Re: [PATCH] [RFC] dmaengine: add fifo_size member

From: Sameer Pujar
Date: Mon Sep 16 2019 - 05:02:41 EST


Sorry for the delay in replying.

On 8/20/2019 4:35 PM, Vinod Koul wrote:
On 19-08-19, 16:56, Jon Hunter wrote:
On this, I am inclined to think that dma driver should not be involved.
The ADMAIF needs this configuration and we should take the path of
dma_router for this piece and add features like this to it
Hi Vinod,

The configuration is needed by both ADMA and ADMAIF. The size is
configurable
on ADMAIF side. ADMA needs to know this info and program accordingly.
Well I would say client decides the settings for both DMA, DMAIF and
sets the peripheral accordingly as well, so client communicates the two
sets of info to two set of drivers
That maybe, but I still don't see how the information is passed from the
client in the first place. The current problem is that there is no means
to pass both a max-burst size and fifo-size to the DMA driver from the
client.
So one thing not clear to me is why ADMA needs fifo-size, I thought it
was to program ADMAIF and if we have client programme the max-burst
size to ADMA and fifo-size to ADMAIF we wont need that. Can you please
confirm if my assumption is valid?
Let me see if I can clarify ...

1. The FIFO we are discussing here resides in the ADMAIF module which is
a separate hardware block the ADMA (although the naming make this
unclear).

2. The size of FIFO in the ADMAIF is configurable and it this is
configured via the ADMAIF registers. This allows different channels
to use different FIFO sizes. Think of this as a shared memory that is
divided into n FIFOs shared between all channels.

3. The ADMA, not the ADMAIF, manages the flow to the FIFO and this is
because the ADMAIF only tells the ADMA when a word has been
read/written (depending on direction), the ADMAIF does not indicate
if the FIFO is full, empty, etc. Hence, the ADMA needs to know the
total FIFO size.

So the ADMA needs to know the FIFO size so that it does not overrun the
FIFO and we can also set a burst size (less than the total FIFO size)
indicating how many words to transfer at a time. Hence, the two parameters.
Thanks, I confirm this is my understanding as well.

To compare to regular case for example SPI on DMA, SPI driver will
calculate fifo size & burst to be used and program dma (burst size) and
its own fifos accordingly

So, in your case why should the peripheral driver not calculate the fifo
size for both ADMA and ADMAIF and (if required it's own FIFO) and
program the two (ADMA and ADMAIF).

What is the limiting factor in this flow is not clear to me.
The FIFO size that is configured by the ADMAIF driver needs to be given
to the ADMA driver so that it can program its registers accordingly. The
difference here is that both the ADMA and ADMAIF need the FIFO size.
Can you please help describing what it is programming using the FIFO
size of ADMAIF?
**ADMA channel register is programmed with the same FIFO_SIZE as ADMAIF channel
to which it is mapped to.**
As previously mentioned, HW (on ADMA) uses this value to understand the FIFO depth
and comes to know when a space of BURST_SIZE is available. ADMAIF is an interface
to AHUB and when data moves forward to other clients via AHUB, it sends signal to
ADMA per WORD basis. ADMA calculates this to know available space and initiates a
transfer when sufficient space is available.
Thanks