Re: (EXT) Re: [PATCH 2/4] pwm: pca9685: remove ALL_LED PWM channel

[Clemens Gruber]

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 02:09:37PM +0200, Matthias Schiffer wrote:
> On Mon, 2020-03-30 at 18:07 +0200, Clemens Gruber wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 05:40:36PM +0200, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > > On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 03:34:50PM +0200, Clemens Gruber wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > > 
> > > > On Mon, Mar 30, 2020 at 03:07:57PM +0200, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > > > > On Wed, Feb 26, 2020 at 02:52:27PM +0100, Matthias Schiffer
> > > > > wrote:
> > > > > > The interaction of the ALL_LED PWM channel with the other
> > > > > > channels was
> > > > > > not well-defined. As the ALL_LED feature does not seem very
> > > > > > useful and
> > > > > > it was making the code significantly more complex, simply
> > > > > > remove it.
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Signed-off-by: Matthias Schiffer <
> > > > > > matthias.schiffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > > > ---
> > > > > >  drivers/pwm/pwm-pca9685.c | 115 ++++++--------------------
> > > > > > ------------
> > > > > >  1 file changed, 17 insertions(+), 98 deletions(-)
> > > > > 
> > > > > Applied, thanks.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Thierry
> > > > 
> > > > I was not reading the mailing list in the last weeks, so I only
> > > > saw the
> > > > patch today.
> > > > 
> > > > We are using the ALL_LED channel in production to reduce the
> > > > delay when
> > > > all 16 PWM outputs need to be set to the same duty cycle.
> > > > 
> > > > I am not sure it is a good idea to remove this feature.
> > > 
> > > Can you specify what platform this is and where the code is that
> > > does
> > > this. I can't really find any device tree users of this and I don't
> > > know
> > > if there's a good way to find out what other users there are, but
> > > this
> > > isn't the first time this driver has created confusion, so please
> > > help
> > > collect some more information about it's use so we can avoid this
> > > in the
> > > future.
> > 
> > The platform is ARM, it's a custom board with an NXP i.MX6. The
> > device
> > tree is not upstreamed. As there are multiple companies involved
> > in changes to this driver, I assume that it is in use, even though
> > there
> > are no in-tree users.
> > Also: As you can set the ALL channel from userspace, it will be very
> > difficult to find out how often the ALL feature is being used
> > somewhere.
> > 
> > > 
> > > I'll back out this particular patch since you're using it. Can you
> > > give
> > > the other three patches a try to see if they work for you?
> > 
> > Thanks! I saw your other mail. Patch 1 looks good to me. I will look
> > at
> > the new version of patches 3 and 4 and test them when they appear on
> > the
> > list.
> > 
> > Clemens
> 
> Thanks for the feedback, I'll have to respin my cleanup patches without
> removing this feature.
> 
> I wonder if we can come up with a sane semantics of how ALL_LED is
> supposed to interact with the individual channels? Optimally, changes
> made via ALL_LED should be reflected in the state of the other channels
> including their sysfs files, but I'm not sure if current APIs can
> support this cleanly. It might make sense to make requesting/exporting
> individual channels and ALL_LED mutually exclusive, so the state of a
> requested PWM can't change when it's supposed to be under exclusive
> control of one user. Of course, such a change can break existing users
> as well...

I agree that it would be a good idea to make this exclusive. This change
would at least not break our application, because we unexport the
ALL_LED channel before requesting an individual channel.
Not sure about other users, but using both individual and ALL channels
at the same time is probably not a reasonable/sane usecase..

> And what about state propagation in the other direction - how should
> the ALL_LED state reflect changes made to the other channels' settings?
> On the hardware side, the ALL_LED registers are write-only, as there
> aren't any sane values that could be returned.

According to the datashet (7.3.4) the individual registers are filled if
the ALL_LED channel is used. However, in .disable, the OFF registers are
reset to 0. (And the ON registers are not used, except for the FULL_ON
bit)
So there should not be any side effects, as long as the access to the
ALL_LED channel is made exclusive and the user has to free it before he
can request individual channels.

Another quirk is the same prescaler/period for all channels. But I am
not sure what we can do about that. Applications might already depend on
the fact that the last set period wins.

Clemens