Re: [PATCH v3 4/5] spi: spi-geni-qcom: Actually use our FIFO

From: Stephen Boyd
Date: Wed Jun 17 2020 - 16:56:10 EST


Quoting Douglas Anderson (2020-06-16 03:40:49)
> The geni hardware has a FIFO that can hold up to 64 bytes (it has 16
> entries that can hold 4 bytes each), at least on the two SoCs I tested
> (sdm845 and sc7180). We configured our RX Watermark to 0, which
> basically meant we got an interrupt as soon as the first 4 bytes
> showed up in the FIFO. Tracing the IRQ handler showed that we often
> only read 4 or 8 bytes per IRQ handler.
>
> I tried setting the RX Watermark to "fifo size - 2" but that just got
> me a bunch of overrun errors reported. Setting it to "fifo size - 3"
> seemed to work great, though. This made me worried that we'd start
> getting overruns if we had long interrupt latency, but that doesn't
> appear to be the case and delays inserted in the IRQ handler while
> using "fifo size - 3" didn't cause any errors. Presumably there is
> some interaction with the poorly-documented RFR (ready for receive)
> level means that "fifo size - 3" is the max. We are the SPI master,
> so it makes sense that there would be no problems with overruns, the
> master should just stop clocking.
>
> Despite "fifo size - 3" working, I chose "fifo size / 2" (8 entries =
> 32 bytes) which gives us a little extra time to get to the interrupt
> handler and should reduce dead time on the SPI wires. With this
> setting, I often saw the IRQ handler handle 40 bytes but sometimes up
> to 56 if we had bad interrupt latency.
>
> Testing by running "flashrom -p ec -r" on a Chromebook saw interrupts
> from the SPI driver cut roughly in half. Time was roughly the same.
>
> Signed-off-by: Douglas Anderson <dianders@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---

Reviewed-by: Stephen Boyd <swboyd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Nice improvement. Maybe it can still have a Fixes tag because it's a
performance problem?