Re: [PATCH v2 2/2] serial: 8250: Add new 8250-core based Broadcom STB driver

[Andy Shevchenko]

On Tue, Jan 19, 2021 at 8:16 PM Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 1/19/2021 7:21 AM, Andy Shevchenko wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 11:19 PM Al Cooper <alcooperx@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >>
> >> Add a UART driver for the new Broadcom 8250 based STB UART. The new
> >> UART is backward compatible with the standard 8250, but has some
> >> additional features. The new features include a high accuracy baud
> >> rate clock system and DMA support.
> >>
> >> The driver will use the new optional BAUD MUX clock to select the best
> >> one of the four master clocks (81MHz, 108MHz, 64MHz and 48MHz) to feed
> >> the baud rate selection logic for any requested baud rate.  This allows
> >> for more accurate BAUD rates when high speed baud rates are selected.
> >>
> >> The driver will use the new UART DMA hardware if the UART DMA registers
> >> are specified in Device Tree "reg" property. The DMA functionality can
> >> be disabled on kernel boot with the argument:
> >> "8250_bcm7271.disable_dma=Y".
> >>
> >> The driver also set the UPSTAT_AUTOCTS flag when hardware flow control
> >> is enabled. This flag is needed for UARTs that don't assert a CTS
> >> changed interrupt when CTS changes and AFE (Hardware Flow Control) is
> >> enabled.
> >>
> >> The driver also contains a workaround for a bug in the Synopsis 8250
> >> core. The problem is that at high baud rates, the RX partial FIFO
> >> timeout interrupt can occur but there is no RX data (DR not set in
> >> the LSR register). In this case the driver will not read the Receive
> >> Buffer Register, which clears the interrupt, and the system will get
> >> continuous UART interrupts until the next RX character arrives. The
> >> fix originally suggested by Synopsis was to read the Receive Buffer
> >> Register and discard the character when the DR bit in the LSR was
> >> not set, to clear the interrupt. The problem was that occasionally
> >> a character would arrive just after the DR bit check and a valid
> >> character would be discarded. The fix that was added will clear
> >> receive interrupts to stop the interrupt, deassert RTS to insure
> >> that no new data can arrive, wait for 1.5 character times for the
> >> sender to react to RTS and then check for data and either do a dummy
> >> read or a valid read. Sysfs error counters were also added and were
> >> used to help create test software that would cause the error condition.
> >> The counters can be found at:
> >> /sys/devices/platform/rdb/*serial/rx_bad_timeout_late_char
> >> /sys/devices/platform/rdb/*serial/rx_bad_timeout_no_char
> >
> > Brief looking into the code raises several questions:
> >  - is it driver from the last decade?
>
> Work on this driver started back in 2018, that was indeed the last decade.
>
> >  - why it's not using what kernel provides?
> >  - we have a lot of nice helpers:
> >    - DMA Engine API
>
> Not sure this makes sense, given that the DMA hardware that was added to
> this UART block is only used by the UART block and no other pieces of HW
> in the system, nor will they ever be. Not sure it makes sense to pay the
> cost of an extra indirection and subsystem unless there are at least two
> consumers of that DMA hardware to warrant modeling it after a dmaengine
> driver. I also remember that Al researched before whether 8250_dma.c
> could work, and came to the conclusion that it would not, but I will let
> him comment on the specifics.

I see. In any case I still believe that the driver can be shrinked by
a notable amount of lines.

> >    - BIT() and GENMASK() macros
> >    - tons of different helpers like regmap API (if you wish to dump
> > registers via debugfs)
> >
> > Can you shrink this driver by 20-30% (I truly believe it's possible)
> > and split DMA driver to drivers/dma (which may already have something
> > similar there)?
>
> See previous response.


-- 
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko