Re: [PATCH v2 3/4] ASoC: apple: mca: Start new platform driver

[Martin Povišer]

> On 23. 8. 2022, at 13:31, Mark Brown <broonie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2022 at 09:33:36AM +0200, Martin Povišer wrote:
>>> On 22. 8. 2022, at 19:39, Mark Brown <broonie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On Fri, Aug 19, 2022 at 02:54:29PM +0200, Martin Povišer wrote:

>>>> +	/*
>>>> +	 * We can't power up the device earlier than this because
>>>> +	 * the power state driver would error out on seeing the device
>>>> +	 * as clock-gated.
>>>> +	 */
>>>> +	cl->pd_link = device_link_add(mca->dev, cl->pd_dev,
>>>> +				      DL_FLAG_STATELESS | DL_FLAG_PM_RUNTIME |
>>>> +					      DL_FLAG_RPM_ACTIVE);
> 
>>> I'm not clear on this dynamically adding and removing device links stuff
>>> - it looks like the main (only?) purpose is to take a runtime PM
>>> reference to the target device which is fine but it's not clear why
>>> device links are involved given that the links are created and destroyed
>>> every time the DAI is used, AFAICT always in the same fixed
>>> relationship.  It's not a problem, it's just unclear.
> 
>> Indeed the only purpose is powering up the cluster’s power domain (there’s
>> one domain for each cluster). Adding the links is the only way I know to
>> do it. They need to be added dynamically (as opposed to statically linking,
>> say, the DAI’s ->dev to the cluster’s ->pd_dev, which I guess may do
>> something similar), because we need to sequence the power-up/power-down
>> with the enablement of the clocks.
> 
> You could also just do the underlying runtime power management
> operations directly couldn't you?  It's not clear what the device link
> stuff is adding.

This seems to be the way to do it. Quoting from documentation of
dev_pm_domain_attach_by_id, by which we obtain the mca->dev and cl->pd_dev
the link is between:

 * This function should typically be invoked by a driver during the probe phase,
 * in case its device requires power management through multiple PM domains. The
 * driver may benefit from using the received device, to configure device-links
 * towards its original device. Depending on the use-case and if needed, the
 * links may be dynamically changed by the driver, which allows it to control
 * the power to the PM domains independently from each other.

--
Martin