Re: [PATCH v3 2/2] irqchip/apple-aic: Add support for A7-A11 SoCs

[Sven Peter]

Hi,


On Tue, Oct 4, 2022, at 13:27, Konrad Dybcio wrote:
> Add support for A7-A11 SoCs by if-ing out some features only present
> on:
>
> * A11 & newer (implementation-defined IPI & UNCORE registers)
> * A11[1] & newer (fast IPI support).
>
> UNCORE/UNCORE2 and IPI registers conveniently both first appeared on
> A11, so introduce just one check for that.
>
> Knowing whether the SoC supports the latter is necessary, as they are
> written to, even if fast IPI is disabled. 

AFAIK that's only an artifact in this driver: It was added to prevent an FIQ
storm in case there were pending fast ipis (i.e. the bootloader was broken ;))
when this driver didn't support fast ipis yet.

> This in turn causes a crash
> on older platforms, as the implemention-defined registers either do
> something else or are not supposed to be touched - definitely not a
> NOP though.
>
> [1] A11 is supposed to use this feature, but it currently doesn't work
> for reasons unknown and hence remains disabled. It can easily be enabled
> on A11 only, as there is a SoC-specific compatible in the DT with a
> fallback to apple,aic. That said, it is not yet necessary, especially
> with only one core up, and it has worked a-ok so far.

Just to make sure I understand this correctly - we have the following three situations:

- base: no fastipi, no uncore, will work on A11 and M1 though
- A11: fastipi and uncore but fastipi is broken (possibly due to HW errata or some bug in this driver that only happens on A11)
- M1 (or maybe even A12 already, doesn't matter though): fastipi and uncore support

If we figured out _why_ fastipi is broken on A11 we would only need a single
feature flag to enable both uncore and fastipi but for now we need two to
disable fastipi for A11.

I'm also curious: What are the symptoms when you enable fastipi on A11?


Sven