Re: [PATCH 00/33] Qualcomm video decoder/encoder driver

[Stanimir Varbanov]

Hi Dmitry,

On 28.07.23 г. 17:01 ч., Dmitry Baryshkov wrote:
> On 28/07/2023 16:23, Vikash Garodia wrote:
> > This patch series introduces support for Qualcomm new video acceleration
> > hardware architecture, used for video stream decoding/encoding. This 
> > driver
> > is based on new communication protocol between video hardware and 
> > application
> > processor.
> >
> > This driver comes with below capabilities:
> > - V4L2 complaint video driver with M2M and STREAMING capability.
> > - Supports H264, H265, VP9 decoders.
> > - Supports H264, H265 encoders.
>
> Please describe, why is it impossible to support this hardware in the 
> venus driver. We do not usually add new drivers for the new generations 
> of the hardware, unless it is fully incompatible with the previous 
> generations. Let me point you to camss or drm/msm drivers. They have 
> successfully solved the issue of supporting multiple generations of the 
> hardware in the same driver.
>
> Unless the "iris3" is completely different from all the previous 
> generations, I strongly suggest spending time on restructuring existing 
> venus driver and then adding support for the new hardware there instead 
> of dumping out something completely new.

AFAIK the major differences are HW IP and firmware interface (by 
firmware interface I mean a protocol, API and API behavior). The 
firmware and its interface has been re-written to align closely with the 
current v4l2 specs for encoders/decoders state machines [1][2]. On the 
other side current mainline Venus driver firmware is following interface 
similar to OpenMAX.

There are incompatibilities between both firmware interfaces which 
cannot easily combined in a common driver. Even if there is a 
possibility to do that it will lead us to a unreadable driver source 
code and maintenance burden.

Vikash, could elaborate more on firmware interface differences.

[1] 
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/userspace-api/media/v4l/dev-decoder.html

[2] 
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/userspace-api/media/v4l/dev-encoder.html

--
regards,
Stan