Re: [PATCH v4 2/2] drm/tiny: add driver for Apple Touch Bars in x86 Macs

From: andriy.shevchenko@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon Feb 24 2025 - 09:07:51 EST


On Mon, Feb 24, 2025 at 01:40:20PM +0000, Aditya Garg wrote:
> From: Kerem Karabay <kekrby@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> The Touch Bars found on x86 Macs support two USB configurations: one
> where the device presents itself as a HID keyboard and can display
> predefined sets of keys, and one where the operating system has full
> control over what is displayed.
>
> This commit adds support for the display functionality of the second
> configuration. Functionality for the first configuration has been
> merged in the HID tree.
>
> Note that this driver has only been tested on T2 Macs, and only includes
> the USB device ID for these devices. Testing on T1 Macs would be
> appreciated.
>
> Credit goes to Ben (Bingxing) Wang on GitHub for reverse engineering
> most of the protocol.
>
> Also, as requested by Andy, I would like to clarify the use of __packed
> structs in this driver:
>
> - All the packed structs are aligned except for appletbdrm_msg_information.
> - We have to pack appletbdrm_msg_information since it is requirement of
> the protocol.
> - We compared binaries compiled by keeping the rest structs __packed and
> not __packed using bloat-o-meter, and __packed was not affecting code
> generation.
> - To maintain consistency, rest structs have been kept __packed.

...

> +#define __APPLETBDRM_MSG_STR4(str4) ((__le32 __force)((str4[0] << 24) | (str4[1] << 16) | (str4[2] << 8) | str4[3]))

As commented previously this is quite strange what's going on with endianess in
this driver. Especially the above weirdness when get_unaligned_be32() is being
open coded and force-cast to __le32.

...

> +struct appletbdrm_msg_information {
> + struct appletbdrm_msg_response_header header;
> + u8 unk_14[12];
> + __le32 width;
> + __le32 height;
> + u8 bits_per_pixel;
> + __le32 bytes_per_row;
> + __le32 orientation;
> + __le32 bitmap_info;
> + __le32 pixel_format;
> + __le32 width_inches; /* floating point */
> + __le32 height_inches; /* floating point */
> +} __packed;

Haven't looked deeply into the protocol, but still makes me think that
the above (since it's the only __packed data type required) might be simply
depicted wrongly w.r.t. endianess / data types in use. It might be that
the data types have something combined and / or different types.

Do I understand correctly that the protocol was basically reverse-engineered?

...

> + /*
> + * The coordinate system used by the device is different from the
> + * coordinate system of the framebuffer in that the x and y axes are
> + * swapped, and that the y axis is inverted; so what the device reports
> + * as the height is actually the width of the framebuffer and vice
> + * versa

Missing period.

> + */

...

Otherwise it's nice tiny driver.

--
With Best Regards,
Andy Shevchenko