[PATCH v13 1/3] spi: pxa2xx: disable DMA for Apple MacBook8,1

From: Shih-Yuan Lee

Date: Sat Jul 18 2026 - 11:33:18 EST


On MacBook8,1 (early 2015 12" MacBook), the LPSS SPI controller at
00:15.4 suffers from hardware DMA handshake failures and interrupt
routing bugs, causing keyboard/touchpad transactions to fail when
DMA is enabled.

Move the forced PIO mode DMI quirk to spi-pxa2xx-pci.c (the LPSS host
controller PCI glue driver) to avoid layering violations in client
drivers (such as applespi).

Add an explicit DMI match table for MacBook8,1 and a module parameter
spi_pxa2xx_force_pio to allow forcing PIO mode on demand.

Link: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=108331
Signed-off-by: Shih-Yuan Lee <fourdollars@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
drivers/spi/spi-pxa2xx-pci.c | 35 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--
1 file changed, 33 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/spi/spi-pxa2xx-pci.c b/drivers/spi/spi-pxa2xx-pci.c
index cae77ac18520..31bdaa096d9e 100644
--- a/drivers/spi/spi-pxa2xx-pci.c
+++ b/drivers/spi/spi-pxa2xx-pci.c
@@ -18,9 +18,14 @@

#include <linux/dmaengine.h>
#include <linux/platform_data/dma-dw.h>
+#include <linux/dmi.h>

#include "spi-pxa2xx.h"

+static bool spi_pxa2xx_force_pio;
+module_param_named(force_pio, spi_pxa2xx_force_pio, bool, 0444);
+MODULE_PARM_DESC(force_pio, "Force PIO mode (disables DMA) for SPI transfers. ([0] = disabled, 1 = enabled)");
+
#define PCI_DEVICE_ID_INTEL_QUARK_X1000 0x0935
#define PCI_DEVICE_ID_INTEL_BYT 0x0f0e
#define PCI_DEVICE_ID_INTEL_MRFLD 0x1194
@@ -93,6 +98,32 @@ static void lpss_dma_put_device(void *dma_dev)
pci_dev_put(dma_dev);
}

+static const struct dmi_system_id pxa2xx_spi_pci_dmi_table[] = {
+ {
+ .ident = "Apple MacBook8,1",
+ .matches = {
+ DMI_MATCH(DMI_SYS_VENDOR, "Apple Inc."),
+ DMI_MATCH(DMI_PRODUCT_NAME, "MacBook8,1"),
+ },
+ },
+ { }
+};
+
+static bool pxa2xx_spi_pci_can_dma(struct pci_dev *dev)
+{
+ if (spi_pxa2xx_force_pio) {
+ pci_info(dev, "Forcing PIO mode (disabling DMA)\n");
+ return false;
+ }
+
+ if (dmi_check_system(pxa2xx_spi_pci_dmi_table)) {
+ pci_info(dev, "MacBook8,1 detected: disabling DMA to force PIO mode\n");
+ return false;
+ }
+
+ return true;
+}
+
static int lpss_spi_setup(struct pci_dev *dev, struct pxa2xx_spi_controller *c)
{
struct ssp_device *ssp = &c->ssp;
@@ -166,7 +197,7 @@ static int lpss_spi_setup(struct pci_dev *dev, struct pxa2xx_spi_controller *c)

c->dma_filter = lpss_dma_filter;
c->dma_burst_size = 1;
- c->enable_dma = 1;
+ c->enable_dma = pxa2xx_spi_pci_can_dma(dev);
return 0;
}

@@ -238,7 +269,7 @@ static int mrfld_spi_setup(struct pci_dev *dev, struct pxa2xx_spi_controller *c)

c->dma_filter = lpss_dma_filter;
c->dma_burst_size = 8;
- c->enable_dma = 1;
+ c->enable_dma = pxa2xx_spi_pci_can_dma(dev);
return 0;
}

--
2.39.5