[RFC PATCH 0/3] media: rockchip: VEPU510 H.264 encoder for RK3576

[Jiaxing Hu]

This is an RFC for a from-scratch mainline V4L2 driver for the H.264
hardware video encoder (VEPU510) on the Rockchip RK3576.  It is a
stateful mem2mem encoder (NV12 in, H.264 Annex-B out) modelled on the
verisilicon/hantro driver, not on the downstream MPP-service model.

I'm posting it as an RFC because intra frames work but inter frames do
not, and I'd like a second pair of eyes on the inter-frame problem
before this is worth a real submission.

What works
----------

Intra-only (I-frame) encoding is confirmed on real hardware (Radxa
ROCK 4D).  With GOP size 1 the driver produces a valid H.264 stream the
reference decoder accepts.  This already exercises the full path: V4L2
m2m, the register programming, the software SPS/PPS prepend, and the
hardware slice output.

There is no upstream userspace involved (an encoder needs no request
API); I drive it with a small ioctl test program that feeds NV12 frames
and writes the CAPTURE buffers to a .h264 file.

The open problem: inter (P-frame) frames hang
---------------------------------------------

Every P-frame stalls the encoder's own hardware watchdog (INT_STA bit 8,
~20 ms after the kick) and produces essentially no bitstream.  I have
spent a lot of time narrowing this; it is sharply localized but I cannot
close it:

  - The P-frame register writes match a real register-write trace of the
    vendor stack encoding the same content, byte for byte (I traced the
    vendor kernel's writes and diffed against this driver's).

  - The reconstruction the previous frame writes is *valid*: dumping the
    recon buffer after the I-frame shows correct reconstructed pixels.

  - If the P-frame reads its own (older, settled) recon slot instead of
    the immediately-preceding frame's, it completes.  Reading the
    immediately-preceding frame's *fresh* reconstruction as the
    reference is what hangs.

  - It is not FBC: storing the reconstruction uncompressed
    (enc_pic.rec_fbc_dis = 1) still hangs.

  - The first frame of a session always works; the first P-frame hangs;
    after a couple of failures + core resets, later frames sometimes
    start completing.  It behaves like a warm-up / settling problem on
    the reference-read path, not a wrong register value.

So the encoder programs identically to the vendor and reads a valid
reference, but stalls fetching the previous frame's reconstruction as
the inter reference on the first inter frame of a session.  My best
guess is that the vendor does something between consecutive frame
submissions -- a completion/drain wait, a cache/coherency step, or a
per-frame re-arm -- that I am missing, but I have not found it.  If
anyone recognizes this on VEPU5xx, or knows what the reference-read path
needs between frames, a pointer would be very welcome.

The shape of this -- the first operation of a power session works, the
next stalls, and a reset/warm-up sometimes helps -- is the same one I
ran into bringing up this SoC's NPU (accel/rocket RKNN), where the
second/chained submit in a session would not fire [1].  I can't claim
they share a root cause, but if this is a known RK3576-wide submit /
re-arm quirk rather than an encoder-specific bug, that would be good to
know.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260718031146.3368811-1-gahing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx/

Notes for review
----------------

  - The PARAM/SQI register classes are programmed from mpp's constant
    "default tuning" tables (not derived per-frame), as noted in the
    code.  They are required: leaving them unwritten stalls even the
    I-frame.

  - Rate control is fixed-QP only for now (the bitrate control is
    advisory).

  - H.264 baseline/main, single slice, 4:2:0 only.

  - Tested at 176x144; other resolutions are not yet validated.

Signed-off-by: Jiaxing Hu <gahing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Jiaxing Hu (3):
  dt-bindings: media: add Rockchip RK3576 VEPU H.264 encoder
  media: rockchip: add VEPU510 H.264 encoder driver for RK3576
  arm64: dts: rockchip: rk3576: add VEPU H.264 encoder nodes

 .../bindings/media/rockchip,rk3576-vepu.yaml       |   94 ++
 arch/arm64/boot/dts/rockchip/rk3576.dtsi           |   50 +
 drivers/media/platform/rockchip/Kconfig            |    1 +
 drivers/media/platform/rockchip/Makefile           |    1 +
 drivers/media/platform/rockchip/rkvenc/Kconfig     |   14 +
 drivers/media/platform/rockchip/rkvenc/Makefile    |    6 +
 .../media/platform/rockchip/rkvenc/rkvenc-h264.c   | 1095 ++++++++++++++++++++
 .../media/platform/rockchip/rkvenc/rkvenc-regs.h   |  929 +++++++++++++++++
 drivers/media/platform/rockchip/rkvenc/rkvenc.c    |  892 ++++++++++++++++
 drivers/media/platform/rockchip/rkvenc/rkvenc.h    |  212 ++++
 10 files changed, 3294 insertions(+)
--
2.43.0