Re: [PATCH] PCI: Extend Apple Thunderbolt power quirk to Alpine Ridge

[Francisco Beltrán Millalén]

Hi Bjorn,

Thanks for looking at this one as well, and for copying the Thunderbolt
folks.

On Thu, Oct 08, 2026 at 06:17:44PM -0500, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> Thanks for all this detail.  I think it's too much for a commit log,
> but it would be good to have it after the "---" where it's in the
> email but not the git commit.  This is easily accessible via the
> "Link: https://patch.msgid.link/"; tag that we add when applying.

I'll move most of it below the "---" in v2 and keep the commit message
to the problem and the fix.

> Wrap these to fit in 80 columns like the rest of the file.  Ideally 75
> or so; that allows minor changes and typo fixes without overflowing.

I'll fix that in v2 too.

Before v2, though, I found something this week that changes the patch,
so I'd ask you not to apply this version.

The quirk works today partly by accident.  On resume, the firmware of
these Macs tries to write to the Thunderbolt controller through the
PCIe2CIO mailbox of its upstream bridge, and on Linux those accesses
currently go to the wrong device: ACPICA works out the PCI address of
the bridge's config region while the bridge's bus numbers are still
reset, and caches 00:00.0.  Each access then times out, which is where
most of the ~16 s noirq resume that Darrell reported comes from.  There
are two pull requests for this in ACPICA:

  https://github.com/open-acpica/acpica/pull/1235
  https://github.com/open-acpica/acpica/pull/1236

With that fixed, resume drops to about 4 s, but the firmware's writes
now succeed, and one of them sets bit 26 of dword 0x3c of the
controller's switch config space (VSC_CS_20 in the plug events
capability).  With that bit set, SXFP() really cuts power to the
controller, and on resume Linux does not bring it back.  With the
ACPICA change and this patch, and a USB disk attached, the controller
with the disk was lost in 3 of 3 suspend cycles, in two of them
together with the other controller, and resume took about 35 s.
Clearing the bit through the same mailbox before SXFP() runs fixes it:
15 of 15 cycles resumed in about 4 s with the disk still there.
Without the ACPICA change the firmware's write never lands, which is
why this version works as posted and in Darrell's tests.

I also checked whether the ACPICA change makes the quirk unnecessary.
It doesn't: in my test without the quirk, with the disk attached, the
link to that controller still did not come up after resume (LnkSta x0),
as described in the commit message.

So v2 would clear that bit before calling SXFP(), so that the quirk
keeps working once the ACPICA change lands.

Mika, I only know what this bit does from measuring it: with it set,
dropping the controller's power pin turns the NHI off; with it clear,
the NHI stays up.  Do you know what bit 26 of VSC_CS_20 is on Alpine
Ridge, and whether it is fine for the OS to clear it before cutting
power this way?  If it has a name, I'd like to use it in v2 instead of
a magic number.  And if you think this belongs in the thunderbolt
driver rather than in a PCI quirk, I'm happy to move it there.

Thanks again,
Francisco