[RFC,0/14] PM / shmobile: Pass power domain information via DT (was: Re: [RFD] PM: Device tree representation of power domains)

On Tuesday 24 July 2012, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 24, 2012, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > On Tuesday 24 July 2012, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> > > On Tuesday, July 24, 2012, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> > > > On Saturday 21 July 2012, Rafael J. Wysocki wrote:
> > 
> > > > 
> > > > Sorry for taking so long to reply. I am really not that familiar with the
> > > > power domain requirements, but I do have two comments on your approach:
> > > > 
> > > > * I think when we want to add a generic concept to the device tree such
> > > >   as power domains, we should always make it specified in a generic way.
> > > 
> > > Do we really want that?  I'm a bit skeptical, because apparently nobody
> > > cares, as the (zero) response to this patchset evidently indicates and
> > > since nobody cares, it's probably better not to add such "generic" things
> > > just yet.
> > 
> > Well, the trouble with bindings is that they are much harder to change
> > later, at least in incompatible ways. 
> 
> Hmm, so I think you wanted to say that it might be burdensome to retain the
> code handling the old binding once we had started to use a new generic one.
> 
> I can agree with that, but that's quite similar to user space interfaces.
> Once we've exposed a user space interface of some kind and someone starts
> to use it, we'll have to maintain it going forward for the user in question.
> However, there is a way to deprecate old user space interfaces and it has
> happened.
> 
> In this particular case the burden would be on Renesas, but I don't think it
> would affect anybody else.

[adding devicetree-discuss@lists.ozlabs.org]

In case of user space interfaces, we also try very hard to avoid cases
where we know that we will have to change things later.

I don't think it's that hard to define a generic binding here, we just
need to make sure it's extensible.

One thing I would like to avoid is having to add to every single
device binding two separate optional properties defined like

Even if you say that the burden is only on Renesas to maintain all those
changes to every binding they use, there is also a burden on people trying
to understand the binding and deciding which one to use.

> > > >   You have used the "renesas,pmdomain" attribute, which is specific to
> > > >   one vendor and requires platform specific code to read it.
> > > >   Is there any reason not to put the code into the generic
> > > >   drivers/base/power/domain.c file (or near it) and make a binding that
> > > >   works for everyone?
> > > 
> > > Yes, there is.  A couple of them in fact.
> > > 
> > > First off, power domains will always need platform-specific code to support
> > > them, no matter what.  The problem is that they tend to require special
> > > handling, even within the same SoC, let alone different SoCs, and that handling
> > > has to be implemented in an SoC-specific way, because it has to know various
> > > things about the platform (like what to write to what register(s) at what time
> > > and so on).  Of course, that platform-specific code needs to know which
> > > domain the given description corresponds to and there doesn't seem to be any
> > > useful way to specify that through DTs.
> > 
> > We have the same problem for a lot of other subsystems: clock, regulator,
> > irq, gpio, pinctrl, dma, ...
> > 
> > In each of these cases, we want a driver to be able to associate some
> > property with a driver (or platform code) from another subsystem.
> > We try to handle those using generic subsystem code that interprets
> > regular property names.
> 
> For power domains those properties would be SoC-specific.  That is, there may
> be a different set of properties for each SoC in principle and it's going to
> get quite messy relatively quickly.

I don't see how power domains are any different from the other cases
I listed. The differences should be contained in whatever provides
the domains. For a device that is part of a power domain, you only need
to know how to find that domain, not what that information means.

> > > Second, the generic code needed to support such a binding would have to be
> > > quite complex and I don't see any advantage from adding it.
> > 
> > The generic binding would only need to specify what the property
> > looks like and how the possible values can be determined. We don't
> > need to make that code generic right away but could wait until we
> > have a couple of implementations before we pull out the common bits.
> > 
> > The important part to me is writing the binding in a way that allows
> > us to do this.
> 
> Admittedly, I have a little experience with writing DT bindings.
> 
> The regulator bindings look like we could do something similar for power
> domains, but for one I don't want platform device objects to be created
> for them in any case (that would make as much sense as creating a platform
> device for a bus type).

We have lots of device nodes in the device tree that do not get
added as platform devices in Linux, and they are used for all sorts
of purposes. For instance most buses (amba, pci, usb, i2c, spi, ...)
can have their devices represented in the device tree but register
their own devices rather than platform devices.

Other nodes are used internally in some code and have no "device"
associated at all. Examples for these are parts of the system that
we don't treat as devices in Linux (cpu, memory, command line)
and things that are subsystem specific but structured (regulators,
pincontrol, clock).

> > > > * Mark suggested two options (string and phandle), and (you guessed it),
> > > 
> > > To me, the Mark's suggestion was to follow the example of TI hwmods, which
> > > I did.  In fact, the power domains on Renesas platforms are an analogous
> > > concept, so in my opinion handling them in analogy with hwmods makes a lot of
> > > sense.
> > 
> > I had never seen the hwmod binding before and if I had I would have
> > given them the same comments. I definitely don't think we should be
> > using it as a good example for common code.
> 
> Well, good to know. :-)
> 
> > > >   IMHO using phandle makes it much easier to do this in a generic way,
> > > >   without having to document every possible string that this can be
> > > >   set to in the binding document. Obviously the phandle requires having
> > > >   a node in the device tree for each domain, but I think having that
> > > >   node is actually an advantage because it lets you describe the
> > > >   hierarchy of the domains there.
> > > 
> > > I don't quite see how it is better.  I could (and should in fact) represent
> > > that hierarchy as an array of pairs of strings without adding any special
> > > parsing code to the kernel (except for a simple routine walking that table
> > > and calling pm_genpd_add_subdomain_names() for every pair).
> > > 
> > > The only disadvantage of the current approach I can see is that whoever
> > > creates a dts for a board based on the given SoC has to know the names of the
> > > power domains to use in there.  I don't think this is an overly burdensome
> > > requirement.
> > 
> > Well, it does mean that we need to maintain a separate binding document
> > for each soc that has its own set of possible values.
> 
> I'm not sure we'll be able to avoid that anyway.

True, but a different kind of document.

The difference is that when using a string, each binding for a device that
can be part of a domain should have a way to document which strings are
possible for the property.
If you use a phandle, the binding for that device just needs to document
that it's a phandle that points to another device for which a binding
exists.
The binding for the SoC can then describe the power domains in a way
that is detached from the devices.

> > > The other way around, the platform code supposed to handle the power domains
> > > would need a way to match DT nodes against the domains, which also would
> > > require some string-based identification and that would have to be documented
> > > as well.
> > 
> > The part that matches the pm-domain device nodes can and should be
> > specific to the platform implementing the pm-domain. We can easily
> > do the same thing we did for regulators, where each regulator can
> > be either identified through its "reg" property in cases where that
> > makes sense or through a "regulator-compatible" property in cases
> > where we need a string representation.
> 
> Where can I find the code that parses the regulator bindings?

The binding is in Documentation/devicetree/bindings/regulator/regulator.txt
and the code is in drivers/regulator/of_regulator.c. Note that this
has recently been extended, so be sure to look at the latest snapshot in
git, not the v3.5 version.

	Arnd
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[RFC,0/14] PM / shmobile: Pass power domain information via DT (was: Re: [RFD] PM: Device tree representation of power domains)

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