Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1763540AbXKNA5d (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:57:33 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1754495AbXKNA5Z (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:57:25 -0500 Received: from nz-out-0506.google.com ([64.233.162.235]:8271 "EHLO nz-out-0506.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753192AbXKNA5X (ORCPT ); Tue, 13 Nov 2007 19:57:23 -0500 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=beta; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition:references; b=AArnnpjjbwOEaFe1NVKy7dH3/7OvCmuoJhvZwTDxVJBWZBa8ypqI2fUAwtp/+4tYFjqt2OovSPGPdJ+mg/0D1bxuqao3hVyckxs4sDa1iFTEL20lk64RJ00qeWch2NqhoNfWuBW98UFtqrc/AktbeZJ2tU8zrCWXr51Goz3yei4= Message-ID: Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 08:57:21 +0800 From: "eric miao" To: "David Brownell" Subject: Re: [patch/rfc 1/4] GPIO implementation framework Cc: "Linux Kernel list" , "Felipe Balbi" , "Bill Gatliff" , "Haavard Skinnemoen" , "Andrew Victor" , "Tony Lindgren" , "Jean Delvare" , "Kevin Hilman" , "Paul Mundt" , "Ben Dooks" In-Reply-To: <200711131106.11277.david-b@pacbell.net> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <200710291809.29936.david-b@pacbell.net> <200711051305.13980.david-b@pacbell.net> <200711131106.11277.david-b@pacbell.net> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 6109 Lines: 159 On Nov 14, 2007 3:06 AM, David Brownell wrote: > On Monday 12 November 2007, eric miao wrote: > > Hi David, > > > > I hope I was not late giving my humble feedback on this framework :-) > > > > Can we use "per gpio based" structure instead of "per gpio_chip" based one, > > just like what the generic IRQ layer is doing nowadays? > > We "can" do most anything. What would that improve though? > > Each irq_chip handles multiple IRQs ... just like this patch > has each gpio_chip handling multiple GPIOs. (Not that I think > GPIO code should closely model IRQ code; they need to address > very different problems.) > > I can't tell what you intend to suggest as a "per-GPIO" data > structure; since I can think of at least three different ways > to do such a thing, you should be more concrete. I'd think it > should be in *addition* to a gpio_chip structure though. > exactly, I'd say a "struct gpio_desc" as > > > So that > > > > a. you don't have to declare per gpio_chip "can_sleep", "is_out" and > > "requested". > > Those will be just bits of properties of a single GPIO. > > The can_sleep value is a per-controller thing. The other bits are > indeed per-GPIO. > > So do you mean a structure with two bits, plus a pointer to a > gpio_chip, plus likely other stuff (what?) to make it work? > What would the hot-path costs be (for getting/setting values of > an on-chip GPIO)? > the cost is as trivial as the current one. > > > b. and furthur more, one can avoid the use of ARCH_GPIOS_PER_CHIP, which > > leads to many holes > > Why should holes (in the GPIO number sequence) be a problem? In > this code, they don't cost much space at all. They'd cost more > if there were a per-GPIO structure though... > well, I don't think holes are problems, but think about the restriction ARCH_GPIOS_PER_CHIP enforces the numbering of GPIOs, don't you think we need a more flexible numbering scheme, so one can later adjust gpio_to_irq() and irq_to_gpio() easily?? > The only downside of GPIOS_PER_CHIP that I know of right now > is that it complicates mixing gpio bank sizes; it's a ceiling, > some controllers would allocate more than they need. The > upside of that is efficiency, and a closer match to how > underlying hardware works. > > Of course, GPIOS_PER_CHIP *could* be decoupled from how the > table of gpio_chip pointers is managed. If the table were to > group GPIOs in units of 8, a gpio_chip with 32 GPIOs could > take four adjacent entries while an 8-bit GPIO expander could > take just one. That'd be a very easy patch, supporting a more > dense allocation of GPIO numbers... although it would increase > static memory consumption by typically NR_GPIOS/4 pointers. > > > > c. gpio_to_chip() will be made easy and straight forward > > I'd say "return chips[gpio / ARCH_GPIOS_PER_CHIP]" already meets > both criteria! > > There's also "efficient" to consider; this way doesn't cost much > memory or add levels of indirection (compared to most platforms, > which already use a similar array). > > > > d. granularity of spin_lock()/_unlock() can be made small > > (per GPIO instead of per gpio_chip) > > Why would per-GPIO locking be needed though? Look again... > > The locking is there fundamentally because gpio_chip structures > may need to be unregistered; that's not a per-gpio issue. > Even when a gpio is marked in chip->requested under that lock, > that's part of ensuring that the unregistration is prevented so > long as the GPIO is in active use. > > Plus, fine grained locking is rarely a good idea; it normally > increases locking overhead by involving multiple locks. Only > add extra locks if a single lock sees too much contention; and > even then, only if that contention can't be removed by using a > smarter design. > well, I don't see much benefit for now, either. But binding/unbinding the gpio_chip to the gpio_desc could possibly be made locking free (RCU maybe), since removing a gpio_chip is really *rare*. > - Dave > > > > > > What do you think? > > > > - eric > > > > On Nov 6, 2007 5:05 AM, David Brownell wrote: > > > On Monday 29 October 2007, David Brownell wrote: > > > > > > > > Provides new implementation infrastructure that platforms may choose to use > > > > when implementing the GPIO programming interface. Platforms can update their > > > > GPIO support to use this. The downside is slower access to non-inlined GPIOs; > > > > rarely a problem except when bitbanging some protocol. > > > > > > I was asked just what that overhead *is* ... and it surprised me. > > > A summary of the results is appended to this note. > > > > > > Fortuntely it turns out those problems all go away if the gpiolib > > > code uses a *raw* spinlock to guard its table lookups. With a raw > > > spinlock, any performance impact of gpiolib seems to be well under > > > a microsecond in this bitbang context (and not objectionable). > > > Preempt became free; enabling debug options had only a minor cost. > > > > > > That's as it should be, since the only substantive changes were to > > > grab and release a lock, do one table lookup a bit differently, and > > > add one indirection function call ... changes which should not have > > > any visible performance impact on per-bit codepaths, and one might > > > expect to cost on the order of one dozen instructions. > > > > > > > > > So the next version of this code will include a few minor bugfixes, > > > and will also use a raw spinlock to protect that table. A raw lock > > > seems appropriate there in any case, since non-sleeping GPIOs should > > > be accessible from hardirq contexts even on RT kernels. > > > > > > If anyone has any strong arguments against using a raw spinlock > > > to protect that table, it'd be nice to know them sooner rather > > > than later. > > > > > > - Dave > > > > > > -- Cheers - eric - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/