Re: [PATCH v2] dma: Add Xilinx AXI Video Direct Memory Access Engine driver support

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On 01/31/2014 06:44 PM, Andy Gross wrote:
On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 02:24:27PM +0100, Lars-Peter Clausen wrote:
On 01/24/2014 12:16 PM, Srikanth Thokala wrote:
Hi Lars,

On Thu, Jan 23, 2014 at 4:55 PM, Lars-Peter Clausen <lars@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 01/22/2014 05:52 PM, Srikanth Thokala wrote:
[...]
+/**
+ * xilinx_vdma_device_control - Configure DMA channel of the device
+ * @dchan: DMA Channel pointer
+ * @cmd: DMA control command
+ * @arg: Channel configuration
+ *
+ * Return: '0' on success and failure value on error
+ */
+static int xilinx_vdma_device_control(struct dma_chan *dchan,
+                                   enum dma_ctrl_cmd cmd, unsigned long arg)
+{
+     struct xilinx_vdma_chan *chan = to_xilinx_chan(dchan);
+
+     switch (cmd) {
+     case DMA_TERMINATE_ALL:
+             xilinx_vdma_terminate_all(chan);
+             return 0;
+     case DMA_SLAVE_CONFIG:
+             return xilinx_vdma_slave_config(chan,
+                                     (struct xilinx_vdma_config *)arg);

You really shouldn't be overloading the generic API with your own semantics.
DMA_SLAVE_CONFIG should take a dma_slave_config and nothing else.

Ok.  The driver needs few additional configuration from the slave
device like Vertical
Size, Horizontal Size,  Stride etc., for the DMA transfers, in that case do you
suggest me to define a separate dma_ctrl_cmd like the one FSLDMA_EXTERNAL_START
defined for Freescale drivers?

In my opinion it is not a good idea to have driver implement a generic API,
but at the same time let the driver have custom semantics for those API
calls. It's a bit like having a gpio driver that expects 23 and 42 as the
values passed to gpio_set_value instead of 0 and 1. It completely defeats
the purpose of a generic API, namely that you are able to write generic code
that makes use of the API without having to know about which implementation
API it is talking to. The dmaengine framework provides the
dmaengine_prep_interleaved_dma() function to setup two dimensional
transfers, e.g. take a look at sirf-dma.c or imx-dma.c.


The comments in the include/linux/dmaengine.h state that if you have
non-generic, non-fixed configuration then you can just create your own
structure and embed the dma_slave_config.  Using the container_of you can get
back your structure.

We should probably revise that, since it is not going to work that well.


I agree that we should always use the generic structure if possible, but
sometimes there are some non-standard things that you have to do for your
hardware.  I am currently in a bind for adding some quirky features that are
required by peripherals who want to use the QCOM DMA devices.

Well there are two types of extensions to the API. The first type changes the semantics of the API so it is no longer possible to use the API without knowing about the extension. This is in my opinion a complete no-go since goes against the very idea of a common API. If you implement the common API with custom semantics you have a custom API. It's just better hidden since you use the same function names. My opinion on this is if you want/need a custom API make it a custom API with custom function names. This on one hand avoids confusion about the behavior and on the other hand reduces the maintenance burden for the common API (e.g. if somebody makes changes to the common API they don't have to bother to update your driver and don't have to try to understand the custom semantics). The other kind of extensions are those that add additional functionality on top of the common API, while keeping the normal semantics for the common API. Which means a user that does not know about the extensions is still able to function. A user that knows about the extension can make use of the additional features.

That said, everybody always thinks their hardware is special and requires special extensions. Usually this is not the case, there will always sooner or later somebody else who needs the same extensions. The dmaengine API is not set in stone, so if you think something is missing to properly to support your hardware it is worth investigating if it makes sense to add the missing parts to the common API. As I said before the whole point of the exercise of having a common API is that we want to abstract away (hardware) implementation specific details. This allows the upper layers to have platform independent common code to take care of setting up the DMA transfers. E.g. in ALSA subsystem we went from 10+ custom implementations of a PCM driver build on top of dmaengine to 1 generic implementation that is shared between platforms. All those custom PCM drivers had hardcoded assumptions about the behavior and features of the underlying dmaengine driver. To be able to have one generic PCM driver it was necessarily to extend the dmaengine API to be able to expose these differences in features and behavior. So as I said the API is not set in stone if it is necessary to extend or modify it to support something properly do it. Other subsystems also want to go the direction of having more shared code that makes use of the dmaengine API at the subsytem level rather than having every driver basically implement the same stuff (with slight variations) over and over again. Having custom extensions in your dmaengine will not make it possible to write a generic user.


If the context field in prep_slave_sg and prep_dma_cyclic was exposed to
everyone, that would allow an easy way to pass in hardware specific
configuration without bastardizing the slave_config.  I noticed that rapidio is
the only consumer of that field and that they have their own prep function.

If we are not going to allow people to do their own slave_config when they need
to, then we need to remove the comments from the include file and expose the
context to the dmaengine_prep_slave_sg and dmaengine_prep_dma_cyclic.

I don't think the way the rapidio stuff is handled is good for the reasons stated above. It uses the same names, but has different semantics. A user of the dmaengine interface that does not know that the underlying dmaengine driver expects rapidio semantics does not work.

- Lars

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