On 7/19/2021 12:23 PM, Stephan Gerhold wrote:
On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 09:43:27AM -0600, Jeffrey Hugo wrote:
On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 9:01 AM Stephan Gerhold <stephan@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The BAM Data Multiplexer provides access to the network data channels
of modems integrated into many older Qualcomm SoCs, e.g. Qualcomm MSM8916
or MSM8974. This series adds a driver that allows using it.
For more information about BAM-DMUX, see PATCH 4/4.
Shortly said, BAM-DMUX is built using a simple protocol layer on top of
a DMA engine (Qualcomm BAM DMA). For BAM-DMUX, the BAM DMA engine runs in
a quite strange mode that I call "remote power collapse", where the
modem/remote side is responsible for powering on the BAM when needed but we
are responsible to initialize it. The BAM is power-collapsed when unneeded
by coordinating power control via bidirectional interrupts from the
BAM-DMUX driver.
The hardware is physically located on the modem, and tied to the modem
regulators, etc. The modem has the ultimate "off" switch. However,
due to the BAM architecture (which is complicated), configuration uses
cooperation on both ends.
What I find strange is that it wasn't done similarly to e.g. Slimbus
which has a fairly similar setup. (I used that driver as inspiration for
how to use the mainline qcom_bam driver instead of the "SPS" from
downstream.)
Slimbus uses qcom,controlled-remotely together with the LPASS
remoteproc, so it looks like there LPASS does both power-collapse
and initialization of the BAM. Whereas here the modem does the
power-collapse but we're supposed to do the initialization.
I suspect I don't have a satisfactory answer for you. The teams that
did slimbus were not the teams involved in the bam_dmux, and the two
didn't talk to each-other. The bam_dmux side wasn't aware of the
slimbus situation, at the time. I don't know if the slimbus folks knew
about bam_dmux. If you have two silos working independently, its
unlikely they will create exactly the same solution.
The series first adds one possible solution for handling this "remote power
collapse" mode in the bam_dma driver, then it adds the BAM-DMUX driver to
the WWAN subsystem. Note that the BAM-DMUX driver does not actually make
use of the WWAN subsystem yet, since I'm not sure how to fit it in there
yet (see PATCH 4/4).
Please note that all of the changes in this patch series are based on
a fairly complicated driver from Qualcomm [1].
I do not have access to any documentation about "BAM-DMUX". :(
I'm pretty sure I still have the internal docs.
Are there specific things you want to know?
Oh, thanks a lot for asking! I mainly mentioned this here to avoid
in-depth questions about the hardware (since I can't answer those).
I can probably think of many, many questions, but I'll try to limit
myself to the two I'm most confused about. :-)
It's somewhat unrelated to this initial patch set since I'm not using
QMAP at the moment, but I'm quite confused about the "MTU negotiation
feature" that you added support for in [1]. (I *think* that is you,
right?) :)
Yes. Do I owe you for some brain damage? :)
The part that I somewhat understand is the "signal" sent in the "OPEN"
command from the modem. It tells us the maximum buffer size the modem
is willing to accept for TX packets ("ul_mtu" in that commit).
Similarly, if we send "OPEN" to the modem we make the modem aware
of our maximum RX buffer size plus the number of RX buffers.
(create_open_signal() function).
The part that is confusing me is the way the "dynamic MTU" is
enabled/disabled based on the "signal" in "DATA" commands as well.
(process_dynamic_mtu() function). When would that happen? The code
suggests that the modem might just suddenly announce that the large
MTU should be used from now on. But the "buffer_size" is only changed
for newly queued RX buffers so I'm not even sure how the modem knows
that it can now send more data at once.
Any chance you could clarify how this should work exactly?
So, I think some of this might make more sense after my response to
question #2.
I don't know how much of this translates to modern platforms. I don't
really work on MSMs anymore, but I can convey what I recall and how
things were "back then"
So, essentially the change you are looking at is the bam_dmux portion of
an overall feature for improving the performance of what was known as
"tethered rmnet".
Per my understanding (which the documentation of this feature
reinforces), teathered rmnet was chiefly a test feature. Your "data"
(websites, email, etc) could be consumed by the device itself, or
exported off, if you teathered your phone to a laptop so that the laptop
could use the phone's data connection. There ends up being 3
implementations for this.
Consuming the data on the phone would route it to the IP stack via the
rmnet driver.
Consuming the data on an external device could take one of 2 routes.
Android would use the "native" routing of the Linux IP stack to
essentially NAT the laptop. The data would go to the rmnet driver, to
the IP stack, and the IP stack would route it to USB.
The other route is that the data could be routed directly to USB. This
is "teathered rmnet". In the case of bam_dmux platforms, the USB stack
is a client of bam_dmux.
Teathered rmnet was never an end-user usecase. It was essentially a
validation feature for both internal testing, and also qualifying the
device with the carriers. The carriers knew that Android teathering
involved NAT based routing on the phone, and wanted to figure out if the
phone could meet the raw performance specs of the RF technology (LTE
Category 4 in this case) in a tethered scenario, without the routing.
For tethered rmnet, USB (at the time) was having issues consistently
meeting those data rates (50mbps UL, 100mbps DL concurrently, if I
recall correctly). So, the decided solution was to implement QMAP
aggregation.
A QMAP "call" over tethered rmnet would be negotiated between the app on
the PC, and "dataservices" or "DS" on the modem. One of the initial
steps of that negotitation causes DS to tell A2 software that QMAP over
tethered rmnet is being activated. That would trigger A2 to activate
the process_dynamic_mtu() code path. Now bam_dmux would allocate future
RX buffers of the increased size which could handle the aggregated
packets. I think the part that is confusing you is, what about the
already queued buffers that are of the old size? Well, essentially
those get consumed by the rest of the QMAP call negotiation, so by the
time actual aggregated data is going to be sent from Modem to bam_dmux,
the pool has been consumed and refilled.
When the tethered rmnet connection is "brought down", DS notifies A2,
and A2 stops requesting the larger buffers.
Since this not something an end user should ever exercise, you may want
to consider dropping it.
And a second question if you don't mind: What kind of hardware block
am I actually talking to here? I say "modem" above but I just know about
the BAM and the DMUX protocol layer. I have also seen assertion failures
of the modem DSP firmware if I implement something incorrectly.
Is the DMUX protocol just some firmware concept or actually something
understood by some hardware block? I've also often seen mentions of some
"A2" hardware block but I have no idea what that actually is. What's
even worse, in a really old kernel A2/BAM-DMUX also appears as part of
the IPA driver [2], and I thought IPA is the new thing after BAM-DMUX...
A2 predates IPA. IPA is essentially an evolution of A2.
Sit down son, let me tell you the history of the world :)
A long time ago, there was only a single processor that did both the
"modem" and the "apps". We generally would call these the 6K days as
that was the number of the chips (6XXX). Then it was decided that the
roles of Apps and Modem should be separated into two different cores.
The modem, handling more "real time" things, and apps, being more
"general purpose". This started with the 7K series.
However, this created a problem as data from a data call may need to be
consumed by the modem, or the apps, and it wouldn't be clear until the
packet headers were inspected, where the packet needed to be routed to.
Sometimes this was handled on apps, sometimes on modem. Usually via a
fully featured IP stack.
With LTE, software couldn't really keep up, and so a hardware engine to
parse the fields and route the package based on programmed filters was
implemented. This is the "Algorithm Accelerator", aka AA, aka A2.
The A2 first appeared on the 9600 chip, which was originally intended
for Gobi- those dongles you could plug into your laptop to give it a
data connection on the go when there was no wifi. It was then coupled
with both 7x30 and 8660 in what we would call "fusion" to create the
first LTE capable phones (HTC thunderbolt is the product I recall) until
an integrated solution could come along.
That integrated solution was 8960.
Back to the fusion solution for a second, the 9600 was connected to the
7x30/8660 via SDIO. Prior to this, the data call control and data path
was all in chip via SMD. Each rmnet instance had its own SMD channel,
so essentially its own physical pipe. With SDIO and 9600, there were
not enough lanes, so we invented SDIO_CMUX and SDIO_DMUX - the Control
and Data multiplexers over SDIO.
With 8960, everything was integrated again, so we could run the control
path over SMD and didn't need a mux. However, the A2 moved from the
9600 modem to the 8960 integrated modem, and now we had a direct
connection to its BAM. Again, the BAM had a limited number of physical
pipes, so we needed a data multiplexer again. Thus SDIO_DMUX evolved
into BAM_DMUX.
The A2 is a hardware block with an attached BAM, that "hangs off" the
modem. There is a software component that also runs on the modem, but
in general is limited to configuration. Processing of data is expected
to be all in hardware. As I think I mentioned, the A2 is a hardware
engine that routes IP packets based on programmed filters.
BAM instances (as part of the smart peripheral subsystem or SPS) can
either be out in the system, or attached to a peripheral. The A2 BAM is
attached to the A2 peripheral. BAM instances can run in one of 3 modes
- BAM-to-BAM, BAM-to-System, or System-to-System. BAM-to-BAM is two BAM
instances talking to eachother. If the USB controller has a BAM, and
the A2 has a BAM, those two BAMS could talk directly to copy data
between the A2 and USB hardware blocks without software interaction
(after some configuration). "System" means system memory, or DDR.
Bam-to-System is the mode the A2 BAM runs in where it takes data to/from
DDR and gives/takes that data with the A2. System-to-System would be
used by a BAM instance not associated with any peripheral to transfer
data say from Apps DDR to Modem DDR.
The A2 can get data from the RF interface, and determine if that needs
to go to some modem consumer, the apps processor, or on some chips to
the wifi processor. All in hardware, much faster than software for
multiple reasons, but mainly because multiple filters can be evaluated
in parallel, each filter looking at multiple fields in parallel. In a
nutshell, the IPA is a revised A2 that is not associated with any
processor (like the modem), which allows it to route data better (think
wifi and audio usecases).
Hope that all helps. I'm "around" for more questions.
Not sure how much you can reveal about this. :)
Thanks a lot!
Stephan
[1]: https://source.codeaurora.org/quic/la/kernel/msm-3.10/commit/?h=LA.BR.1.2.9.1-02310-8x16.0&id=c7001b82388129ee02ac9ae1a1ef9993eafbcb26
[2]: https://source.codeaurora.org/quic/la/kernel/msm/tree/drivers/platform/msm/ipa/a2_service.c?h=LA.BF.1.1.3-01610-8x74.0
