Hi All, I'd like to make a good impression when posting this more widely, hence I'm posting it here first. Please comment on both the code and the text of this explanatory email! Are there other things I should put in here? Clearly the set is currently missing documentation which will need doing before this goes to lkml etc. Also note that the code has to sit on a couple of namespace moves to avoid a clash with the staging tree. These are in the outofstaging branch of iio-blue.git. Dear All, This is our first attempt to propose moving 'some' of the Industrial I/O subsystem out of staging. This cover letter attempts to explain what IIO is and why it is needed. All comments welcome on this as well as the code! So the big question is 'Why is there a need for a new subsystem?' To answer this we need two things, a list or requirements and analysis of why current subystems (hwmon and input) do not meet them. Focused subsytems targetting just one type of sensor have been rejected as a concept (see ALS proposal). Requirements of IIO. 1) Simple interface for simple use cases. 2) High performance data route. 3) Generic and consistent 'event' handling. 4) Wide device type coverage with consistent interface. 5) Complex triggering setups - multiple devices capture 'simultaneously'. 6) Support output devices. Lets take these in turn: 1 - Simple interface for simple use cases: The requirement boils down to an easy way to get a reading from a device or set an output without much overhead. This is an area in which hwmon excels. Everything is available via sysfs and thats exactly what we allow drivers to provide. 2 - High performance data route: We want a path via which data can get to userspace without much overhead, thus allowing high speed data capture. (Note I'm not arguing we have this right yet - but the potential is there). Input comes closest to this, but its approach of treating all data as events and providing significant filtering options (obvously tailored to human input) means that it isn't light weight. The approach taken in IIO is to provide a 'buffered' interface. The buffer may be in hardware or in software. The 'data' outputs of the devices being considered can be mapped onto the concept of 'scans'. In ADCs it is common to have a single actually convertor connected via a multiplexer to a much larger set of inputs. The multiplexer will select the channels in turn in a repeating sequence. Each repeat is termed a scan. The whole scan clearly doesn't always occur simultaneously, but can be considered as a single set of associated data none the less. Thus we have repeating sequences of data. This means that the meta data about what we are reading can be read 'out of band' from the data stream itself. In IIO the buffers consist of a sequence of scans. The contents of each scan data set (laid out however a driver wants to do it) is provided via a set of sysfs attributes in the scan_elements directory. The reason we can do it this way is that unlike input we pass our 'unusual' events via a different path. (see point 3). We also allow for the minimum amount of processing of data to occur in the kernel possible. Its often best to leave this to userspace and in a number of important use cases doesn't need doing at all, either because it can be done offline (logging) or because the reverse transform can be applied to a much smaller set of data (e.g. software threshold comparison). Note that the raw value off the sensor is often considerably more compact to store than a value in some set of consistent units. 3 - Generic and consistent 'event' handling. Numerous sensing devices provide threshold type detectors designed to do simple comparisons on the data without involving the host device. In input, these are passed within the main event stream (we don't as that would mean all data would need to carry identifying metadata along). Where these events map to typical human input device elements (double click etc) these are well handled. Hwmon supports a small set of such events via its alarm attributes. For IIO we have decided to try and create an event code (litterally one number) to describe all types of events that these devices can detect and pass on to the host device. This is coupled with appropriate sysfs controls to configure the event. The event code consists of: 1) What type of channel 2) Which channel (either axis / index or just index) Note this can be compound if modified. (e.g. freefall is typically X&Y&Z all less than alpha) 3) What type of processed data it is applied to (raw value, abs value, rate of change, average shifted value) 4) Which direction the threshold is crossed in. 4 - Device coverage with a consistent interface Hwmon and input have consistent interfaces that cover their chosen target well. When considering a wider range of sensors they simply don't generalize well enough. Afterall why should they? Initially we matched hwmon where ever possible. In the end we broke away for a number of reasons. The in / out naming for voltage is a nasty bit of legacy for them which we don't want to carry. There is no general way of specifying whether a channel is an input or an output. Having said that there is an easy mapping from IIO to hwmon (see possible future work). Input is only interested in a narrow set of devices (those for human input). 5) Complex triggering setups This is probably more of a niche requirement but the generalizations required for it do simplify simple cases as well. In a traditional data capturing environment (picture oscilloscopes / data loggers), the concept of a trigger is vital. That is, some event on which data is captured. In IIO this point is stretched somewhat. For some devices it is indeed the point of capture (those with explicit 'capture now' pins, or those that capture when asked to by a bus transaction). For other devices that run on their own internal clocks this is actualy a 'data has been captured now' signal (dataready). What we want to allow (where possible) is for any device to be triggered by any other and crucially for any number of devices to be triggered by a single source. As Thomas Gleixner observed, this is pretty much an irq cascade (and hence that's how it is now implemented - a very tidy approach!). Some of the types of trigger we have are: a) Data ready signals These usually need to be used to trigger reading from the device producing them but can be used to get only 'slightly' late readings from other devices. b) Software triggers These allow userspace to trigger simultaneous capture from a number of devices. c) Standalone triggers. General interrupts from whereever can be used to cause a capture to occur - typically a gpio. d) hardware timers (could probably do with a more consistent interface outside of IIO for these). 6) Support output devices. This is a relatively recent addition to IIO (despite us planning on it when the name was picked!). Right now the support is very rudimentary - corresponding to the most basic sysfs only device interfaces. It becomes more interesting when buffered outputs are considered, but that has not yet been implemented. There is rudimentary support for output in hwmon (as is appropriate for its use domain) and indeed some of this could map to the regulator api, but neither is adaptable or suitable for more complex data flows. To get an appreciation for the whole subsystem it is necessary to look at what is still in staging as we aren't attempting to move the whole core out in one go. Naturally if anyone fancies diving deeper into that tree and commenting on stuff in there it would also be welcomed. Note however that being in staging some of the drivers are in 'interesting' shape. 'Good' drivers include (and this is far from a complete list) adc/ ad7192 ad7780 ad7792 ad799x max1363 accel/ lis3l02dq gyro/ adis16260 imu/ adis16400 light/ tsl2563 So what do we have here? Our merge plan (order may change) has the following elements 1) Registration core and sysfs interface 2) Some stripped down drivers using the above. 3) Event interface 4) Extend drivers in 2 to provide event interfaces. 5) Buffered reading interface 6) Extend drivers from 4 to provide buffered reading. 7) Pull in hardware ring buffer device examples 8) Futher sets pulling across a few drivers at time (keeping review manageable!) Drivers may be added to the subsystem at any stage (once support for what they use is available). This patchset (1-2) only covers the simplest type of driver supported by IIO, that with only a sysfs based interface. Please review it with that in mind! Acknowledgements A lot of thanks is due to various people during the IIO development. Most of it is born out by commit messages but I'd particularly like to thank Michael Hennerich for massive contributions and Arnd Bergmann for taking the time to not only suggest what we should do differently but to explain it to me and look at the results as they occured. Jonathan Cameron (4): IIO: Core sysfs only support. IIO:ADC: max1363 initial import. IIO:light:tsl2563 initial move out of staging. IIO:imu:adis16400 partial move from staging. drivers/Kconfig | 2 + drivers/Makefile | 2 + drivers/iio/Kconfig | 19 + drivers/iio/Makefile | 10 + drivers/iio/adc/Kconfig | 17 + drivers/iio/adc/Makefile | 6 + drivers/iio/adc/max1363.h | 148 ++++++ drivers/iio/adc/max1363_core.c | 1000 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ drivers/iio/iio.c | 593 +++++++++++++++++++++ drivers/iio/imu/Kconfig | 10 + drivers/iio/imu/Makefile | 6 + drivers/iio/imu/adis16400.h | 180 +++++++ drivers/iio/imu/adis16400_core.c | 1057 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ drivers/iio/light/Kconfig | 14 + drivers/iio/light/Makefile | 6 + drivers/iio/light/tsl2563.c | 653 +++++++++++++++++++++++ include/linux/iio/iio.h | 243 +++++++++ include/linux/iio/sysfs.h | 68 +++ include/linux/iio/tsl2563.h | 9 + 19 files changed, 4043 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-) create mode 100644 drivers/iio/Kconfig create mode 100644 drivers/iio/Makefile create mode 100644 drivers/iio/adc/Kconfig create mode 100644 drivers/iio/adc/Makefile create mode 100644 drivers/iio/adc/max1363.h create mode 100644 drivers/iio/adc/max1363_core.c create mode 100644 drivers/iio/iio.c create mode 100644 drivers/iio/imu/Kconfig create mode 100644 drivers/iio/imu/Makefile create mode 100644 drivers/iio/imu/adis16400.h create mode 100644 drivers/iio/imu/adis16400_core.c create mode 100644 drivers/iio/light/Kconfig create mode 100644 drivers/iio/light/Makefile create mode 100644 drivers/iio/light/tsl2563.c create mode 100644 include/linux/iio/iio.h create mode 100644 include/linux/iio/sysfs.h create mode 100644 include/linux/iio/tsl2563.h -- 1.7.3.4 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-iio" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
