On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 05:49:32PM +0200, Simon Guinot wrote: > On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 02:19:24PM -0400, Jason Cooper wrote: > > On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 05:18:34PM +0200, Simon Guinot wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > I am currently working on converting the LED driver leds-netxbig to DT. > > > Doing so, I am also considering to move the GPIO extension bus functions > > > (which are currently parts of leds-netxbig) into a separate driver. > > > > > > On the LaCie "Big Network" board family (netxbig), the LEDs are > > > controlled by a CPLD. In turn, the CPLD can be configured (mostly the > > > LEDs modes) through a kind of parallel GPIO bus, called GPIO extension > > > bus. Two registers (address and data) are exposed. Each of them is made > > > up of several GPIOs. An extra GPIO is used to notify the CPLD that the > > > registers have been updated. The leds-netxbig driver uses some dedicated > > > functions (prefixed by "gpio_ext_") to handle the GPIO bus extension. > > > > > > On the latest "Big Network" boards, this bus is also used to enable the > > > PM wakeup sources: the CPLD can be asked to keep powered some devices > > > (as the RTC or the Ethernet PHY) while the board is down. I think it > > > could be nice to expose this feature to the userland. That's why I am > > > thinking about moving the GPIO extension bus support into a separate > > > driver. The problem is that I can't find a proper location for a such > > > driver. AFAIK, it doesn't fit with anything existing supported by Linux. > > > Maybe I should consider drivers/bus ? Or even drivers/misc ? > > Hi Jason, > > Thanks for your answer. > > > > > iiuc, the CPLD is more of gpio multiplexer/expander. Have you seen > > > > 66bcb58 arm: mvebu: enable gpio expander over i2c on Mirabox platform > > > > ? And the corresponding driver, drivers/gpio/gpio-pca953x.c? > > All the drivers under drivers/gpio are registering some GPIO chips. > It is a big difference with the LaCie "GPIO extension bus". This last > is more an extension mechanism on the top of GPIOs already existing > (eventually provided by a SoC or a Super-I/O on x86 boards). No new > GPIOs are added. I think that the name "extension" is quite confusing. Agreed. > The idea behind this "bus" is to allow to configure a lot of LEDs (in > various modes) using only few GPIOs and a CPLD (which is already > available on the board for other purposes). This cheap solution allows > precisely to save the cost of a GPIO expander :) > > As an example, you can see the "GPIO extension bus" configuration for > the Kirkwood "Big Network" boards in: > arch/arm/mach-kirkwood/netxbig_v2-setup.c:132. > > > > > I would try drivers/gpio. If there are complaints, it should be trivial > > to move it in a new version of the series. > > Why not, as long it is clear that the resulting driver will not provide > a GPIO chip but rather functions as a library. right, but the end result of what the library would do is expose a series of LEDs and PM 'virtual gpios'. So, even though it's not a gpio expander per-se, it's still filling that role. Or am I still missing something? > > Is there any reason why the new capabilities in the "Big Network" boards > > couldn't be covered by gpio-regulator? > > I don't have looked at the details but I think that gpio-regulator > could be able to configure the PM modes through the GPIO extension bus. > > But a problem remains. The same GPIOs would be used by two different > drivers: leds-netxbig and gpio-regulator. This would lead to some > conflicts. That's why I think that at some level a driver is needed to > handle the GPIO extension bus. It may be simpler to combine it into one driver and place it under drivers/mfd as it's certainly a multi-function device. I don't think anyone outside of Lacie is going to be adopting this 'bus'... thx, Jason. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-leds" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
