On Wed, Sep 14, 2022 at 8:35 AM Jeremi Piotrowski <jpiotrowski@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, Aug 29, 2022 at 02:43:35PM -0700, Lizhi Hou wrote: > > This patch series introduces OF overlay support for PCI devices which > > primarily addresses two use cases. First, it provides a data driven method > > to describe hardware peripherals that are present in a PCI endpoint and > > hence can be accessed by the PCI host. An example device is Xilinx/AMD > > Alveo PCIe accelerators. Second, it allows reuse of a OF compatible > > driver -- often used in SoC platforms -- in a PCI host based system. An > > example device is Microchip LAN9662 Ethernet Controller. > > > > This patch series consolidates previous efforts to define such an > > infrastructure: > > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220305052304.726050-1-lizhi.hou@xxxxxxxxxx/ > > https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20220427094502.456111-1-clement.leger@xxxxxxxxxxx/ > > > > Normally, the PCI core discovers PCI devices and their BARs using the > > PCI enumeration process. However, the process does not provide a way to > > discover the hardware peripherals that are present in a PCI device, and > > which can be accessed through the PCI BARs. Also, the enumeration process > > does not provide a way to associate MSI-X vectors of a PCI device with the > > hardware peripherals that are present in the device. PCI device drivers > > often use header files to describe the hardware peripherals and their > > resources as there is no standard data driven way to do so. This patch > > series proposes to use flattened device tree blob to describe the > > peripherals in a data driven way. Based on previous discussion, using > > device tree overlay is the best way to unflatten the blob and populate > > platform devices. To use device tree overlay, there are three obvious > > problems that need to be resolved. > > Hi Lizhi, > > We all *love* "have you thought about xxx" questions but I would really like to > get your thoughts on this. An approach to this problem that I have seen in > various devices is to emulate a virtual pcie switch, and expose the "sub > devices" behind that. That way you can carve up the BAR space, each device has > its own config space and mapping of MSI-X vector to device becomes clear. This > approach also integrates well with other kernel infrastructure (IOMMU, hotplug). > > This is certainly possible on reprogrammable devices but requires some more > FPGA resources - though I don't believe the added utilization would be > significant. What do you think of this kind of solution? It would integrate easily unless the sub-devices you are targeting have drivers already which are not PCI drivers. Sure, we could add PCI support to them, but that could be a lot of churn. There are also usecases where we don't get to change the h/w. Rob