Re: [PATCHv6 3/3] misc: gehc-achc: new driver

[Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 12:46:00PM +0200, Sebastian Reichel wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 07:41:51AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 01:20:16AM +0200, Sebastian Reichel wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jul 12, 2021 at 07:46:05PM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Jul 12, 2021 at 05:02:42PM +0200, Sebastian Reichel wrote:
> > > > > General Electric Healthcare's PPD has a secondary processor from
> > > > > NXP's Kinetis K20 series. That device has two SPI chip selects:
> > > > > 
> > > > > The main interface's behaviour depends on the loaded firmware
> > > > > and is currently unused.
> > > > > 
> > > > > The secondary interface can be used to update the firmware using
> > > > > EzPort protocol. This is implemented by this driver using the
> > > > > kernel's firmware API. It's not done during probe time, since
> > > > > the device has non-volatile memory and flashing lasts almost 3
> > > > > minutes.
> > > > 
> > > > In thinking about this some more, why does it matter?  Spin up a
> > > > workqueue when probing and do the firmware loading then. That way you
> > > > do not end up creating yet another custom user/kernel api just to do
> > > > something as trivial as loading the firmware for a device.
> > > > 
> > > > And I think the firmware loader even handles async loading, or at least
> > > > it used to, maybe not anymore, it's a complex api, I recommend reading
> > > > the docs...
> > > 
> > > Flashing the firmware during boot instead of on-demand is not
> > > a good idea for two reasons:
> > > 
> > > 1. This will wear the flash memory of the microcontroller for no
> > >    good reason.
> > 
> > Why would you boot with this hardware and not want the firmware
> > loaded?
> 
> As written in the commit message this code is updateing the firmware
> in non-volatile memory, so the previously flashed FW will be used
> until a new one is flashed.
> 
> The datasheet for the memory being programmed states, that it has a
> guaranteed programming endurance of 10.000 times. So programming it
> at every boot instead of manually when a new FW should be flashed
> (i.e. once every few years) shortens the device life time considerably.

Ah, ok, that was not obvious at all.  This is much more like a "BIOS
update" in that it is infrequent.  You might want to document the heck
out of this so others are not confused like me.

thanks,

greg k-h