Re: [PATCH v3 2/3] mtd: spi-nor: intel-spi: Convert to SPI MEM

[Boris Brezillon <boris.brezillon@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 20 Oct 2021 17:29:15 +0530
Pratyush Yadav <p.yadav@xxxxxx> wrote:

> On 20/10/21 11:41AM, Boris Brezillon wrote:
> > On Wed, 13 Oct 2021 14:44:31 +0300
> > Mika Westerberg <mika.westerberg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >   
> > > The preferred way to implement SPI-NOR controller drivers is through SPI
> > > subsubsystem utilizing the SPI MEM core functions. This converts the
> > > Intel SPI flash controller driver over the SPI MEM by moving the driver
> > > from SPI-NOR subsystem to SPI subsystem and in one go make it use the
> > > SPI MEM functions. The driver name will be changed from intel-spi to
> > > spi-intel to match the convention used in the SPI subsystem.
> > >   
> > 
> > I skimmed over the driver changes, and I'm skeptical about this "let's
> > convert all spi-nor controller drivers into spi-mem drivers even if
> > they don't fit the spi-mem model" strategy. Clearly, the intel
> > controller is much more limited than any other spi-mem controller (I
> > mean feature-wise not perf-wise of course). The fact that you have to
> > check the opcode to decide whether the operation is supported or not,
> > or the way you deduce when to issue an erase vs a regular read/write is
> > kind of hack-ish. Not saying we shouldn't support this case in spi-mem,
> > but it should at least be done in a more controlled way. Maybe with an
> > explicit array of supported spi_mem operations, and driver specific
> > hooks for each of these operations so anything falling outside is
> > clearly identified and rejected (we have this sort of things in the raw
> > NAND framework).  
> 
> I am curious about how we can solve this. Any pointers to 
> functions/drivers in raw NAND framework that follow this model?

It's not quite what you'd need, but nand_op_parser_pattern follows the
same philosophy: describe a pattern and attach a hook to be executed
when this pattern is found. Then you pass this pattern table to a helper
that tries to match the operation against the supported patterns. If it
finds one that matches, the operation is reported as supported and/or
executed, otherwise it's rejected.

In this particular case, the pattern must be very specific:

* matching opcode
* matching direction
* matching number of address cycles
* matching number of dummy cycles?
* max/min number of data cycles?