Re: [PATCH 2/3] ARM: multi_v7_defconfig: Switch BCM2835 to sdhci-iproc.c for MMC

From: Stephen Warren
Date: Fri Apr 01 2016 - 12:58:40 EST


On 03/31/2016 08:01 PM, Stephen Warren wrote:
On 03/31/2016 06:28 PM, Eric Anholt wrote:
This approximately triples write performance for the SD card. My card
is too full of important data to collect very reliable numbers, but I
see 271.361% +/- 166.742% improvement (n=3 before, 6 after), for 'dd
if=/dev/zero of=/boot/asdf bs=1M count=3 oflag=dsync,direct'. Read
performance appears to be unaffected.

I thought that switching the defconfig wasn't possible, since this HW
module relies on the SoC core clock, and that can be asynchronously
changed by the FW running on the VideoCore. Consequently, this change
isn't safe unless the user puts non-default options in their config.txt.

The same comment applies to "[PATCH 1/4] ARM: bcm2835: Switch BCM2835 to
sdhci-iproc.c for MMC" in the other series.

Ah, now I realize that sdhci-bcm2835.c and sdhci-iproc.c are two alternative drivers for the same HW device. For some reason I got the incorrect impression from some past email/patch discussion that sdhci-iproc.c was a driver for the alternative SD controller in the chip.

So, there's no problem with this patch.
Acked-by: Stephen Warren <swarren@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

(although /me wonders why sdhci-iproc.c was even added in the first place given sdhci-bcm2835.c pre-dates it by over 2 years, and equally why the new driver is any faster given it looks almost identical and accesses the same HW, but I suppose it doesn't matter).