Re: [PATCH v2 2/3] arm64: tegra: Add GPCDMA support for Tegra I2C

From: Thierry Reding
Date: Fri Oct 07 2022 - 11:17:37 EST


On Fri, Oct 07, 2022 at 03:53:21PM +0100, Robin Murphy wrote:
> On 2022-10-07 15:34, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > On Fri, Oct 07, 2022 at 03:20:37PM +0200, Thierry Reding wrote:
> > > On Tue, Sep 06, 2022 at 08:17:15PM +0530, Akhil R wrote:
> > > > Add dma properties to support GPCDMA for I2C in Tegra 186 and later
> > > > chips
> > > >
> > > > Signed-off-by: Akhil R <akhilrajeev@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > ---
> > > > arch/arm64/boot/dts/nvidia/tegra186.dtsi | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > > > arch/arm64/boot/dts/nvidia/tegra194.dtsi | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > > > arch/arm64/boot/dts/nvidia/tegra234.dtsi | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > > > 3 files changed, 96 insertions(+)
> > > >
> > > > diff --git a/arch/arm64/boot/dts/nvidia/tegra186.dtsi b/arch/arm64/boot/dts/nvidia/tegra186.dtsi
> > > > index 59a10fb184f8..3580fbf99091 100644
> > > > --- a/arch/arm64/boot/dts/nvidia/tegra186.dtsi
> > > > +++ b/arch/arm64/boot/dts/nvidia/tegra186.dtsi
> > > > @@ -672,6 +672,10 @@
> > > > clock-names = "div-clk";
> > > > resets = <&bpmp TEGRA186_RESET_I2C1>;
> > > > reset-names = "i2c";
> > > > + iommus = <&smmu TEGRA186_SID_GPCDMA_0>;
> > > > + dma-coherent;
> > >
> > > I wonder: why do we need the iommus and dma-coherent properties here?
> > > The I2C controllers are not directly accessing memory, instead it's the
> > > GPCDMA via the dmas/dma-names properties. The GPCDMA already has these
> > > properties set, so they seem to be useless here.
> >
> > Looking at this some more, the reason why we need these is so that the
> > struct device backing these I2C controllers is attached to an IOMMU and
> > the DMA ops are set up correspondingly. Without these, the DMA memory
> > allocated by the I2C controllers will not be mapped through the IOMMU
> > and cause faults because the GPCDMA is the one that needs to access
> > those.
> >
> > I do recall that we have a similar case for audio where the "sound card"
> > needs to have an iommus property to make sure it allocates memory
> > through the same IOMMU domain as the ADMA, which is the device that ends
> > up doing the actual memory accesses.
> >
> > Rob, Robin, Will, do you know of a good way other than the DT workaround
> > here to address this? I think ideally we would want to obtain the "DMA
> > parent" of these devices so that we allocate memory for that parent
> > instead of the child. We do have some existing infrastructure for this
> > type of relationship with the __of_get_dma_parent() function as well as
> > the interconnects property, but I wonder if that's really the right way
> > to represent this.
> >
> > Adding "interconnects" properties would also duplicate the "dmas"
> > properties we already use to obtain the TX and RX DMA channels. One
> > simple way to more accurately do this would be to reach into the DMA
> > engine internals (dma_chan->device->dev) and pass that to dma_alloc_*()
> > to make sure we allocate for the correct device. For audio that could be
> > a bit complicated because most of that code is shared across multiple
> > vendors. I couldn't find any examples where a driver would reach into
> > DMA channels to allocate for the parent, so I'm wondering what other
> > people do to solve this issue. Or if anyone else even has the same
> > issue.
>
> As far as I'm aware that's the correct approach, i.e. if a driver is using
> an external dmaengine then it's responsible for making DMA mappings for the
> correct DMA channel device. We ended up being a bit asymmetrical in that the
> dmaengine driver itself has to take care of its own mapping for the
> non-memory end of a transfer when an IOMMU is involved - that's what
> dma_map_resource() was created for, see pl330 and rcar-dmac for examples.
>
> The only driver I have first-hand experience with in this context is
> amba-pl011, using pl330 through an SMMU on the Arm Juno board, but that
> definitely works fine without DT hacks.

Oh yeah, I see. That's exactly what I had in mind. And now that I'm
using the right regex I can also find more occurrences of this. Thanks
for those pointers. Looks like that's the right approach then. I'll try
to make corresponding changes and see if there's any fallout.

Thanks,
Thierry

>
> Robin.
>
> > Adding Lars-Peter for the sound/dmaengine helpers and Vinod for general
> > dmaengine. Perhaps they have some thoughts on or experience with this.
> >
> > Thierry

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