Re: [PATCH v2 2/3] PCI: qcom: Read back PARF_LTSSM register

From: Konrad Dybcio
Date: Fri Mar 15 2024 - 06:17:19 EST




On 2/16/24 07:52, Johan Hovold wrote:
On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 07:44:27PM +0100, Konrad Dybcio wrote:
On 15.02.2024 17:11, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
On Thu, Feb 15, 2024 at 11:21:45AM +0100, Konrad Dybcio wrote:
On 14.02.2024 23:28, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
On Wed, Feb 14, 2024 at 10:35:16PM +0100, Konrad Dybcio wrote:
On 12.02.2024 22:17, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
Maybe include the reason in the subject? "Read back" is literally
what the diff says.

On Sat, Feb 10, 2024 at 06:10:06PM +0100, Konrad Dybcio wrote:
To ensure write completion, read the PARF_LTSSM register after setting
the LTSSM enable bit before polling for "link up".

The write will obviously complete *some* time; I assume the point is
that it's important for it to complete before some other event, and it
would be nice to know why that's important.

Right, that's very much meaningful on non-total-store-ordering
architectures, like arm64, where the CPU receives a store instruction,
but that does not necessarily impact the memory/MMIO state immediately.

I was hinting that maybe we could say what the other event is, or what
problem this solves? E.g., maybe it's as simple as "there's no point
in polling for link up until after the PARF_LTSSM store completes."

But while the read of PARF_LTSSM might reduce the number of "is the
link up" polls, it probably wouldn't speed anything up otherwise, so I
suspect there's an actual functional reason for this patch, and that's
what I'm getting at.

So, the register containing the "enable switch" (PARF_LTSSM) can (due
to the armv8 memory model) be "written" but not "change the value of
memory/mmio from the perspective of other (non-CPU) memory-readers
(such as the MMIO-mapped PCI controller itself)".

In that case, the CPU will happily continue calling qcom_pcie_link_up()
in a loop, waiting for the PCIe controller to bring the link up, however
the PCIE controller may have never received the PARF_LTSSM "enable link"
write by the time we decide to time out on checking the link status.

This makes no sense. As Bjorn already said, you're just polling for the
link to come up (for a second). And unless you have something else that
depends on the write to have reached the device, there is no need to
read it back. It's not going to be cached indefinitely if that's what
you fear.

The point is, if we know that the hardware is expected to return "done"
within the polling timeout value of receiving the request to do so, we
are actively taking away an unknown amount of time from that timeout.

So, if the polling condition becomes true after 980ms, but due to write
buffering the value reached the PCIe hardware after 21 ms, we're gonna
hit a timeout. Or under truly extreme circumstances, the polling may
time out before the write has even arrived at the PCIe hw.


Generally, it's a good idea to add such readbacks after all timing-
critical writes, especially when they concern asserting reset,
enabling/disabling power, etc., to make sure we're not assuming the
hardware state of a peripheral has changed before we ask it to do so.

Again no, there is no general need to do that. It all depends on what
the code does and how the device works.

Agreed it's not necessary *in general*, but as I pointed out, this is
an operation that we expect to complete within a set time frame, which
involves external hardware.

Konrad