[PATCH v3 3/5] clk: introduce the common clock framework

[Russell King - ARM Linux]

On Mon, Dec 05, 2011 at 02:15:56PM -0700, Paul Walmsley wrote:
> The types associated with clock rates in the clock interface 
> (include/linux/clk.h) are inconsistent, and we should fix this. 

Rubbish.  They're different with good reason.  Rates are primerily
unsigned quantities - and should be treated as such.

The exception is clk_round_rate() which returns the rate, but also
_may_ return an error.  Therefore, its return type has to be signed.

> We could fix the immediate problem by changing the prototype of 
> clk_round_rate() to pass the rounded rate back to the caller via a pointer 
> in one of the arguments, and return an error code (if any) via the return 
> value:
> 
> int clk_round_rate(struct clk *clk, unsigned long rate, unsigned long 
>                    *rounded_rate);

Yes that might have been a better solution.

> But I'd propose that we instead increase the size of struct clk.rate to be 
> s64:
> 
> s64 clk_round_rate(struct clk *clk, s64 desired_rate);
> int clk_set_rate(struct clk *clk, s64 rate);
> s64 clk_get_rate(struct clk *clk);
> 
> struct clk {
> ...
>      s64 rate;
> ...
> };
> 
> That way the clock framework can accommodate current clock rates, as well 
> as any conceivable future clock rate.  (Some production CPUs are already 
> running at clock rates greater than 4 GiHZ[1].  RF devices with 4 GiHz+ 
> clock rates are also common, such as 802.11a devices running in the 5.8 
> GHz band, and drivers for those may eventually wish to use the clock 
> framework.)

Yuck.  You are aware that 64-bit math on 32-bit CPUs sucks?  So burdening
_everything_ with 64-bit rate quantities is absurd.  As for making then
64-bit signed quantities, that's asking for horrid code from gcc for the
majority of cases.