[PATCH 1/3] misc: Add crossbar driver

[Linus Walleij]

On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Santosh Shilimkar
<santosh.shilimkar at ti.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 15 August 2013 04:01 PM, Linus Walleij wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 13, 2013 at 11:56 AM, Sricharan R <r.sricharan at ti.com> wrote:
>>
>>>  Initially irqchip was discussed, but we also have a DMA crossbar
>>>  to map the dma-requests. Since both irq/dma crossbars should be handled,
>>>  pinctrl was suggested as the appropriate place to handle this.
>>
>> I think it is better to use irqchip.
>>
> Did you happen to read the thread why irqchip is in-appropriate
> for such an IP.

Sorry I don't understand what thread that is... can you point me there?
My previous statement on this issue what this:
http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=137442541628641&w=2

> As I said earlier, an IRQ-chip always need a
> real IRQ link (even for the chained one) to the primary irqchip.
>
> This IP is just dummy IP makes the connections for the primary
> irqchip(read GIC). And its use only limited to make the
> connection between the peripheral IRQ event to the GIC IRQ line.
>
> I don't see how you can make this happen with an irqchip
> infrastructure.

I think my post above describes this.

>> I don't see any way to really abstract this pretty simple crossbar
>> for reuse across subsystems.
>>
> This exactly the reason, i am against idea of over-engineering the
> simple IP whose only job is to make the physical wire connection
> in software where as this is generally done in RTL by default on
> most of the SOCs.

Well, it was made accessible by software, and if someone has a
usecase that requires this do be done dynamically, i.e. not just
being set up by firmware and never touched, and that use case
is valid, then I guess we need to do something...

I think it was mentioned in the thread that there is really such
a usecase?

Yours,
Linus Walleij