[PATCH] ARM: zynq: wfi exit on same cpu is valid

[Daniel Lezcano]

On 06/04/2013 04:17 PM, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 04, 2013 at 03:10:17PM +0100, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 04, 2013 at 01:58:31PM +0200, Daniel Lezcano wrote:
>>> On 06/04/2013 01:39 PM, Amit Kucheria wrote:
>>>> I'm curious why it is called pen_release. :) Is there some historical
>>>> link to some HW lines?
>>>
>>> I tried to figure out the same but I did not found any information on
>>> that. I assumed the name could be referring to a simplified mutual
>>> exclusion algorithm from the 'Dining philosophers problem' [1] where the
>>> fork is a pen.
>>
>> Where it comes from is the original ARM SMP patches from early 2000, which
>> everyone has blindly copied with no thought about what they're doing.  This
>> is why I'm totally against any consolidation of this code, because I'm of
>> the opinion that _no one_ other than the ARM Ltd development platforms
>> should be using it.
>>
>> "pen" means "holding pen".  It comes about because early on in the SMP
>> development, ARM SMP platforms had four CPUs, and it was only possible to
>> release all three secondary CPUs from the boot loader simultaneously to
>> a common piece of code.
>>
>> As the kernel was not able to serialize the release of each CPU, ARM Ltd
>> worked around this problem by having all the CPUs jump to assembly code
>> which "holds" the CPUs which we didn't want to boot yet, and the CPUs
>> are released one at a time by setting pen_release to the hardware CPU
>> number.
>>
>> Modern platforms either have just one secondary CPU, or they have a way
>> to control the reset/power to the secondary CPU.  This makes the holding
>> pen entirely redundant, and such platforms should _not_ make use of any
>> kind of holding pen.
> 
> And yes, indeed, zynq can control the secondary CPU:
> 
> void zynq_slcr_cpu_start(int cpu)
> {
>         /* enable CPUn */
>         writel(SLCR_A9_CPU_CLKSTOP << cpu,
>                zynq_slcr_base + SLCR_A9_CPU_RST_CTRL);
>         /* enable CLK for CPUn */
>         writel(0x0 << cpu, zynq_slcr_base + SLCR_A9_CPU_RST_CTRL);
> }
> 
> void zynq_slcr_cpu_stop(int cpu)
> {
>         /* stop CLK and reset CPUn */
>         writel((SLCR_A9_CPU_CLKSTOP | SLCR_A9_CPU_RST) << cpu,
>                zynq_slcr_base + SLCR_A9_CPU_RST_CTRL);
> }
> 
> So there's no need for the pen.  There's no need for the low power crap
> in hotplug.c, there's no need for the pen in hotplug.c. 

Thanks Russell, that finishes to clarify what is the pen release for or
better say 'was' :)

So if I follow correctly, there are some inadequate code with different
mach-* because they are using a WFI instructions instead of simply
powering down the core, right ? (eg. mach-ux500/hotplug.c).

> You just arrange
> for the secondary CPU to have its clock stopped and reset when it is
> taken offline.
> Hotplugging a CPU back in _should_ be no different from its initial
> bringup into the kernel.

Thanks
  -- Daniel

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