[linux-sunxi] GSoC 2014 #1 status report - Improving Allwinner SoC support

[Chen-Yu Tsai]

Hi,

On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 9:11 PM, jonsmirl at gmail.com <jonsmirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 6:22 AM, Chen-Yu Tsai <wens at csie.org> wrote:
>> On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 12:18 PM, Chen-Yu Tsai <wens at csie.org> wrote:
>>> Hi Emilio,
>>>
>>> On Sun, Jul 20, 2014 at 3:41 AM, Emilio López <emilio at elopez.com.ar> wrote:
>>>> Hi everyone,
>>>>
>>>> Here's this week's update on my GSoC project; if you missed the first issue
>>>> or you want a refresher of what this is about, you can read it on the list
>>>> archives[0]
>>>>
>>>> A couple of days after the last report, and with the help of Jon Smirl, I
>>>> got the hardware working on mainline Linux, first on only 16 bit stereo
>>>> mode, then mono as well, and later on, also on 24 bit mode. The first thing
>>>> I had to do was rework the cyclic DMA code to make it perform decently and
>>>> avoid underruns. The rest took a bit of playing with values and reading the
>>>> Allwinner documentation. There is one unresolved issue with 24 bit audio
>>>> still - for some reason, the volume is really low compared to the same track
>>>> played on 16 bit. Unfortunately the SDK driver doesn't support 24 bit, so
>>>> it's hard to compare with anything else.
>>>
>>> So I have not experimented on this, it's just a hunch:
>>> Could it be that the 24bit audio samples you're sending to the audio codec
>>> is aligned incorrectly? So the sample is actually seen as down-shifted by
>>> 8 bits, resulting in the low volume?
>>
>> So the user manual says that 24 bit samples should be right justified,
>> or in the most significant bytes. The way to do it in ASoC is to declare
>> support 32 bit, instead of 24 bit, audio, and also set .sig_bits to 24.
>>
>> See: http://www.spinics.net/lists/alsa-devel/msg40846.html
>>
>> This makes ALSA send 32bit data, and the hardware will drop the lower 8
>> bits. S24_LE denotes 24bit in the lower bits, and thus we cannot use it.
>>
>> However, there is something puzzling about the FIFO modes. The manual
>> says that with TX FIFO modes 00/10, 16 bit audio should take the most
>> significant 2 bytes of the FIFO as the audio sample to convert. However
>> the DMA engine looks like it's writing the least significant 2 bytes.
>> I know the code as it is now works, but still I think we should get
>> this straightened out.
>
> Are you getting any underrun errors? We both got them.

Any way to tell? The audio doesn't sound choppy or anything.

>> As a side note, the code still needs some cleaning up. I see some
>> duplicate codec/dais.
>
> I initially copied dummy-codec into the source file. It needs to be
> removed and the driver should use the dummy-codec provided by ALSA.
> The driver should not use simple-audio-card since there is nothing to
> bind.

I see. Let us know when the code is cleaned up.

> The routing="" in the DTS is to allow you to specify which jacks are
> implemented in your hardware. That code is not complete.  Once it is
> complete board the Cubietruck DTS could specify only LINEOUT. Then all
> of the unneeded ALSA controls will drop out of the UI.

I haven't seen this.

> Looks like some sort of clock callback is need to lock the PLL2 rate.
> You don't want to have something playing on the codec and then have a
> another device reprogram PLL2 in the middle of the song.

The common clock framework has support for this. I can't remember
the option off the top of my head, but I've used it in the GMAC clock.

> No one has tried capture yet. Cubieboard2 has MICIN. I don't have one of those.

I believe it's LINE IN actually. Anyway, I have one, and I can test it
if the code is there.

>>> I'll grab your tree and test 24bit tomorrow. (Good thing I have 24 bit
>>> music files.) :)
>>
>> I now have my CubieTruck singing nicely with 24 bit music. Either the
>> player or ALSA will extend the 24 bits to 32 bits. The only downside
>> is you cannot specify S24_LE when streaming directly to the hardware
>> device.
>>
>>
>> Cheers
>> ChenYu
>>
>>>> Aside from the audio stuff, I worked a bit on the DMA driver, after
>>>> realizing memcpy could be optimized a fair bit. By using proper alignment
>>>> and choosing the best bus width and as big a burst as possible, I was able
>>>> to go from a totally unscientifically measured ~3MB/s to ~13MB/s on a single
>>>> thread, single channel, 1000 iterations dmatest run with noverify=0. I will
>>>> be sending a v3 with these new changes as well as addressing comments I
>>>> received in the next few days.
>>>
>>> This still seems quite slow? I think there was a discussion about this
>>> on IRC, you included? Any followups there?
>>>
>>>> To round up on this week's developments, I also worked on the audio clock
>>>> representation, involving PLL2, the codec clock gate and "module 1" clocks
>>>> (AC97, SPDIF, IIS) to enable Jon to work on IIS. Patches for these clocks
>>>> will be out in the list soon as well.
>>>
>>> Thanks! I look forward to them.
>>>
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> ChenYu
>>>
>>>> You can expect the next status report in about a week's time.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers!
>>>>
>>>> Emilio
>>>>
>>>> [0]
>>>> http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/linux-arm-kernel/2014-July/271150.html