[RFC PATCH 1/5] spi: introduce flag for memory mapped read

[Michal Suchanek]

On 5 August 2015 at 13:50, Mark Brown <broonie at kernel.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 11:29:52PM +0530, R, Vignesh wrote:
>> On 8/4/2015 9:21 PM, Mark Brown wrote:
>> > On Mon, Aug 03, 2015 at 10:27:19AM +0530, Vignesh R wrote:
>
>> > I still can't tell from the above what this interface is supposed to do.
>> > It sounds like the use of memory mapped mode is supposed to be
>> > transparent to users, it should just affect how the controller interacts
>> > with the hardware, but if that's the case why do we need to expose it to
>> > users at all?  Shouldn't the driver just use memory mapped mode if it's
>> > faster?
>
>> 2. SFI_MM_IF(SPI memory mapped interface): The SFI_MM_IF block only
>> allows reading and writing to an SPI flash device only. Used to speed up
>> flash reads. It _cannot_ be used to communicate with non flash devices.
>> Now, the spi_message that ti-qspi receives in transfer_one() callback
>> can be from mtd device(in which case SFI_MM_IF can be used) or from any
>> other non flash SPI device (in which case SFI_MM_IF must not be used
>> instead SPI_CORE is to be used) but there is no way(is there?) to
>> distinguish where spi_message is from. Therefore I introduced flag
>> (use_mmap_mode) to struct spi_message. mtd driver will set flag to true,
>> this helps the ti-qspi driver to determine that the user is flash device
>> and thus can do read via SFI_MM_IF. If this flag is not set then the
>> user is assumed to be non flash SPI driver and will use SPI_CORE block
>> to communicate.
>
> So if you're trying to do this you need to document it adequately so
> that other people can understand what it is supposed to do and how to
> use and implement it.  People can't really tell how the interface is
> supposed to work based on what was in the patch and the above isn't
> really helping.  For example, how does this change or restrict what the
> contents of the spi_message are?
>
>> On the whole, I just need a way to determine that the user is a flash
>> device in order to switch to memory mapped interface.
>
> As far as I can tell you want to set a per spi_message flag saying that
> the message is a flash read command?  If that's what this is trying to
> do then why do you need to set the flag at all?  If the message is in a
> clearly defined format and it's more efficient to use this mmap mode
> then surely the driver can just recognise that the format is approprate
> and switch into mmap mode without being explicitly told - I'm not clear
> what the flag adds here.

ehm, the read command is just one byte.

I don't think sending 03 or other random byte as the first byte of a
SPI transfer can be used as reliable detection that we are talking to
a SPI flash memory.

Thanks

Michal