[PATCH v3 2/3] ARM: rockchip: ensure CPU to enter WFI/WFE state

[Doug Anderson]

Russell,

On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 11:29 AM, Russell King - ARM Linux
<linux at arm.linux.org.uk> wrote:
> 1) v7_coherency_exit() is specific to v7 CPUs and can't be used by
>    generic code.

Oh, I see.  So (I think) you're saying that perhaps the reason that
Caesar needed his patch was that he needed the dying processor to
execute v7_exit_coherency_flush(), NOT that he needed the dying
processor to be in WFI/WFE.  That actually makes a lot more sense to
me!  :)  Thanks a lot for pointing that out, it's very helpful.


> So, we're actually in a very sticky position over taking CPUs offline.
> It seems to be something that the ARM architecture and kernel
> architecture doesn't actually allow to be done safely.  So much so,
> that in a similar way to the original Keystone 2 physical address
> switch, I'm tempted to make taking a CPU offline taint the kernel!

Wow, that's going to suck.  So if you want to suspend / resume you
need to taint your kernel.  So much for saving the planet by going
into suspend...  ...or are you thinking that it won't taint the kernel
when the kernel takes CPUs offline for suspend/resume purposes?  ...or
are you thinking you've some solution that works for suspend/resume
that doesn't work for the general cpu offlining problem?  I'd be very
interested to hear...


I know I'm not a maintainer, but if I were and I knew that lots of
smart people had thought about the problem of CPU offlining and they
didn't have a solution and I could make my platform 99.99999999%
reliable by allowing a very safe mdelay(1) where I had a pretty strong
guarantee that the 1ms was enough time, I would probably accept that
code...


So since I'm not a maintainer and I certainly couldn't ack such code,
I would certainly be happy to add my Reviewed-by to Caesar's patch if
he changed it mention that he needed to make sure that
v7_exit_coherency_flush() in rockchip_cpu_die() executed in time.


-Doug