[PATCH/RFC 4/4] soc: renesas: Identify SoC and register with the SoC bus

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Saturday, October 22, 2016 9:44:11 AM CEST Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> Hi Arnd,
> 
> On Fri, Oct 21, 2016 at 11:16 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd at arndb.de> wrote:
> > On Friday, October 21, 2016 8:16:00 PM CEST Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> >> On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 12:59 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd at arndb.de> wrote:
> >> > On Wednesday, October 19, 2016 10:02:57 AM CEST Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> >> >> On Mon, Oct 10, 2016 at 4:23 PM, Arnd Bergmann <arnd at arndb.de> wrote:
> >> > I'd prefer seeing a separate soc driver for that one.
> >> >> Some SoCs have only CCCR, others have only PRR, some have both.
> >> >> On some SoCs one of them can be accessed from the RealTime CPU
> >> >> core (SH) only.
> >> >> On some SoCs the register is not documented, but present.
> >> >> If the PRR exists, it's a better choice, as it contains additional information
> >> >> in the high order bits (representing the presence of each big (CA15/CA57),
> >> >> little (CA7/CA53), and RT (CR7) CPU core). Currently we don't use that
> >> >> information, though.
> >> >>
> >> >> Grouping them in some other way means we would loose the family name,
> >> >> which is exposed through soc_dev_attr->family.
> >> >> The usefulness of family names is debatable though, as this is more an
> >> >> issue of marketing business.
> >> >
> >> > How about having a table to look up the family name by the value
> >> > of the PRR or CCCR then?
> >>
> >> Unfortunately there exist SoCs from different families using the same
> >> product ID.
> >>
> >> And different SoCs from the same family may have a revision register
> >> or not (e.g. R-Car H1 has, M1A hasn't).
> >
> > Is this something we expect to see more of in the future, or can
> > we expect future chips to handle this more consistently?
> 
> I expect to see more of these in the future.
> 
> Perhaps I just should forget about the product IDs and (marketing) families,
> and just stick the CCCR/PRR addresses in the of_device_ids?
> Then we'll have SoC names (e.g. "r8a7791") and (optional) revisions
> (e.g. "ES1.0") to match on.

I don't think listing the marketing names is a problem if we need a
full list of all chips in of_device_ids anyway.

I'm still hoping to be able to limit the need for specifying the
register addresses in the driver instead.

> >> > How about this:
> >> >
> >> > The driver could report the hardcoded strings for the SoCs it already
> >> > knows about (you have the table anyway) and not report the revision
> >> > unless there is a regmap containing the CCCR or the PRR, in which
> >> > case you use that. Future SoCs will provide the PRR (I assume
> >> > CCCR is only used on the older ones) through a syscon regmap
> >> > that we can use to find out the exact revision as well.
> >> >
> >> > The existing DT files can gain the syscon device so you can report
> >> > the revision on those machines as well, unless you use an old DTB.
> >>
> >> Hmm... That means that if we have to add a driver quirk to distinguish
> >> between different revisions of the same SoC, we have to update the
> >> DTB anyway, to add the CCCR/PRR device node.
> >> We might as well just change the compatible value in that DTB for the
> >> device that needs the quirk. Which is what we'd like to avoid in the
> >> first place.
> >
> > Do you have a specific example in mind? If this is only a theoretical
> > problem, we can worry about it when we get there, and then decide
> > if we add a hardcoded register after all.
> 
> For R-Car H3, there are small differences between ES1.0 and ES1.1,
> and more and larger differences between ES1.x and ES2.0, which
> need different handling (patches already floating around).
> 
> For (old) R-Car H1, the SATA driver already handles "renesas,sata-r8a7790-es1",
> but so far there didn't exist an established process to specify how that
> compatible value would end up in the DTB (the in-kernel DTS doesn't have it).
> 
> There may be more differences I'm not aware of.

Ok, so for R-Car H1, I assume we don't need the driver, it would just
be a way to replace the current workaround with a different one, right?

For R-Car H3, do we just require driver changes to work with ES2.0,
or also DT changes? If the new chip version already implies a new DT,
we can require the presence of a device node that has the correct
register number.

	Arnd