[RFC v0 0/2] Introduce on-chip interconnect API

[Georgi Djakov]

On 03/03/2017 08:21 AM, Rob Herring wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 08:22:33PM +0200, Georgi Djakov wrote:
>> Modern SoCs have multiple processors and various dedicated cores (video, gpu,
>> graphics, modem). These cores are talking to each other and can generate a lot
>> of data flowing through the on-chip interconnects. These interconnect buses
>> could form different topologies such as crossbar, point to point buses,
>> hierarchical buses or use the network-on-chip concept.
>>
>> These buses have been sized usually to handle use cases with high data
>> throughput but it is not necessary all the time and consume a lot of power.
>> Furthermore, the priority between masters can vary depending on the running
>> use case like video playback or cpu intensive tasks.
>>
>> Having an API to control the requirement of the system in term of bandwidth
>> and QoS, so we can adapt the interconnect configuration to match those by
>> scaling the frequencies, setting link priority and tuning QoS parameters.
>> This configuration can be a static, one-time operation done at boot for some
>> platforms or a dynamic set of operations that happen at run-time.
>>
>> This patchset introduce a new API to get the requirement and configure the
>> interconnect buses across the entire chipset to fit with the current demand.
>> The API is NOT for changing the performance of the endpoint devices, but only
>> the interconnect path in between them.
>>
>> The API is using a consumer/provider-based model, where the providers are
>> the interconnect controllers and the consumers could be various drivers.
>> The consumers request interconnect resources (path) to an endpoint and set
>> the desired constraints on this data flow path. The provider(s) receive
>> requests from consumers and aggregate these requests for all master-slave
>> pairs on that path. Then the providers configure each participating in the
>> topology node according to the requested data flow path, physical links and
>> constraints. The topology could be complicated and multi-tiered and is SoC
>> specific.
>>
>> Below is a simplified diagram of a real-world SoC topology. The interconnect
>> providers are the memory front-end and the NoCs.
>>
>> +----------------+    +----------------+
>> | HW Accelerator |--->|      M NoC     |<---------------+
>> +----------------+    +----------------+                |
>>                         |      |                    +------------+
>>           +-------------+      V       +------+     |            |
>>           |                +--------+  | PCIe |     |            |
>>           |                | Slaves |  +------+     |            |
>>           |                +--------+     |         |   C NoC    |
>>           V                               V         |            |
>> +------------------+   +------------------------+   |            |   +-----+
>> |                  |-->|                        |-->|            |-->| CPU |
>> |                  |-->|                        |<--|            |   +-----+
>> |      Memory      |   |         S NoC          |   +------------+
>> |                  |<--|                        |---------+    |
>> |                  |<--|                        |<------+ |    |   +--------+
>> +------------------+   +------------------------+       | |    +-->| Slaves |
>>    ^     ^    ^           ^                             | |        +--------+
>>    |     |    |           |                             | V
>> +-----+  |  +-----+    +-----+  +---------+   +----------------+   +--------+
>> | CPU |  |  | GPU |    | DSP |  | Masters |-->|       P NoC    |-->| Slaves |
>> +-----+  |  +-----+    +-----+  +---------+   +----------------+   +--------+
>>          |
>>      +-------+
>>      | Modem |
>>      +-------+
>>
>> This RFC does not implement all features but only main skeleton to check the
>> validity of the proposal. Currently it only works with device-tree and platform
>> devices.
>>
>> TODO:
>>  * Constraints are currently stored in internal data structure. Should PM QoS
>>  be used instead?
>>  * Rework the framework to not depend on DT as frameworks cannot be tied
>>  directly to firmware interfaces. Add support for ACPI?
>
> I would start without DT even. You can always have the data you need in
> the kernel. This will be more flexible as you're not defining an ABI as
> this evolves. I think it will take some time to have consensus on how to
> represent the bus master view of buses/interconnects (It's been
> attempted before).
>
> Rob
>

Thanks for the comment and for discussing this off-line! As the main
concern here is to see a list of multiple platforms before we come
up with a common binding, i will convert this to initially use platform
data. Then later we will figure out what exactly to pull into DT.

BR,
Georgi