[RFC 0/9] PCI: introduce the concept of power sequencing of PCIe devices

[Chen-Yu Tsai]

On Tue, Jan 9, 2024 at 12:09 PM Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> On 1/4/2024 5:01 AM, Bartosz Golaszewski wrote:
> > From: Bartosz Golaszewski <bartosz.golaszewski at linaro.org>
> >
> > During last year's Linux Plumbers we had several discussions centered
> > around the need to power-on PCI devices before they can be detected on
> > the bus.
> >
> > The consensus during the conference was that we need to introduce a
> > class of "PCI slot drivers" that would handle the power-sequencing.
> >
> > After some additional brain-storming with Manivannan and the realization
> > that the DT maintainers won't like adding any "fake" nodes not
> > representing actual devices, we decided to reuse the existing
> > infrastructure provided by the PCIe port drivers.
> >
> > The general idea is to instantiate platform devices for child nodes of
> > the PCIe port DT node. For those nodes for which a power-sequencing
> > driver exists, we bind it and let it probe. The driver then triggers a
> > rescan of the PCI bus with the aim of detecting the now powered-on
> > device. The device will consume the same DT node as the platform,
> > power-sequencing device. We use device links to make the latter become
> > the parent of the former.
> >
> > The main advantage of this approach is not modifying the existing DT in
> > any way and especially not adding any "fake" platform devices.
>
> There is prior work in that area which was applied, but eventually reverted:
>
> https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-pci/msg119136.html
>
> and finally re-applied albeit in a different shape:
>
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220716222454.29914-1-jim2101024@gmail.com/
>
> so we might want to think about how to have pcie-brcmstb.c converted
> over your proposed approach. AFAIR there is also pcie-rockchip.c which
> has some rudimentary support for voltage regulators of PCIe end-points.

I think the current in-tree approaches mostly target either PCIe slots,
whether full size or mini-PCIe or M.2, or soldered-on components that
either only have a single power rail, have internal regulators, or have
surrounding circuitry that would be incorporated on a PCIe card.

These all have standardized power rails (+12V, +3.3V, +3.3V aux, etc.).

> What does not yet appear in this RFC is support for suspend/resume,
> especially for power states where both the RC and the EP might be losing
> power. There also needs to be some thoughts given to wake-up enabled
> PCIe devices like Wi-Fi which might need to remain powered on to service
> Wake-on-WLAN frames if nothing else.
>
> I sense a potential for a lot of custom power sequencing drivers being
> added and ultimately leading to the decision to create a "generic" one
> which is entirely driven by Device Tree properties...

We can have one "generic" slot power sequencing driver, which just
enables all the power rails together. I would very much like to see that.

I believe the power sequencing in this series is currently targeting more
tightly coupled designs that use power rails directly from the PMIC, and
thus require more explicit power sequencing.

ChenYu


> Thanks for doing this!
> --
> Florian
>
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