[PATCH 0/5] Add Mediatek MT8173 subsystem clocks support

[James Liao]

Hi Stephen,

On Thu, 2015-06-04 at 14:02 -0700, Stephen Boyd wrote:
> On 05/29, Sascha Hauer wrote:
> > Yes. I previously got the impression that the subsystem clocks are not
> > directly associated to the larbs, but needed to be handled by the larb
> > code due to some side effect. Now that I saw that the larbs are directly
> > in the subsystem register space it all makes sense.
> > 
> > Note that the way Mediatek SoCs are designed around sub modules is bit
> > unusual and does not fit very well in the Linux directory structure.
> > Normally SoCs have a single clocks controller which controls all clocks
> > in the SoC. Then you often have a reset controller providing reset lines
> > in the SoC. In this case it's clear that the clk driver goes to
> > drivers/clk/, the reset controller driver to drivers/reset/. Mediatek
> > SoCs instead have several blocks, each with its own clock and reset
> > controller. Splitting each block up into parts in drivers/clk/ and
> > drivers/reset/ leads to quite a code fragmentation.
> > This is my opinion, it would be great to hear something from others.
> > Matthias? I'd like to avoid running into a direction that is not
> > acceptable in the end.
> 
> We already have drivers registering clocks and resets under
> drivers/clk, so it's not unheard of. An alternative solution is
> to make child devices for the clock part and the reset part at
> runtime in the toplevel driver for the vencsys device (don't do
> any sort of DT description for this) and use regmap to mediate
> the register accesses and locking. That way we can put the clk
> driver in drivers/clk/, the reset driver in drivers/reset, etc.
> so that logically related code is grouped.

I have a question about the alternative way you mentioned. Currently
clock providers and consumers describe what clocks they will provide /
consume in device tree. If we don't describe vencsys clocks in device
tree, how to get vencsys clocks for drivers that need to control them?


Best regards,

James