[RFC v3 04/11] ath10k: add start_once support

[Kalle Valo]

Erik Stromdahl <erik.stromdahl at gmail.com> writes:

> Add possibility to configure the driver to only start target once.
> This can reduce startup time of SDIO devices significantly since
> loading the firmware can take a substantial amount of time.

But it also makes it impossible to restart the firmware if it crashes,
right? Good to mention that in the commit log.

> The patch is also necessary for high latency devices in general since
> it does not seem to be possible to rerun the BMI phase (fw upload)
> without power-cycling the device.
>
> Signed-off-by: Erik Stromdahl <erik.stromdahl at gmail.com>

[...]

> --- a/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath10k/core.h
> +++ b/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath10k/core.h
> @@ -784,6 +784,8 @@ struct ath10k {
>  
>  	bool is_high_latency;
>  
> +	bool is_started;

Is a separate boolean really needed? State management becomes really
difficult if an enum ath10k_state and this boolean to define the state
of the device. Can't you use ar->state?

> --- a/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath10k/hw.h
> +++ b/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath10k/hw.h
> @@ -569,6 +569,12 @@ struct ath10k_hw_params {
>  	bool is_high_latency;
>  
>  	enum ath10k_bus bus;
> +
> +	/* Specifies whether or not the device should be started once.
> +	 * If set, the device will be started once by the early fw probe
> +	 * and it will not be terminated afterwards.
> +	 */
> +	bool start_once;
>  };

I would actually prefer that the bus driver (eg. usb.c) decides this and
provides it though ath10k_core_register(). It might be that some SDIO
devices have a GPIO line to reset the device etc.

The struct ath10k_bus_params I mentioned earlier might be handy also
here.

-- 
Kalle Valo