[PATCH v1 7/7] mci: imx-esdhc: support DMA in the i.MX8M PBL eMMC loader

[Sascha Hauer]

On 2026-06-30 09:22, SCHNEIDER Johannes wrote:
> Hoi Sascha,
> 
> 
> > On 2026-06-27 19:43, Johannes Schneider wrote:
> > > The PBL eMMC loader was hardwired to PIO via esdhc_use_pio_mode(): IN_PBL
> > > forced PIO unconditionally. PIO is slow -- on an i.MX8MM board loading the
> > > ~1.6 MB next stage took ~559 ms; SDMA/ADMA2 do it in ~21 ms.
> >
> > For proper DMA support you'll need memory synchronization in form of dma_map_*
> > or dma_sync_* helpers which we do not have in PBL. Without them it won't
> > work with MMU enabled.
> 
> Noted. So since the MMU is still left as it is = off were still good wtih the
> current sdma/adma implementation. But maybe worth a comment in the code/commit?
> 
> > Have you tried enabling the MMU in the mean time? This
> > should give you decent performance even with PIO.
> >
> > Sascha
> >
> 
> Thanks for the hint/idea!
> I've let the AI draft a PIO+MMU-on change and ran a round of measurements,
> (Caveat: sample size is one) there is some gain - but we get more with SDMA or ADMA
> And interestingly "the same" with the later two.:
> 
>  Phase                  PIO   PIO+MMU   SDMA   ADMA2
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>  BootROM                  1       1       1        2
>  PBL-init                 3       3       3        3
>  DDR-training           265     265     262      269
>  PBL-load (total)       884     413     257      258
>    PBL-pre-load         165     170     166      167
>    load_bl33            713     241      86       85
>    PBL-post-load          5       1       5        5
>  BL31-early             114     114     114      114
>  BL31-platform           16      15      15       15
>  BL31-runtime            98      98      98       98
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>  time-to-barebox       1393     921     763      770
> 
> 
> If you want i can brush up that PIO+MMU code and send it out too.

Let's concentrate on the MMU stuff first as that's something you want to
have anyway for faster sha256 support.

Sascha

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