Re: [PATCH 2/4 v4] i.MX31: Image Processing Unit DMA and IRQ drivers

[Guennadi Liakhovetski]

Hi Sascha

On Tue, 23 Dec 2008, Sascha Hauer wrote:

> On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 09:10:03PM +0100, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:
> > 
> > Ok, so, what would we like to have there? We agree that the proper way to 
> > serve them is a irq-chip driver, right?
> 
> In case of the *_EOF interrupts when they can be used outside the idmac
> driver then yes. If not then not for the reasons I explained.

Wait a minute, are you suggesting to handle interrupts that are exported 
to client drivers and that are "internal" to ipu_idmac differently? Like 
exported once - properly using the irq chip machinery, and internal once 
just demux in the driver hiding them from the kernel?... Or have I 
misunderstood you? If this is indeed what you mean, then that doesn't 
sound like a good idea to me, sorry. Like you configure a chained handler, 
then when it is called on an IRQ, you check if the reason is bits 0, 1, or 
2 you call generic_handle_irq(), for other bits you handle them 
internally... grrrr... And, in fact, I don't see many internal interrupts 
there - maybe only those from IPU_INT_STAT_3 related to CM? You see, we 
could split interrupts further: support for EOF irqs - unconditional, 
error, NF, and IPU_INT_STAT_3 IRQs - under 3 config variables, maybe even 
split IPU_INT_STAT_3 further in submodules... But this would clutter the 
Kconfig. Ok, I could add an own Kconfig under drivers/dma/ipu. But I 
really do not think we should export some interrupts to the irq_desc array 
and handle others internally. So, what granularity would you like to see 
there?

> > > Another thing is the overlay framebuffer. I think it's mainly useful to
> > > display video streams. Maybe it's better to implement this as a v4l
> > > device as unlike the framebuffer API the v4l API is designed to handle
> > > different image buffers.
> > > These things just popped up in my mind, I don't know if they are
> > > practical, I still have a quite limited understanding of the whole
> > > imaging stuff on the MX31.
> > 
> > You mean an output v4l device? I think overlays are handled by framebuffer 
> > drivers... But I'm also not quite sure about it, however, handling overlay 
> > as another framebuffer seems logical to me.
> 
> Well the DMA engine seems to suggest that frames should be passed around
> whereas the framebuffer API only has a single frame. That would fit
> better into the v4l API. Also the IPU can do things like colourspace
> conversion and hw scaling which would fit into the V4L API.
> OTOH there are not many examples of drivers doing this (ivtv, zoran in
> kernel and an Omap driver found on lists). And I haven't found any
> application supporting a V4L output device.
> BTW is the overlay framebuffer useful in it's current implementation?
> There seems to be no way to adjust the x/y offset or the blending modes.

No - that's what the comment in the commit says:

This is a framebuffer driver for i.MX31 SoCs. It only supports synchronous
displays, overlay support is included but has never been tested.

[Oops, just noticed - in v5 framebuffer I again have the "panning not 
tested" clause, which is not true, and the comment has been fixed in v4:-( 
So, if we decide to take v5, we'd have to take the comment from v4]

So, I could just throw overlay completely out. OTOH, if anyone ever wants 
to use it, they'll have something to start with.

> > If there are no other problems with v5, could we maybe take it as a basis 
> > and then I would submit a patch to reduce the number of IRQs?
> 
> Please understand my concerns with this driver. It's a quite complex
> beast and experience shows that once a driver is in the kernel it is far
> more complicated to change it than to do it right the first way. You
> know that I'm also interested in having a MX31 framebuffer (and camera)
> driver in kernel but I want to make sure that it works properly and leaves
> room for feature enhancements without having to refactor the whole
> driver.

Well, not quite so. At least with my workflow it takes more work to 
regenerate a complete patch-series, than to create incremental patches. 
For me it would be definitely easier to have a version of the driver 
upstream to then only create incremental patches for it. Also, it would be 
easier for others to test it. And consider the constantly moving target 
effect - you know it as well as I do, rebasing your off-tree patches to 
new kernel versions is a considerable amount of work too.

> It would be good if someone else could throw his 2 cents into this
> discussion.

Yes, eventually, the drivers will have to go over dma and framebuffer 
trees...

Thanks
Guennadi
---
Guennadi Liakhovetski, Ph.D.
Freelance Open-Source Software Developer
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