Re: [PATCH v2 2/5] cpu_pm: call notifiers during suspend

[Santosh]

On Friday 09 September 2011 02:21 AM, Kevin Hilman wrote:
> Colin Cross<ccross@xxxxxxxxxxx>  writes:
>
> > On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 7:01 AM, Kevin Hilman<khilman@xxxxxx>  wrote:
> > > Santosh<santosh.shilimkar@xxxxxx>  writes:
> > >
> > > > On Thursday 08 September 2011 01:32 AM, Kevin Hilman wrote:
> > > > > Santosh Shilimkar<santosh.shilimkar@xxxxxx>    writes:
> > > > >
> > > > > > From: Colin Cross<ccross@xxxxxxxxxxx>
[...]

> > These notifiers are designed for drivers that are tightly coupled to
> > the cpu, and shared across multiple architectures (mostly GIC and
> > VFP).
>
> That is certainly the initial intended usage, and I understand that
> design, but they are useful for much more.
>
> Specifically, consider devices whose power transitions need to be
> tightly coupled with the CPU, but are in different power domains.
> Notifiers for these devices may need to be coordinated with
> platform-specific events.
>
> Also, it's not only about context save for off-mode.  Some of these
> tightly-coupled devices have other work to do besides context
> save/restore, and CPU PM notifiers are useful there.  A dumb example off
> the top of my head: pins (e.g. GPIOs), that need to be mux'd into safe
> mode to avoid glitches when coming back from off.  (admittedly, this is
> broken HW, but we all know broken HW is part of life.)
>
> > In practice, all of these devices are off in every suspend
> > state, because nobody leaves the CPU on in suspend.
>
> Sure, but you might leave other power domains on (or in retention)
> during suspend, and these domains might contain some of the devices
> whose power transitions are coupled with CPU transitions and thus using
> CPU PM notifiers.
>
> Also, so far we've only talked about suspend, but the CPU (and other
> power domains) might also go off during idle.  The approach in $SUBJECT
> patch addresses suspend but not idle, which means it's up to
> platform-specific code to trigger the notifiers for idle.  I think it
> should be the same for suspend.
>
> > The (next_state == OFF) api you refer to would have to be something
> > architecture specific, since the power state handling is very
> > different on every platform, so it's not something that would ever be
> > included in drivers that I imagined would be using these notifiers.
>
> Sure, but you created something so useful that it can be used in other
> areas than you initially imagined. :)   Thanks!
>
> I wouldn't imagine arch-specific being used in those generic drivers
> either, but in addition to the drivers you imagined, I'm already trying
> to the notifiers in drivers that are platform-specific.  I only imagine
> using the "next state" type of checking in platform-specific code, not
> in generic ones.
>
> Note however that I'm certainly not arguing that the notifiers should
> not be called in suspend.  I'm only arguing that it should be up to
> platform-specific code when to call them because of possible
> platform-specific pre-requisites in platform-specific notifier
> callbacks.
>
> IMO, there are 2 options.
>
> 1) leave it up to platform-specific code when to trigger the notifiers
>     for *both* suspend and idle PM transitions
>
> 2) trigger the notifiers in arch-independent code for both suspend and
>     idle *but* provide a way that platform-specific code can disable
>     them in favor of using platform-specific trigger points.
>
> If most platforms really don't care, then maybe (2) would be the
> better approach.  That's fine with me as long as there's a way to
> disable them so platform-specific ones can be used.
I think, we should keep the notifiers simple and option 1 the one
thing we should consider. It's just easy to take care of IDLE and
suspend together.

Regards
Santosh
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/