Re: [RFC 1/1] clk: Add notifier support in clk_prepare_enable/clk_disable_unprepare

[Ulf Hansson]

On 15 March 2013 20:38, Stephen Warren <swarren@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 03/15/2013 06:33 AM, Ulf Hansson wrote:
>> On 15 March 2013 13:06, Bill Huang <bilhuang@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2013-03-15 at 18:08 +0800, Ulf Hansson wrote:
> ...
>>>> Some prerequisites; I think am in favor of using the clk API to
>>>> trigger DVFS changes and then I agree on that clk_prepare|unprepare
>>>> needs to be possible to track from a DVFS perspective. clk_set_rate is
>>>> not enough.
>>>>
>>>> So if we decide to do the above (using the clk API to trigger DVFS
>>>> changes), I believe we should discuss two possible solutions;
>>>> - clk notifiers or..
>>>> - dvfs clock type.
>>>>
>>>> I am trying to make up my mind of what I think is the best solution.
>>>> Have you considered "dvfs clock type"?
>>>> I put some comments about this for "[PATCH 2/5] clk: notifier handler
>>>> for dynamic voltage scaling" recently as well.
>>>>
>>>> What could the advantages/disadvantages be between the two options?
>>>
>>> I personally prefer clk notifiers since that's easy and all the existing
>>> device drivers don't need to be modified, a new clock or API might be
>>> more thoroughly considered (and hence maybe more graceful) but that
>>> means we need more time to cook and many drivers need to plug into that
>>> API when it comes out, a lot of test/verification or maybe chaos
>>> follows, I'm not sure will that be a little overkill.
>>
>> I guess you did not fully got what I meant with "dvfs clock type". It
>> will not affect the clock API. But instead the dvfs is handled by
>> implementing a specific clk hw type. So the same thing is accomplished
>> as with clk notifiers, no changes should be needed to device drivers.
>>
>> The difference is only that no notifiers will be needed, and all the
>> dvfs stuff will be handled in the clk hw instead. It will mean that we
>> will bundle dvfs stuff into the clock drivers, instead of separating
>> the code outside the clock drivers. But, on the other hand no
>> notifiers will be needed.
>
> The advantage here is that I assume that a notifier would continually
> have to check whether the clock being modified was one that the DVFS
> notifier cared about. By integrating the CVFS logic into the clk_hw
> itself, it'll only ever get executed for clocks that really care about
> DVFS. Presumably, the code that implements the clk_hw could also use
> some common DVFS library as part of the implementation, and still share
> code. Or perhaps, what about putting DVFS "ops" into a clk_hw alongside
> any other existing ops, and having the clock core call them whenever
> appropriate?

Thanks for your comment Stephen.

I agree to your reflections as well. It will probably be a more
optimized solution going this direction and we don't have to add more
"clk notifier code" to the clk API, which I guess is good.
It would be interesting to get some input from some of the maintainers
to this discussion as well, let's see.

Kind regards
Ulf Hansson
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