Re: [PATCH 8/9] PM / Domains: Add support for multi PM domains per device to genpd

From: Jon Hunter
Date: Wed May 23 2018 - 04:14:23 EST



On 23/05/18 07:12, Ulf Hansson wrote:

...

Thanks for sending this. Believe it or not this has still been on my to-do list
and so we definitely need a solution for Tegra.

Looking at the above it appears that additional power-domains exposed as devices
to the client device. So I assume that this means that the drivers for devices
with multiple power-domains will need to call RPM APIs for each of these
additional power-domains. Is that correct?

They can, but should not!

Instead, the driver shall use device_link_add() and device_link_del(),
dynamically, depending on what PM domain that their original device
needs for the current running use case.

In that way, they keep existing runtime PM deployment, operating on
its original device.

OK, sounds good. Any reason why the linking cannot be handled by the above API? Is there a use-case where you would not want it linked?

I am guessing the linking is what would give the driver the ability to decide which subset of powerdomains it actually wants to control
at any point using runtime PM. If we have cases wherein the driver would want to turn on/off _all_ its associated powerdomains _always_
then a default linking of all would help.

First, I think we need to decide on *where* the linking should be
done, not at both places, as that would just mess up synchronization
of who is responsible for calling the device_link_del() at detach.

Second, It would in principle be fine to call device_link_add() and
device_link_del() as a part of the attach/detach APIs. However, there
is a downside to such solution, which would be that the driver then
needs call the detach API, just to do device_link_del(). Of course
then it would also needs to call the attach API later if/when needed.
Doing this adds unnecessary overhead - comparing to just let the
driver call device_link_add|del() when needed. On the upside, yes, it
would put less burden on the drivers as it then only needs to care
about using one set of functions.

Which solution do you prefer?

Any reason why we could not add a 'boolean' argument to the API to indicate whether the new device should be linked? I think that I prefer the API handles it, but I can see there could be instances where drivers may wish to handle it themselves.

Rajendra, do you have a use-case right now where the driver would want to handle the linking?

Cheers
Jon

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nvpublic