Re: [PATCH 3/6] irqchip: RISC-V Local Interrupt Controller Driver

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 09:08:00AM +0530, Anup Patel wrote:
> Actually, RISCV HLIC and PLIC are very similar to RPi2 and RPi3 SOCs.
> 
> On RPi2 and RPi3, we have per-CPU BCM2836 local intc and the global
> interrupts are managed using BCM2835 intc. You should certainly have
> a look a this drivers because these very simple compared to GICv2 and
> GICv3 drivers.

Yes, using that model makes writing the per-cpu irq controller driver
trivial.  But retrofitting it into the device tree, where the existing
bootloader (bbl) assumes the old DT layout is a giant pain in the neck.

At the same time I'm still not conveninced RISC-V really needs a full
irqchip driver for the per-cpu interrupt 'controller' really is nothing
but 1 and a half architectural control registers:

  - the scause register that contains the reason for an exception
    (any exception including syscalls and page faults) for the entry
    into supervisor mode.  This includes a bit to indicate interrupts,
    and then logical interrupt reason, out of which only three are
    interesting for supervisor mode (timer, software, external)
  - the sie register that allows to to enable/disable each of the above
    causes individually

So after burning out on DT hacking (never mind retrofitting that into
actual shipping SOCs vs just qemu) I'm going to try a version that
doesn't add an irqchip for this but just handles it hardcoded in
RISC-V do_IRQ.  I'll still keep the irqchip for the PLIC, which while
specificed in the RISC-V spec isn't architectural but an actual
periphal.