Date:   Mon, 23 Nov 2020 21:35:52 -0600
From:   Samuel Holland <samuel@...lland.org>
To:     Wilken Gottwalt <wilken.gottwalt@...teo.net>,
        Maxime Ripard <maxime@...no.tech>
Cc:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Ohad Ben-Cohen <ohad@...ery.com>,
        Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@...aro.org>,
        Baolin Wang <baolin.wang7@...il.com>,
        Rob Herring <robh+dt@...nel.org>, Chen-Yu Tsai <wens@...e.org>,
        Jernej Skrabec <jernej.skrabec@...l.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] hwspinlock: add sunxi hardware spinlock support

On 11/23/20 12:32 PM, Wilken Gottwalt wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Nov 2020 17:44:18 +0100
> Maxime Ripard <maxime@...no.tech> wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, Nov 21, 2020 at 08:22:55PM +0800, fuyao wrote:
>>> On Fri, Nov 20, 2020 at 05:42:31PM +0100, Maxime Ripard wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 11:13:43AM +0100, Wilken Gottwalt wrote:
>>>>> On Thu, 19 Nov 2020 08:15:23 +0100
>>>>> Maxime Ripard <maxime@...no.tech> wrote:
>>>>>>> can you help me here a bit? I still try to figure out how to do patch sets
>>>>>>> properly. Some kernel submitting documentation says everything goes into the
>>>>>>> coverletter and other documentation only tells how to split the patches. So
>>>>>>> what would be the right way? A quick example based on my patch set would be
>>>>>>> really helpful.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I mean, the split between your patches and so on is good, you got that right
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The thing I wanted better details on is the commit log itself, so the
>>>>>> message attached to that patch.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ah yes, I think I got it now. So basically add a nice summary of the coverletter
>>>>> there.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, a bit more context as well. Eventually, this should be the
>>>> motivation on why this patch is useful. So what it can be used for, what
>>>> are the challenges, how it was tested, etc.
>>>>
>>>> The cover letter is usually here more to provide some meta-context: what
>>>> you expect from the maintainers / reviewers if it's an RFC, if there's
>>>> any feature missing or that could be added later on, etc.
>>>>
>>>>>>>> Most importantly, this hwspinlock is used to synchronize the ARM cores
>>>>>>>> and the ARISC. How did you test this driver?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Yes, you are right, I should have mentioned this. I have a simple test kernel
>>>>>>> module for this. But I must admit, testing the ARISC is very hard and I have
>>>>>>> no real idea how to do it. Testing the hwspinlocks in general seems to work
>>>>>>> with my test kernel module, but I'm not sure if this is really sufficient. I
>>>>>>> can provide the code for it if you like. What would be the best way? Github?
>>>>>>> Just mailing a patch?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> The test module produces these results:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> # insmod /lib/modules/5.9.8/kernel/drivers/hwspinlock/sunxi_hwspinlock_test.ko 
>>>>>>> [   45.395672] [init] sunxi hwspinlock test driver start
>>>>>>> [   45.400775] [init] start test locks
>>>>>>> [   45.404263] [run ] testing 32 locks
>>>>>>> [   45.407804] [test] testing lock 0 -----
>>>>>>> [   45.411652] [test] taking lock attempt #0 succeded
>>>>>>> [   45.416438] [test] try taken lock attempt #0
>>>>>>> [   45.420735] [test] unlock/take attempt #0
>>>>>>> [   45.424752] [test] taking lock attempt #1 succeded
>>>>>>> [   45.429556] [test] try taken lock attempt #1
>>>>>>> [   45.433823] [test] unlock/take attempt #1
>>>>>>> [   45.437862] [test] testing lock 1 -----
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That doesn't really test for contention though, and dealing with
>>>>>> contention is mostly what this hardware is about. Could you make a small
>>>>>> test with crust to see if when the arisc has taken the lock, the ARM
>>>>>> cores can't take it?
>>>>>
>>>>> So the best solution would be to write a bare metal program that runs on the
>>>>> arisc and can be triggered from the linux side (the test kernel module) to take
>>>>> a spinlock ... or at least take spinlocks periodically for a while and watch it
>>>>> on the linux side. Okay, I think I can do this. Though, I have to dig through
>>>>> all this new stuff first.
>>>>
>>>> It doesn't have to be super complicated, just a loop that takes a lock,
>>>> sleeps for some time, and releases the lock should be enough to at least
>>>> validate that the lock is actually working
>>>>
>>>
>>> I think the difficulty is the bare metal program in arsic has little
>>> documentation.
>>
>> crust has mostly figured it out:
>> https://github.com/crust-firmware/crust
> 
> I actually have serious trouble to get crust running. It compiles for H2+/H3, but
> I can't figure out if it runs at all. I will switch to a H5 based device which is

Crust does not yet support the H2+/H3 (it is active WIP). H5 should work
well.

> confirmed to work. If I see this correctly crust is doing nothing with spinlocks
> yet, so I may end up also working on crust, adding the spinlocks there too. Don't> know yet how long I will take to understand every detail, but I will
report
> progress.

Correct. There is currently no hwspinlock driver in crust. For testing,
you can poke MMIO from the main loop, near the call to scpi_poll() in
common/system.c. You can use the timeout.h functions for timing.

If you want to write a full driver, I would like to know how you expect
to use the hwspinlocks. Allocating the locks has to be coordinated among
all of the users: Linux, U-Boot, crust, any other ARISC firmware, etc.

> Greetings,
> Wilken

Cheers,
Samuel

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