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  1. ==================================
  2. DMAengine controller documentation
  3. ==================================
  4. Hardware Introduction
  5. =====================
  6. Most of the Slave DMA controllers have the same general principles of
  7. operations.
  8. They have a given number of channels to use for the DMA transfers, and
  9. a given number of requests lines.
  10. Requests and channels are pretty much orthogonal. Channels can be used
  11. to serve several to any requests. To simplify, channels are the
  12. entities that will be doing the copy, and requests what endpoints are
  13. involved.
  14. The request lines actually correspond to physical lines going from the
  15. DMA-eligible devices to the controller itself. Whenever the device
  16. will want to start a transfer, it will assert a DMA request (DRQ) by
  17. asserting that request line.
  18. A very simple DMA controller would only take into account a single
  19. parameter: the transfer size. At each clock cycle, it would transfer a
  20. byte of data from one buffer to another, until the transfer size has
  21. been reached.
  22. That wouldn't work well in the real world, since slave devices might
  23. require a specific number of bits to be transferred in a single
  24. cycle. For example, we may want to transfer as much data as the
  25. physical bus allows to maximize performances when doing a simple
  26. memory copy operation, but our audio device could have a narrower FIFO
  27. that requires data to be written exactly 16 or 24 bits at a time. This
  28. is why most if not all of the DMA controllers can adjust this, using a
  29. parameter called the transfer width.
  30. Moreover, some DMA controllers, whenever the RAM is used as a source
  31. or destination, can group the reads or writes in memory into a buffer,
  32. so instead of having a lot of small memory accesses, which is not
  33. really efficient, you'll get several bigger transfers. This is done
  34. using a parameter called the burst size, that defines how many single
  35. reads/writes it's allowed to do without the controller splitting the
  36. transfer into smaller sub-transfers.
  37. Our theoretical DMA controller would then only be able to do transfers
  38. that involve a single contiguous block of data. However, some of the
  39. transfers we usually have are not, and want to copy data from
  40. non-contiguous buffers to a contiguous buffer, which is called
  41. scatter-gather.
  42. DMAEngine, at least for mem2dev transfers, require support for
  43. scatter-gather. So we're left with two cases here: either we have a
  44. quite simple DMA controller that doesn't support it, and we'll have to
  45. implement it in software, or we have a more advanced DMA controller,
  46. that implements in hardware scatter-gather.
  47. The latter are usually programmed using a collection of chunks to
  48. transfer, and whenever the transfer is started, the controller will go
  49. over that collection, doing whatever we programmed there.
  50. This collection is usually either a table or a linked list. You will
  51. then push either the address of the table and its number of elements,
  52. or the first item of the list to one channel of the DMA controller,
  53. and whenever a DRQ will be asserted, it will go through the collection
  54. to know where to fetch the data from.
  55. Either way, the format of this collection is completely dependent on
  56. your hardware. Each DMA controller will require a different structure,
  57. but all of them will require, for every chunk, at least the source and
  58. destination addresses, whether it should increment these addresses or
  59. not and the three parameters we saw earlier: the burst size, the
  60. transfer width and the transfer size.
  61. The one last thing is that usually, slave devices won't issue DRQ by
  62. default, and you have to enable this in your slave device driver first
  63. whenever you're willing to use DMA.
  64. These were just the general memory-to-memory (also called mem2mem) or
  65. memory-to-device (mem2dev) kind of transfers. Most devices often
  66. support other kind of transfers or memory operations that dmaengine
  67. support and will be detailed later in this document.
  68. DMA Support in Linux
  69. ====================
  70. Historically, DMA controller drivers have been implemented using the
  71. async TX API, to offload operations such as memory copy, XOR,
  72. cryptography, etc., basically any memory to memory operation.
  73. Over time, the need for memory to device transfers arose, and
  74. dmaengine was extended. Nowadays, the async TX API is written as a
  75. layer on top of dmaengine, and acts as a client. Still, dmaengine
  76. accommodates that API in some cases, and made some design choices to
  77. ensure that it stayed compatible.
  78. For more information on the Async TX API, please look the relevant
  79. documentation file in Documentation/crypto/async-tx-api.rst.
  80. DMAEngine APIs
  81. ==============
  82. ``struct dma_device`` Initialization
  83. ------------------------------------
  84. Just like any other kernel framework, the whole DMAEngine registration
  85. relies on the driver filling a structure and registering against the
  86. framework. In our case, that structure is dma_device.
  87. The first thing you need to do in your driver is to allocate this
  88. structure. Any of the usual memory allocators will do, but you'll also
  89. need to initialize a few fields in there:
  90. - ``channels``: should be initialized as a list using the
  91. INIT_LIST_HEAD macro for example
  92. - ``src_addr_widths``:
  93. should contain a bitmask of the supported source transfer width
  94. - ``dst_addr_widths``:
  95. should contain a bitmask of the supported destination transfer width
  96. - ``directions``:
  97. should contain a bitmask of the supported slave directions
  98. (i.e. excluding mem2mem transfers)
  99. - ``residue_granularity``:
  100. granularity of the transfer residue reported to dma_set_residue.
  101. This can be either:
  102. - Descriptor:
  103. your device doesn't support any kind of residue
  104. reporting. The framework will only know that a particular
  105. transaction descriptor is done.
  106. - Segment:
  107. your device is able to report which chunks have been transferred
  108. - Burst:
  109. your device is able to report which burst have been transferred
  110. - ``dev``: should hold the pointer to the ``struct device`` associated
  111. to your current driver instance.
  112. Supported transaction types
  113. ---------------------------
  114. The next thing you need is to set which transaction types your device
  115. (and driver) supports.
  116. Our ``dma_device structure`` has a field called cap_mask that holds the
  117. various types of transaction supported, and you need to modify this
  118. mask using the dma_cap_set function, with various flags depending on
  119. transaction types you support as an argument.
  120. All those capabilities are defined in the ``dma_transaction_type enum``,
  121. in ``include/linux/dmaengine.h``
  122. Currently, the types available are:
  123. - DMA_MEMCPY
  124. - The device is able to do memory to memory copies
  125. - No matter what the overall size of the combined chunks for source and
  126. destination is, only as many bytes as the smallest of the two will be
  127. transmitted. That means the number and size of the scatter-gather buffers in
  128. both lists need not be the same, and that the operation functionally is
  129. equivalent to a ``strncpy`` where the ``count`` argument equals the smallest
  130. total size of the two scatter-gather list buffers.
  131. - It's usually used for copying pixel data between host memory and
  132. memory-mapped GPU device memory, such as found on modern PCI video graphics
  133. cards. The most immediate example is the OpenGL API function
  134. ``glReadPielx()``, which might require a verbatim copy of a huge framebuffer
  135. from local device memory onto host memory.
  136. - DMA_XOR
  137. - The device is able to perform XOR operations on memory areas
  138. - Used to accelerate XOR intensive tasks, such as RAID5
  139. - DMA_XOR_VAL
  140. - The device is able to perform parity check using the XOR
  141. algorithm against a memory buffer.
  142. - DMA_PQ
  143. - The device is able to perform RAID6 P+Q computations, P being a
  144. simple XOR, and Q being a Reed-Solomon algorithm.
  145. - DMA_PQ_VAL
  146. - The device is able to perform parity check using RAID6 P+Q
  147. algorithm against a memory buffer.
  148. - DMA_MEMSET
  149. - The device is able to fill memory with the provided pattern
  150. - The pattern is treated as a single byte signed value.
  151. - DMA_INTERRUPT
  152. - The device is able to trigger a dummy transfer that will
  153. generate periodic interrupts
  154. - Used by the client drivers to register a callback that will be
  155. called on a regular basis through the DMA controller interrupt
  156. - DMA_PRIVATE
  157. - The devices only supports slave transfers, and as such isn't
  158. available for async transfers.
  159. - DMA_ASYNC_TX
  160. - Must not be set by the device, and will be set by the framework
  161. if needed
  162. - TODO: What is it about?
  163. - DMA_SLAVE
  164. - The device can handle device to memory transfers, including
  165. scatter-gather transfers.
  166. - While in the mem2mem case we were having two distinct types to
  167. deal with a single chunk to copy or a collection of them, here,
  168. we just have a single transaction type that is supposed to
  169. handle both.
  170. - If you want to transfer a single contiguous memory buffer,
  171. simply build a scatter list with only one item.
  172. - DMA_CYCLIC
  173. - The device can handle cyclic transfers.
  174. - A cyclic transfer is a transfer where the chunk collection will
  175. loop over itself, with the last item pointing to the first.
  176. - It's usually used for audio transfers, where you want to operate
  177. on a single ring buffer that you will fill with your audio data.
  178. - DMA_INTERLEAVE
  179. - The device supports interleaved transfer.
  180. - These transfers can transfer data from a non-contiguous buffer
  181. to a non-contiguous buffer, opposed to DMA_SLAVE that can
  182. transfer data from a non-contiguous data set to a continuous
  183. destination buffer.
  184. - It's usually used for 2d content transfers, in which case you
  185. want to transfer a portion of uncompressed data directly to the
  186. display to print it
  187. - DMA_COMPLETION_NO_ORDER
  188. - The device does not support in order completion.
  189. - The driver should return DMA_OUT_OF_ORDER for device_tx_status if
  190. the device is setting this capability.
  191. - All cookie tracking and checking API should be treated as invalid if
  192. the device exports this capability.
  193. - At this point, this is incompatible with polling option for dmatest.
  194. - If this cap is set, the user is recommended to provide an unique
  195. identifier for each descriptor sent to the DMA device in order to
  196. properly track the completion.
  197. - DMA_REPEAT
  198. - The device supports repeated transfers. A repeated transfer, indicated by
  199. the DMA_PREP_REPEAT transfer flag, is similar to a cyclic transfer in that
  200. it gets automatically repeated when it ends, but can additionally be
  201. replaced by the client.
  202. - This feature is limited to interleaved transfers, this flag should thus not
  203. be set if the DMA_INTERLEAVE flag isn't set. This limitation is based on
  204. the current needs of DMA clients, support for additional transfer types
  205. should be added in the future if and when the need arises.
  206. - DMA_LOAD_EOT
  207. - The device supports replacing repeated transfers at end of transfer (EOT)
  208. by queuing a new transfer with the DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT flag set.
  209. - Support for replacing a currently running transfer at another point (such
  210. as end of burst instead of end of transfer) will be added in the future
  211. based on DMA clients needs, if and when the need arises.
  212. These various types will also affect how the source and destination
  213. addresses change over time.
  214. Addresses pointing to RAM are typically incremented (or decremented)
  215. after each transfer. In case of a ring buffer, they may loop
  216. (DMA_CYCLIC). Addresses pointing to a device's register (e.g. a FIFO)
  217. are typically fixed.
  218. Per descriptor metadata support
  219. -------------------------------
  220. Some data movement architecture (DMA controller and peripherals) uses metadata
  221. associated with a transaction. The DMA controller role is to transfer the
  222. payload and the metadata alongside.
  223. The metadata itself is not used by the DMA engine itself, but it contains
  224. parameters, keys, vectors, etc for peripheral or from the peripheral.
  225. The DMAengine framework provides a generic ways to facilitate the metadata for
  226. descriptors. Depending on the architecture the DMA driver can implement either
  227. or both of the methods and it is up to the client driver to choose which one
  228. to use.
  229. - DESC_METADATA_CLIENT
  230. The metadata buffer is allocated/provided by the client driver and it is
  231. attached (via the dmaengine_desc_attach_metadata() helper to the descriptor.
  232. From the DMA driver the following is expected for this mode:
  233. - DMA_MEM_TO_DEV / DEV_MEM_TO_MEM
  234. The data from the provided metadata buffer should be prepared for the DMA
  235. controller to be sent alongside of the payload data. Either by copying to a
  236. hardware descriptor, or highly coupled packet.
  237. - DMA_DEV_TO_MEM
  238. On transfer completion the DMA driver must copy the metadata to the client
  239. provided metadata buffer before notifying the client about the completion.
  240. After the transfer completion, DMA drivers must not touch the metadata
  241. buffer provided by the client.
  242. - DESC_METADATA_ENGINE
  243. The metadata buffer is allocated/managed by the DMA driver. The client driver
  244. can ask for the pointer, maximum size and the currently used size of the
  245. metadata and can directly update or read it. dmaengine_desc_get_metadata_ptr()
  246. and dmaengine_desc_set_metadata_len() is provided as helper functions.
  247. From the DMA driver the following is expected for this mode:
  248. - get_metadata_ptr()
  249. Should return a pointer for the metadata buffer, the maximum size of the
  250. metadata buffer and the currently used / valid (if any) bytes in the buffer.
  251. - set_metadata_len()
  252. It is called by the clients after it have placed the metadata to the buffer
  253. to let the DMA driver know the number of valid bytes provided.
  254. Note: since the client will ask for the metadata pointer in the completion
  255. callback (in DMA_DEV_TO_MEM case) the DMA driver must ensure that the
  256. descriptor is not freed up prior the callback is called.
  257. Device operations
  258. -----------------
  259. Our dma_device structure also requires a few function pointers in
  260. order to implement the actual logic, now that we described what
  261. operations we were able to perform.
  262. The functions that we have to fill in there, and hence have to
  263. implement, obviously depend on the transaction types you reported as
  264. supported.
  265. - ``device_alloc_chan_resources``
  266. - ``device_free_chan_resources``
  267. - These functions will be called whenever a driver will call
  268. ``dma_request_channel`` or ``dma_release_channel`` for the first/last
  269. time on the channel associated to that driver.
  270. - They are in charge of allocating/freeing all the needed
  271. resources in order for that channel to be useful for your driver.
  272. - These functions can sleep.
  273. - ``device_prep_dma_*``
  274. - These functions are matching the capabilities you registered
  275. previously.
  276. - These functions all take the buffer or the scatterlist relevant
  277. for the transfer being prepared, and should create a hardware
  278. descriptor or a list of hardware descriptors from it
  279. - These functions can be called from an interrupt context
  280. - Any allocation you might do should be using the GFP_NOWAIT
  281. flag, in order not to potentially sleep, but without depleting
  282. the emergency pool either.
  283. - Drivers should try to pre-allocate any memory they might need
  284. during the transfer setup at probe time to avoid putting to
  285. much pressure on the nowait allocator.
  286. - It should return a unique instance of the
  287. ``dma_async_tx_descriptor structure``, that further represents this
  288. particular transfer.
  289. - This structure can be initialized using the function
  290. ``dma_async_tx_descriptor_init``.
  291. - You'll also need to set two fields in this structure:
  292. - flags:
  293. TODO: Can it be modified by the driver itself, or
  294. should it be always the flags passed in the arguments
  295. - tx_submit: A pointer to a function you have to implement,
  296. that is supposed to push the current transaction descriptor to a
  297. pending queue, waiting for issue_pending to be called.
  298. - In this structure the function pointer callback_result can be
  299. initialized in order for the submitter to be notified that a
  300. transaction has completed. In the earlier code the function pointer
  301. callback has been used. However it does not provide any status to the
  302. transaction and will be deprecated. The result structure defined as
  303. ``dmaengine_result`` that is passed in to callback_result
  304. has two fields:
  305. - result: This provides the transfer result defined by
  306. ``dmaengine_tx_result``. Either success or some error condition.
  307. - residue: Provides the residue bytes of the transfer for those that
  308. support residue.
  309. - ``device_issue_pending``
  310. - Takes the first transaction descriptor in the pending queue,
  311. and starts the transfer. Whenever that transfer is done, it
  312. should move to the next transaction in the list.
  313. - This function can be called in an interrupt context
  314. - ``device_tx_status``
  315. - Should report the bytes left to go over on the given channel
  316. - Should only care about the transaction descriptor passed as
  317. argument, not the currently active one on a given channel
  318. - The tx_state argument might be NULL
  319. - Should use dma_set_residue to report it
  320. - In the case of a cyclic transfer, it should only take into
  321. account the total size of the cyclic buffer.
  322. - Should return DMA_OUT_OF_ORDER if the device does not support in order
  323. completion and is completing the operation out of order.
  324. - This function can be called in an interrupt context.
  325. - device_config
  326. - Reconfigures the channel with the configuration given as argument
  327. - This command should NOT perform synchronously, or on any
  328. currently queued transfers, but only on subsequent ones
  329. - In this case, the function will receive a ``dma_slave_config``
  330. structure pointer as an argument, that will detail which
  331. configuration to use.
  332. - Even though that structure contains a direction field, this
  333. field is deprecated in favor of the direction argument given to
  334. the prep_* functions
  335. - This call is mandatory for slave operations only. This should NOT be
  336. set or expected to be set for memcpy operations.
  337. If a driver support both, it should use this call for slave
  338. operations only and not for memcpy ones.
  339. - device_pause
  340. - Pauses a transfer on the channel
  341. - This command should operate synchronously on the channel,
  342. pausing right away the work of the given channel
  343. - device_resume
  344. - Resumes a transfer on the channel
  345. - This command should operate synchronously on the channel,
  346. resuming right away the work of the given channel
  347. - device_terminate_all
  348. - Aborts all the pending and ongoing transfers on the channel
  349. - For aborted transfers the complete callback should not be called
  350. - Can be called from atomic context or from within a complete
  351. callback of a descriptor. Must not sleep. Drivers must be able
  352. to handle this correctly.
  353. - Termination may be asynchronous. The driver does not have to
  354. wait until the currently active transfer has completely stopped.
  355. See device_synchronize.
  356. - device_synchronize
  357. - Must synchronize the termination of a channel to the current
  358. context.
  359. - Must make sure that memory for previously submitted
  360. descriptors is no longer accessed by the DMA controller.
  361. - Must make sure that all complete callbacks for previously
  362. submitted descriptors have finished running and none are
  363. scheduled to run.
  364. - May sleep.
  365. Misc notes
  366. ==========
  367. (stuff that should be documented, but don't really know
  368. where to put them)
  369. ``dma_run_dependencies``
  370. - Should be called at the end of an async TX transfer, and can be
  371. ignored in the slave transfers case.
  372. - Makes sure that dependent operations are run before marking it
  373. as complete.
  374. dma_cookie_t
  375. - it's a DMA transaction ID that will increment over time.
  376. - Not really relevant any more since the introduction of ``virt-dma``
  377. that abstracts it away.
  378. DMA_CTRL_ACK
  379. - If clear, the descriptor cannot be reused by provider until the
  380. client acknowledges receipt, i.e. has a chance to establish any
  381. dependency chains
  382. - This can be acked by invoking async_tx_ack()
  383. - If set, does not mean descriptor can be reused
  384. DMA_CTRL_REUSE
  385. - If set, the descriptor can be reused after being completed. It should
  386. not be freed by provider if this flag is set.
  387. - The descriptor should be prepared for reuse by invoking
  388. ``dmaengine_desc_set_reuse()`` which will set DMA_CTRL_REUSE.
  389. - ``dmaengine_desc_set_reuse()`` will succeed only when channel support
  390. reusable descriptor as exhibited by capabilities
  391. - As a consequence, if a device driver wants to skip the
  392. ``dma_map_sg()`` and ``dma_unmap_sg()`` in between 2 transfers,
  393. because the DMA'd data wasn't used, it can resubmit the transfer right after
  394. its completion.
  395. - Descriptor can be freed in few ways
  396. - Clearing DMA_CTRL_REUSE by invoking
  397. ``dmaengine_desc_clear_reuse()`` and submitting for last txn
  398. - Explicitly invoking ``dmaengine_desc_free()``, this can succeed only
  399. when DMA_CTRL_REUSE is already set
  400. - Terminating the channel
  401. - DMA_PREP_CMD
  402. - If set, the client driver tells DMA controller that passed data in DMA
  403. API is command data.
  404. - Interpretation of command data is DMA controller specific. It can be
  405. used for issuing commands to other peripherals/register reads/register
  406. writes for which the descriptor should be in different format from
  407. normal data descriptors.
  408. - DMA_PREP_REPEAT
  409. - If set, the transfer will be automatically repeated when it ends until a
  410. new transfer is queued on the same channel with the DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT flag.
  411. If the next transfer to be queued on the channel does not have the
  412. DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT flag set, the current transfer will be repeated until the
  413. client terminates all transfers.
  414. - This flag is only supported if the channel reports the DMA_REPEAT
  415. capability.
  416. - DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT
  417. - If set, the transfer will replace the transfer currently being executed at
  418. the end of the transfer.
  419. - This is the default behaviour for non-repeated transfers, specifying
  420. DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT for non-repeated transfers will thus make no difference.
  421. - When using repeated transfers, DMA clients will usually need to set the
  422. DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT flag on all transfers, otherwise the channel will keep
  423. repeating the last repeated transfer and ignore the new transfers being
  424. queued. Failure to set DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT will appear as if the channel was
  425. stuck on the previous transfer.
  426. - This flag is only supported if the channel reports the DMA_LOAD_EOT
  427. capability.
  428. General Design Notes
  429. ====================
  430. Most of the DMAEngine drivers you'll see are based on a similar design
  431. that handles the end of transfer interrupts in the handler, but defer
  432. most work to a tasklet, including the start of a new transfer whenever
  433. the previous transfer ended.
  434. This is a rather inefficient design though, because the inter-transfer
  435. latency will be not only the interrupt latency, but also the
  436. scheduling latency of the tasklet, which will leave the channel idle
  437. in between, which will slow down the global transfer rate.
  438. You should avoid this kind of practice, and instead of electing a new
  439. transfer in your tasklet, move that part to the interrupt handler in
  440. order to have a shorter idle window (that we can't really avoid
  441. anyway).
  442. Glossary
  443. ========
  444. - Burst: A number of consecutive read or write operations that
  445. can be queued to buffers before being flushed to memory.
  446. - Chunk: A contiguous collection of bursts
  447. - Transfer: A collection of chunks (be it contiguous or not)