Back to home page

OSCL-LXR

 
 

    


0001 ==================================
0002 DMAengine controller documentation
0003 ==================================
0004 
0005 Hardware Introduction
0006 =====================
0007 
0008 Most of the Slave DMA controllers have the same general principles of
0009 operations.
0010 
0011 They have a given number of channels to use for the DMA transfers, and
0012 a given number of requests lines.
0013 
0014 Requests and channels are pretty much orthogonal. Channels can be used
0015 to serve several to any requests. To simplify, channels are the
0016 entities that will be doing the copy, and requests what endpoints are
0017 involved.
0018 
0019 The request lines actually correspond to physical lines going from the
0020 DMA-eligible devices to the controller itself. Whenever the device
0021 will want to start a transfer, it will assert a DMA request (DRQ) by
0022 asserting that request line.
0023 
0024 A very simple DMA controller would only take into account a single
0025 parameter: the transfer size. At each clock cycle, it would transfer a
0026 byte of data from one buffer to another, until the transfer size has
0027 been reached.
0028 
0029 That wouldn't work well in the real world, since slave devices might
0030 require a specific number of bits to be transferred in a single
0031 cycle. For example, we may want to transfer as much data as the
0032 physical bus allows to maximize performances when doing a simple
0033 memory copy operation, but our audio device could have a narrower FIFO
0034 that requires data to be written exactly 16 or 24 bits at a time. This
0035 is why most if not all of the DMA controllers can adjust this, using a
0036 parameter called the transfer width.
0037 
0038 Moreover, some DMA controllers, whenever the RAM is used as a source
0039 or destination, can group the reads or writes in memory into a buffer,
0040 so instead of having a lot of small memory accesses, which is not
0041 really efficient, you'll get several bigger transfers. This is done
0042 using a parameter called the burst size, that defines how many single
0043 reads/writes it's allowed to do without the controller splitting the
0044 transfer into smaller sub-transfers.
0045 
0046 Our theoretical DMA controller would then only be able to do transfers
0047 that involve a single contiguous block of data. However, some of the
0048 transfers we usually have are not, and want to copy data from
0049 non-contiguous buffers to a contiguous buffer, which is called
0050 scatter-gather.
0051 
0052 DMAEngine, at least for mem2dev transfers, require support for
0053 scatter-gather. So we're left with two cases here: either we have a
0054 quite simple DMA controller that doesn't support it, and we'll have to
0055 implement it in software, or we have a more advanced DMA controller,
0056 that implements in hardware scatter-gather.
0057 
0058 The latter are usually programmed using a collection of chunks to
0059 transfer, and whenever the transfer is started, the controller will go
0060 over that collection, doing whatever we programmed there.
0061 
0062 This collection is usually either a table or a linked list. You will
0063 then push either the address of the table and its number of elements,
0064 or the first item of the list to one channel of the DMA controller,
0065 and whenever a DRQ will be asserted, it will go through the collection
0066 to know where to fetch the data from.
0067 
0068 Either way, the format of this collection is completely dependent on
0069 your hardware. Each DMA controller will require a different structure,
0070 but all of them will require, for every chunk, at least the source and
0071 destination addresses, whether it should increment these addresses or
0072 not and the three parameters we saw earlier: the burst size, the
0073 transfer width and the transfer size.
0074 
0075 The one last thing is that usually, slave devices won't issue DRQ by
0076 default, and you have to enable this in your slave device driver first
0077 whenever you're willing to use DMA.
0078 
0079 These were just the general memory-to-memory (also called mem2mem) or
0080 memory-to-device (mem2dev) kind of transfers. Most devices often
0081 support other kind of transfers or memory operations that dmaengine
0082 support and will be detailed later in this document.
0083 
0084 DMA Support in Linux
0085 ====================
0086 
0087 Historically, DMA controller drivers have been implemented using the
0088 async TX API, to offload operations such as memory copy, XOR,
0089 cryptography, etc., basically any memory to memory operation.
0090 
0091 Over time, the need for memory to device transfers arose, and
0092 dmaengine was extended. Nowadays, the async TX API is written as a
0093 layer on top of dmaengine, and acts as a client. Still, dmaengine
0094 accommodates that API in some cases, and made some design choices to
0095 ensure that it stayed compatible.
0096 
0097 For more information on the Async TX API, please look the relevant
0098 documentation file in Documentation/crypto/async-tx-api.rst.
0099 
0100 DMAEngine APIs
0101 ==============
0102 
0103 ``struct dma_device`` Initialization
0104 ------------------------------------
0105 
0106 Just like any other kernel framework, the whole DMAEngine registration
0107 relies on the driver filling a structure and registering against the
0108 framework. In our case, that structure is dma_device.
0109 
0110 The first thing you need to do in your driver is to allocate this
0111 structure. Any of the usual memory allocators will do, but you'll also
0112 need to initialize a few fields in there:
0113 
0114 - ``channels``: should be initialized as a list using the
0115   INIT_LIST_HEAD macro for example
0116 
0117 - ``src_addr_widths``:
0118   should contain a bitmask of the supported source transfer width
0119 
0120 - ``dst_addr_widths``:
0121   should contain a bitmask of the supported destination transfer width
0122 
0123 - ``directions``:
0124   should contain a bitmask of the supported slave directions
0125   (i.e. excluding mem2mem transfers)
0126 
0127 - ``residue_granularity``:
0128   granularity of the transfer residue reported to dma_set_residue.
0129   This can be either:
0130 
0131   - Descriptor:
0132     your device doesn't support any kind of residue
0133     reporting. The framework will only know that a particular
0134     transaction descriptor is done.
0135 
0136   - Segment:
0137     your device is able to report which chunks have been transferred
0138 
0139   - Burst:
0140     your device is able to report which burst have been transferred
0141 
0142 - ``dev``: should hold the pointer to the ``struct device`` associated
0143   to your current driver instance.
0144 
0145 Supported transaction types
0146 ---------------------------
0147 
0148 The next thing you need is to set which transaction types your device
0149 (and driver) supports.
0150 
0151 Our ``dma_device structure`` has a field called cap_mask that holds the
0152 various types of transaction supported, and you need to modify this
0153 mask using the dma_cap_set function, with various flags depending on
0154 transaction types you support as an argument.
0155 
0156 All those capabilities are defined in the ``dma_transaction_type enum``,
0157 in ``include/linux/dmaengine.h``
0158 
0159 Currently, the types available are:
0160 
0161 - DMA_MEMCPY
0162 
0163   - The device is able to do memory to memory copies
0164 
0165   - No matter what the overall size of the combined chunks for source and
0166     destination is, only as many bytes as the smallest of the two will be
0167     transmitted. That means the number and size of the scatter-gather buffers in
0168     both lists need not be the same, and that the operation functionally is
0169     equivalent to a ``strncpy`` where the ``count`` argument equals the smallest
0170     total size of the two scatter-gather list buffers.
0171 
0172   - It's usually used for copying pixel data between host memory and
0173     memory-mapped GPU device memory, such as found on modern PCI video graphics
0174     cards. The most immediate example is the OpenGL API function
0175     ``glReadPielx()``, which might require a verbatim copy of a huge framebuffer
0176     from local device memory onto host memory.
0177 
0178 - DMA_XOR
0179 
0180   - The device is able to perform XOR operations on memory areas
0181 
0182   - Used to accelerate XOR intensive tasks, such as RAID5
0183 
0184 - DMA_XOR_VAL
0185 
0186   - The device is able to perform parity check using the XOR
0187     algorithm against a memory buffer.
0188 
0189 - DMA_PQ
0190 
0191   - The device is able to perform RAID6 P+Q computations, P being a
0192     simple XOR, and Q being a Reed-Solomon algorithm.
0193 
0194 - DMA_PQ_VAL
0195 
0196   - The device is able to perform parity check using RAID6 P+Q
0197     algorithm against a memory buffer.
0198 
0199 - DMA_MEMSET
0200 
0201   - The device is able to fill memory with the provided pattern
0202 
0203   - The pattern is treated as a single byte signed value.
0204 
0205 - DMA_INTERRUPT
0206 
0207   - The device is able to trigger a dummy transfer that will
0208     generate periodic interrupts
0209 
0210   - Used by the client drivers to register a callback that will be
0211     called on a regular basis through the DMA controller interrupt
0212 
0213 - DMA_PRIVATE
0214 
0215   - The devices only supports slave transfers, and as such isn't
0216     available for async transfers.
0217 
0218 - DMA_ASYNC_TX
0219 
0220   - Must not be set by the device, and will be set by the framework
0221     if needed
0222 
0223   - TODO: What is it about?
0224 
0225 - DMA_SLAVE
0226 
0227   - The device can handle device to memory transfers, including
0228     scatter-gather transfers.
0229 
0230   - While in the mem2mem case we were having two distinct types to
0231     deal with a single chunk to copy or a collection of them, here,
0232     we just have a single transaction type that is supposed to
0233     handle both.
0234 
0235   - If you want to transfer a single contiguous memory buffer,
0236     simply build a scatter list with only one item.
0237 
0238 - DMA_CYCLIC
0239 
0240   - The device can handle cyclic transfers.
0241 
0242   - A cyclic transfer is a transfer where the chunk collection will
0243     loop over itself, with the last item pointing to the first.
0244 
0245   - It's usually used for audio transfers, where you want to operate
0246     on a single ring buffer that you will fill with your audio data.
0247 
0248 - DMA_INTERLEAVE
0249 
0250   - The device supports interleaved transfer.
0251 
0252   - These transfers can transfer data from a non-contiguous buffer
0253     to a non-contiguous buffer, opposed to DMA_SLAVE that can
0254     transfer data from a non-contiguous data set to a continuous
0255     destination buffer.
0256 
0257   - It's usually used for 2d content transfers, in which case you
0258     want to transfer a portion of uncompressed data directly to the
0259     display to print it
0260 
0261 - DMA_COMPLETION_NO_ORDER
0262 
0263   - The device does not support in order completion.
0264 
0265   - The driver should return DMA_OUT_OF_ORDER for device_tx_status if
0266     the device is setting this capability.
0267 
0268   - All cookie tracking and checking API should be treated as invalid if
0269     the device exports this capability.
0270 
0271   - At this point, this is incompatible with polling option for dmatest.
0272 
0273   - If this cap is set, the user is recommended to provide an unique
0274     identifier for each descriptor sent to the DMA device in order to
0275     properly track the completion.
0276 
0277 - DMA_REPEAT
0278 
0279   - The device supports repeated transfers. A repeated transfer, indicated by
0280     the DMA_PREP_REPEAT transfer flag, is similar to a cyclic transfer in that
0281     it gets automatically repeated when it ends, but can additionally be
0282     replaced by the client.
0283 
0284   - This feature is limited to interleaved transfers, this flag should thus not
0285     be set if the DMA_INTERLEAVE flag isn't set. This limitation is based on
0286     the current needs of DMA clients, support for additional transfer types
0287     should be added in the future if and when the need arises.
0288 
0289 - DMA_LOAD_EOT
0290 
0291   - The device supports replacing repeated transfers at end of transfer (EOT)
0292     by queuing a new transfer with the DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT flag set.
0293 
0294   - Support for replacing a currently running transfer at another point (such
0295     as end of burst instead of end of transfer) will be added in the future
0296     based on DMA clients needs, if and when the need arises.
0297 
0298 These various types will also affect how the source and destination
0299 addresses change over time.
0300 
0301 Addresses pointing to RAM are typically incremented (or decremented)
0302 after each transfer. In case of a ring buffer, they may loop
0303 (DMA_CYCLIC). Addresses pointing to a device's register (e.g. a FIFO)
0304 are typically fixed.
0305 
0306 Per descriptor metadata support
0307 -------------------------------
0308 Some data movement architecture (DMA controller and peripherals) uses metadata
0309 associated with a transaction. The DMA controller role is to transfer the
0310 payload and the metadata alongside.
0311 The metadata itself is not used by the DMA engine itself, but it contains
0312 parameters, keys, vectors, etc for peripheral or from the peripheral.
0313 
0314 The DMAengine framework provides a generic ways to facilitate the metadata for
0315 descriptors. Depending on the architecture the DMA driver can implement either
0316 or both of the methods and it is up to the client driver to choose which one
0317 to use.
0318 
0319 - DESC_METADATA_CLIENT
0320 
0321   The metadata buffer is allocated/provided by the client driver and it is
0322   attached (via the dmaengine_desc_attach_metadata() helper to the descriptor.
0323 
0324   From the DMA driver the following is expected for this mode:
0325 
0326   - DMA_MEM_TO_DEV / DEV_MEM_TO_MEM
0327 
0328     The data from the provided metadata buffer should be prepared for the DMA
0329     controller to be sent alongside of the payload data. Either by copying to a
0330     hardware descriptor, or highly coupled packet.
0331 
0332   - DMA_DEV_TO_MEM
0333 
0334     On transfer completion the DMA driver must copy the metadata to the client
0335     provided metadata buffer before notifying the client about the completion.
0336     After the transfer completion, DMA drivers must not touch the metadata
0337     buffer provided by the client.
0338 
0339 - DESC_METADATA_ENGINE
0340 
0341   The metadata buffer is allocated/managed by the DMA driver. The client driver
0342   can ask for the pointer, maximum size and the currently used size of the
0343   metadata and can directly update or read it. dmaengine_desc_get_metadata_ptr()
0344   and dmaengine_desc_set_metadata_len() is provided as helper functions.
0345 
0346   From the DMA driver the following is expected for this mode:
0347 
0348   - get_metadata_ptr()
0349 
0350     Should return a pointer for the metadata buffer, the maximum size of the
0351     metadata buffer and the currently used / valid (if any) bytes in the buffer.
0352 
0353   - set_metadata_len()
0354 
0355     It is called by the clients after it have placed the metadata to the buffer
0356     to let the DMA driver know the number of valid bytes provided.
0357 
0358   Note: since the client will ask for the metadata pointer in the completion
0359   callback (in DMA_DEV_TO_MEM case) the DMA driver must ensure that the
0360   descriptor is not freed up prior the callback is called.
0361 
0362 Device operations
0363 -----------------
0364 
0365 Our dma_device structure also requires a few function pointers in
0366 order to implement the actual logic, now that we described what
0367 operations we were able to perform.
0368 
0369 The functions that we have to fill in there, and hence have to
0370 implement, obviously depend on the transaction types you reported as
0371 supported.
0372 
0373 - ``device_alloc_chan_resources``
0374 
0375 - ``device_free_chan_resources``
0376 
0377   - These functions will be called whenever a driver will call
0378     ``dma_request_channel`` or ``dma_release_channel`` for the first/last
0379     time on the channel associated to that driver.
0380 
0381   - They are in charge of allocating/freeing all the needed
0382     resources in order for that channel to be useful for your driver.
0383 
0384   - These functions can sleep.
0385 
0386 - ``device_prep_dma_*``
0387 
0388   - These functions are matching the capabilities you registered
0389     previously.
0390 
0391   - These functions all take the buffer or the scatterlist relevant
0392     for the transfer being prepared, and should create a hardware
0393     descriptor or a list of hardware descriptors from it
0394 
0395   - These functions can be called from an interrupt context
0396 
0397   - Any allocation you might do should be using the GFP_NOWAIT
0398     flag, in order not to potentially sleep, but without depleting
0399     the emergency pool either.
0400 
0401   - Drivers should try to pre-allocate any memory they might need
0402     during the transfer setup at probe time to avoid putting to
0403     much pressure on the nowait allocator.
0404 
0405   - It should return a unique instance of the
0406     ``dma_async_tx_descriptor structure``, that further represents this
0407     particular transfer.
0408 
0409   - This structure can be initialized using the function
0410     ``dma_async_tx_descriptor_init``.
0411 
0412   - You'll also need to set two fields in this structure:
0413 
0414     - flags:
0415       TODO: Can it be modified by the driver itself, or
0416       should it be always the flags passed in the arguments
0417 
0418     - tx_submit: A pointer to a function you have to implement,
0419       that is supposed to push the current transaction descriptor to a
0420       pending queue, waiting for issue_pending to be called.
0421 
0422   - In this structure the function pointer callback_result can be
0423     initialized in order for the submitter to be notified that a
0424     transaction has completed. In the earlier code the function pointer
0425     callback has been used. However it does not provide any status to the
0426     transaction and will be deprecated. The result structure defined as
0427     ``dmaengine_result`` that is passed in to callback_result
0428     has two fields:
0429 
0430     - result: This provides the transfer result defined by
0431       ``dmaengine_tx_result``. Either success or some error condition.
0432 
0433     - residue: Provides the residue bytes of the transfer for those that
0434       support residue.
0435 
0436 - ``device_issue_pending``
0437 
0438   - Takes the first transaction descriptor in the pending queue,
0439     and starts the transfer. Whenever that transfer is done, it
0440     should move to the next transaction in the list.
0441 
0442   - This function can be called in an interrupt context
0443 
0444 - ``device_tx_status``
0445 
0446   - Should report the bytes left to go over on the given channel
0447 
0448   - Should only care about the transaction descriptor passed as
0449     argument, not the currently active one on a given channel
0450 
0451   - The tx_state argument might be NULL
0452 
0453   - Should use dma_set_residue to report it
0454 
0455   - In the case of a cyclic transfer, it should only take into
0456     account the total size of the cyclic buffer.
0457 
0458   - Should return DMA_OUT_OF_ORDER if the device does not support in order
0459     completion and is completing the operation out of order.
0460 
0461   - This function can be called in an interrupt context.
0462 
0463 - device_config
0464 
0465   - Reconfigures the channel with the configuration given as argument
0466 
0467   - This command should NOT perform synchronously, or on any
0468     currently queued transfers, but only on subsequent ones
0469 
0470   - In this case, the function will receive a ``dma_slave_config``
0471     structure pointer as an argument, that will detail which
0472     configuration to use.
0473 
0474   - Even though that structure contains a direction field, this
0475     field is deprecated in favor of the direction argument given to
0476     the prep_* functions
0477 
0478   - This call is mandatory for slave operations only. This should NOT be
0479     set or expected to be set for memcpy operations.
0480     If a driver support both, it should use this call for slave
0481     operations only and not for memcpy ones.
0482 
0483 - device_pause
0484 
0485   - Pauses a transfer on the channel
0486 
0487   - This command should operate synchronously on the channel,
0488     pausing right away the work of the given channel
0489 
0490 - device_resume
0491 
0492   - Resumes a transfer on the channel
0493 
0494   - This command should operate synchronously on the channel,
0495     resuming right away the work of the given channel
0496 
0497 - device_terminate_all
0498 
0499   - Aborts all the pending and ongoing transfers on the channel
0500 
0501   - For aborted transfers the complete callback should not be called
0502 
0503   - Can be called from atomic context or from within a complete
0504     callback of a descriptor. Must not sleep. Drivers must be able
0505     to handle this correctly.
0506 
0507   - Termination may be asynchronous. The driver does not have to
0508     wait until the currently active transfer has completely stopped.
0509     See device_synchronize.
0510 
0511 - device_synchronize
0512 
0513   - Must synchronize the termination of a channel to the current
0514     context.
0515 
0516   - Must make sure that memory for previously submitted
0517     descriptors is no longer accessed by the DMA controller.
0518 
0519   - Must make sure that all complete callbacks for previously
0520     submitted descriptors have finished running and none are
0521     scheduled to run.
0522 
0523   - May sleep.
0524 
0525 
0526 Misc notes
0527 ==========
0528 
0529 (stuff that should be documented, but don't really know
0530 where to put them)
0531 
0532 ``dma_run_dependencies``
0533 
0534 - Should be called at the end of an async TX transfer, and can be
0535   ignored in the slave transfers case.
0536 
0537 - Makes sure that dependent operations are run before marking it
0538   as complete.
0539 
0540 dma_cookie_t
0541 
0542 - it's a DMA transaction ID that will increment over time.
0543 
0544 - Not really relevant any more since the introduction of ``virt-dma``
0545   that abstracts it away.
0546 
0547 DMA_CTRL_ACK
0548 
0549 - If clear, the descriptor cannot be reused by provider until the
0550   client acknowledges receipt, i.e. has a chance to establish any
0551   dependency chains
0552 
0553 - This can be acked by invoking async_tx_ack()
0554 
0555 - If set, does not mean descriptor can be reused
0556 
0557 DMA_CTRL_REUSE
0558 
0559 - If set, the descriptor can be reused after being completed. It should
0560   not be freed by provider if this flag is set.
0561 
0562 - The descriptor should be prepared for reuse by invoking
0563   ``dmaengine_desc_set_reuse()`` which will set DMA_CTRL_REUSE.
0564 
0565 - ``dmaengine_desc_set_reuse()`` will succeed only when channel support
0566   reusable descriptor as exhibited by capabilities
0567 
0568 - As a consequence, if a device driver wants to skip the
0569   ``dma_map_sg()`` and ``dma_unmap_sg()`` in between 2 transfers,
0570   because the DMA'd data wasn't used, it can resubmit the transfer right after
0571   its completion.
0572 
0573 - Descriptor can be freed in few ways
0574 
0575   - Clearing DMA_CTRL_REUSE by invoking
0576     ``dmaengine_desc_clear_reuse()`` and submitting for last txn
0577 
0578   - Explicitly invoking ``dmaengine_desc_free()``, this can succeed only
0579     when DMA_CTRL_REUSE is already set
0580 
0581   - Terminating the channel
0582 
0583 - DMA_PREP_CMD
0584 
0585   - If set, the client driver tells DMA controller that passed data in DMA
0586     API is command data.
0587 
0588   - Interpretation of command data is DMA controller specific. It can be
0589     used for issuing commands to other peripherals/register reads/register
0590     writes for which the descriptor should be in different format from
0591     normal data descriptors.
0592 
0593 - DMA_PREP_REPEAT
0594 
0595   - If set, the transfer will be automatically repeated when it ends until a
0596     new transfer is queued on the same channel with the DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT flag.
0597     If the next transfer to be queued on the channel does not have the
0598     DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT flag set, the current transfer will be repeated until the
0599     client terminates all transfers.
0600 
0601   - This flag is only supported if the channel reports the DMA_REPEAT
0602     capability.
0603 
0604 - DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT
0605 
0606   - If set, the transfer will replace the transfer currently being executed at
0607     the end of the transfer.
0608 
0609   - This is the default behaviour for non-repeated transfers, specifying
0610     DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT for non-repeated transfers will thus make no difference.
0611 
0612   - When using repeated transfers, DMA clients will usually need to set the
0613     DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT flag on all transfers, otherwise the channel will keep
0614     repeating the last repeated transfer and ignore the new transfers being
0615     queued. Failure to set DMA_PREP_LOAD_EOT will appear as if the channel was
0616     stuck on the previous transfer.
0617 
0618   - This flag is only supported if the channel reports the DMA_LOAD_EOT
0619     capability.
0620 
0621 General Design Notes
0622 ====================
0623 
0624 Most of the DMAEngine drivers you'll see are based on a similar design
0625 that handles the end of transfer interrupts in the handler, but defer
0626 most work to a tasklet, including the start of a new transfer whenever
0627 the previous transfer ended.
0628 
0629 This is a rather inefficient design though, because the inter-transfer
0630 latency will be not only the interrupt latency, but also the
0631 scheduling latency of the tasklet, which will leave the channel idle
0632 in between, which will slow down the global transfer rate.
0633 
0634 You should avoid this kind of practice, and instead of electing a new
0635 transfer in your tasklet, move that part to the interrupt handler in
0636 order to have a shorter idle window (that we can't really avoid
0637 anyway).
0638 
0639 Glossary
0640 ========
0641 
0642 - Burst: A number of consecutive read or write operations that
0643   can be queued to buffers before being flushed to memory.
0644 
0645 - Chunk: A contiguous collection of bursts
0646 
0647 - Transfer: A collection of chunks (be it contiguous or not)