[RFC PATCH 0/5] ARM: introducing DT topology
Rob Herring
robherring2 at gmail.com
Thu Jan 19 02:38:54 EST 2012
On 01/18/2012 08:36 AM, Lorenzo Pieralisi wrote:
> The introduction of multi-cluster ARM systems in SoC designs requires the kernel
> to become cluster aware, so that it can be booted on every CPU in the system
> and it can build an appropriate representation of topology levels.
>
> Current code in the kernel, in particular the boot sequence, hinges upon a
> sequential mapping of MPIDR values for cpus and related interrupt
> controller CPU interfaces to logical cpu indexing.
> This hypothesis is not valid when the concept of cluster is introduced since
> the MPIDR cannot be represented as a single index and interrupt controller
> CPU interfaces might be wired with a numbering scheme following per-SoC
> design parameters which cannot be extrapolated easily through generic functions
> by the primary CPU.
>
> Furthermore, relying on the MPIDR to be wired according to real topology levels
> might turn out to be an unreliable solution, hence a SW representation is
> needed to override possibly incorrect MPIDR register values.
>
"might be" is used several times. Is this a real problem? Wouldn't a
more simple solution be providing properties to override the MPIDR
register value if it is unreliable?
> Through the device tree and relative bindings, the kernel is provided
> with HW values for MPIDR registers, interrupt controller CPU interfaces and
> with a topology representation of hierarchy levels and connection between cores.
>
> The device tree bindings allow to boot the Linux kernel on a multi-cluster
> system without relying on platform specific hook to identify the number of CPUs
> and interrupt controller wiring definition.
>
> The patchset has been tested against:
>
> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/cmarinas/linux-arm-arch.git master
>
> to boot an 8-core dual-cluster system on every possible CPU and to describe
> the relative cpu topology according to the affinity levels.
>
> Compile tested against linux-next, with a dependency on the following patch:
>
> http://www.spinics.net/lists/arm-kernel/msg155873.html
>
> Documentation of new device tree bindings is provided in the corresponding
> patches and provided for discussion.
>
> Lorenzo Pieralisi (5):
> ARM: kernel: add device tree init map function
> ARM: kernel: add cpu logical map DT init in setup_arch
> ARM: kernel: add logical mappings look-up
> ARM: gic: add cpuif topology description
> ARM: kernel: build CPU topology from DT
>
> Documentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/cpus.txt | 42 +++++
> Documentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/gic.txt | 69 ++++++++
> Documentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/topology.txt | 167 ++++++++++++++++++++
> arch/arm/common/gic.c | 94 +++++++++++-
> arch/arm/include/asm/prom.h | 2 +
> arch/arm/include/asm/smp_plat.h | 12 ++
> arch/arm/kernel/devtree.c | 40 +++++
> arch/arm/kernel/setup.c | 1 +
> arch/arm/kernel/topology.c | 110 +++++++++++---
> 9 files changed, 513 insertions(+), 24 deletions(-)
> create mode 100644 Documentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/cpus.txt
> create mode 100644 Documentation/devicetree/bindings/arm/topology.txt
>
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