[RFC PATCH v2 3/4] powerpc: refactor of_get_cpu_node to support other architectures

[Mark Rutland]

On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 02:56:10PM +0100, Sudeep KarkadaNagesha wrote:
> On 19/08/13 14:02, Rob Herring wrote:
> > On 08/19/2013 05:19 AM, Mark Rutland wrote:
> >> On Sat, Aug 17, 2013 at 11:09:36PM +0100, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> >>> On Sat, 2013-08-17 at 12:50 +0200, Tomasz Figa wrote:
> >>>> I wonder how would this handle uniprocessor ARM (pre-v7) cores, for
> >>>> which 
> >>>> the updated bindings[1] define #address-cells = <0> and so no reg 
> >>>> property.
> >>>>
> >>>> [1] - http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ports.arm.kernel/260795
> >>>
> >>> Why did you do that in the binding ? That sounds like looking to create
> >>> problems ... 
> >>>
> >>> Traditionally, UP setups just used "0" as the "reg" property on other
> >>> architectures, why do differently ?
> >>
> >> The decision was taken because we defined our reg property to refer to
> >> the MPIDR register's Aff{2,1,0} bitfields, and on UP cores before v7
> >> there's no MPIDR register at all. Given there can only be a single CPU
> >> in that case, describing a register that wasn't present didn't seem
> >> necessary or helpful.
> > 
> > What exactly reg represents is up to the binding definition, but it
> > still should be present IMO. I don't see any issue with it being
> > different for pre-v7.
> > 
> Yes it's better to have 'reg' with value 0 than not having it.
> Otherwise this generic of_get_cpu_node implementation would need some
> _hack_ to handle that case.

I'm not sure that having some code to handle a difference in standard
between two architectures is a hack. If anything, I'd argue encoding a
reg of 0 that corresponds to a nonexistent MPIDR value (given that's
what the reg property is defined to map to on ARM) is more of a hack ;)

I'm not averse to having a reg value of 0 for this case, but given that
there are existing devicetrees without it, requiring a reg property will
break compatibility with them.

Mark.