[PATCH 01/10] ARM: OMAP3+: Implement timer workaround for errata i103 and i767

On 09/06/2012 12:07 AM, Vaibhav Hiremath wrote:

On 9/6/2012 12:34 AM, Jon Hunter wrote:

quoted

Errata Titles:
i103: Delay needed to read some GP timer, WD timer and sync timer registers
      after wakeup (OMAP3/4)
i767: Delay needed to read some GP timer registers after wakeup (OMAP5)

Description (i103/i767):
If a General Purpose Timer (GPTimer) is in posted mode (TSICR [2].POSTED=1),
due to internal resynchronizations, values read in TCRR, TCAR1 and TCAR2
registers right after the timer interface clock (L4) goes from stopped to
active may not return the expected values. The most common event leading to
this situation occurs upon wake up from idle.

GPTimer non-posted synchronization mode is not impacted by this limitation.

Workarounds:
1). Disable posted mode
2). Use static dependency between timer clock domain and MPUSS clock domain
3). Use no-idle mode when the timer is active

Workarounds #2 and #3 are not pratical from a power standpoint and so
workaround #1 has been implemented. Disabling posted mode adds some CPU overhead
for configuring the timers as the CPU has to wait for the write to complete.
However, disabling posted mode guarantees correct operation.

Please note that it is safe to use posted mode for timers if the counter (TCRR)
and capture (TCARx) registers will never be read. An example of this is the
clock-event system timer. This is used by the kernel to schedule events however,
the timers counter is never read and capture registers are not used. Given that
the kernel configures this timer often yet never reads the counter register it
is safe to enable posted mode in this case. Hence, for the timer used for kernel
clock-events, posted mode is enabled by overriding the errata for devices that
are impacted by this defect.

Although both dmtimers and watchdogs are impacted by this defect this patch only
implements the workaround for the dmtimer. Currently the watchdog driver does
not read the counter register and so no workaround is necessary.

Confirmed with Vaibhav Hiremath that this bug also impacts AM33xx devices.

Thanks for pinging me on this and getting it confirmed.

quoted

Signed-off-by: Jon Hunter <redacted>
---
 arch/arm/mach-omap2/timer.c               |    9 +++++++
 arch/arm/plat-omap/dmtimer.c              |    2 ++
 arch/arm/plat-omap/include/plat/dmtimer.h |   39 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 3 files changed, 50 insertions(+)

diff --git a/arch/arm/mach-omap2/timer.c b/arch/arm/mach-omap2/timer.c
index 2ff6d41..5471706 100644
--- a/arch/arm/mach-omap2/timer.c
+++ b/arch/arm/mach-omap2/timer.c

@@ -208,6 +208,13 @@ static void __init omap2_gp_clockevent_init(int gptimer_id,
 {
 	int res;
 
+	/*
+	 * For clock-event timers we never read the timer counter and
+	 * so we are not impacted by errata i103 and i767. Therefore,
+	 * we can safely ignore this errata for clock-event timers.
+	 */
+	__omap_dm_timer_populate_errata(&clkev, OMAP_TIMER_ERRATA_I103_I767);
+

Couple of points,

1. It is confusing to me, as you are passing the errata flag so i expect
api should set it. Why can't we do reverse way, you pass 0 here, since
you don't want to set and pass this flag every other places where you
want to enable this errata.

Per the design of the __omap_dm_timer_populate_errata function, the 2nd
argument is called override to allow us to override an errata. I am not
a huge fan of this, but I wanted to be explicit in the code that we are
intentionally allowing posted mode for the clock-events timer.

I did not wish to pass the flags we want to set because if there more
flags added in the future then we will have to keep changing the calls
to the populate_errata function to add these.

2. Why can't we enable for all timers? Even though clock-event is anyway
not reading it, but still is is applicable to it, right?

Yes it is still applicable but we never read it so it is ok to override.
If you see Richard W's original patch for enabling posted mode it is to
reduce overhead of programming timers, specifically the clock-events
timer which is program very often.

For other timers, we do not know how they will be used and so by default
we disable posted mode as this is safe.

3. Why can't we just simply Add this flag to hwmod_data file and read it
back in omap_timer_init() and omap_dm_timer_init_one(). Wouldn't that be
a good approach to handle it?

It could be done in this case, but typically I have not seen errata
flags added to HWMOD. One limitation you would have with HWMOD is if an
erratum is only specific to a certain revision of the device. In this
case it is not and so it could work.

In general I think that having errata described by HWMOD would be a good
thing, but if think that should be a longer term goal with agreement
from Benoit and add some general errata helpers to HWMOD.

Cheers
Jon