On Thu, 14 Aug 2014 15:54:22 +0300
Horia Geanta [off-list ref] wrote:

This patch set adds Run Time Assembler (RTA) SEC descriptor library.
RTA is a replacement for incumbent "inline append".

The library is intended to be a single code base for SEC descriptors creation
for all Freescale products. This comes with a series of advantages, such as
library being maintained / kept up-to-date with latest platforms, i.e. SEC
functionalities (for e.g. SEC incarnations present in Layerscape LS1 and LS2).

RTA detects options in SEC descriptors that are not supported
by a SEC HW revision ("Era") and reports this back.
Say a descriptor uses Sequence Out Pointer (SOP) option for the SEQINPTR
command, which is supported starting from SEC Era 5. If the descriptor would
be built on a P4080R3 platform (which has SEC Era 4), RTA would report
"SEQ IN PTR: Flag(s) not supported by SEC Era 4".
This is extremely useful and saves a lot of time wasted on debugging.
SEC HW detects only *some* of these problems, leaving user wonder what causes
a "DECO Watchdog Timeout". And when it prints something more useful, sometimes
it does not point to the exact opcode.

again, RTA just adds bloat to the kernel driver - the kernel driver
is supposed to generate the appropriate descriptor for its target
running SEC version no matter what, not "report back" what is/is not
supported.  This is a flaw at the RTA design level, as far as the
kernel driver is concerned.

Thanks,

Kim