Re: [PATCH v3 1/8] soc: mediatek: Add PMIC wrapper for MT8135 and MT6397 SoC

Hi,

On Tue, 2014-12-09 at 12:20 +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

On Tuesday 09 December 2014 11:30:15 Matthias Brugger wrote:

quoted

2014-12-09 11:13 GMT+01:00 Sascha Hauer [off-list ref]:

quoted

On Tue, Dec 09, 2014 at 09:23:18AM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:

quoted

I think we have had a similar case recently where a controller wasn't
actually using I2C, but the sofware protocol was close enough so we decided
to make it appear as i2c in Linux.

Would that work for you, i.e. register the pmic wrapper as a fake spi
master driver in drivers/spi/ and register the rtc/regulator/codec
as SPI clients from DT?

I don't think that's appropriate. I mean technically that could even
work, but in software you really don't see anything from the underlying
SPI bus. The SoC and the PMIC are really tightly coupled via the PMIC
wrapper. This goes to the point where pins of the SoCs internal I2C and
keypad controllers are routed over the SPI bus out of the PMIC. In
software you do this by setting a bit in the I2C controller. If it's
set, the signals are routed out of the PMIC instead of the main die.
As said, technically we probably could create a fake SPI master, but
that wouldn't really fit to this situation.

Ok, I see.

quoted

I agree with Sascha. Although from the hardware point of view, the
communication between the PMIC and the SOC is done through SPI from
the point of view of the software everything looks like I2C commands
which will be "transalted" into SPI messages by the PMIC wrapper.

If it looks like i2c messages, would it be more appropriate to make
it appear as an i2c controller then?

Although the message looks like I2C command, it is not I2C.
Form source code, the software does not touch any I2C i/o or protocols.
It depends SoC and has specific initial flow, read and write transfer
state. It is not able to an i2c controller.
That's why we consider its a proprietary hardware with specific
protocols. How about let it appear in driver/soc?

Thanks,
Flora

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