Re: [PATCH v3 08/10] ARM: mxs: add ocotp read function

Jamie Iles wrote:

On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 05:44:09PM +0100, Uwe Kleine-König wrote:

quoted

Hello Jamie,
On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 04:16:46PM +0000, Jamie Iles wrote:

quoted

On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 10:07:35PM +0800, Shawn Guo wrote:

quoted

+	/* check both BUSY and ERROR cleared */
+	while ((__raw_readl(ocotp_base) &
+		(BM_OCOTP_CTRL_BUSY | BM_OCOTP_CTRL_ERROR)) && --timeout)
+		/* nothing */;

Is it worth using cpu_relax() in these polling loops?

I don't know what cpu_relax does for other platforms, but on ARM it's
just a memory barrier which AFAICT doesn't help here at all (which
doesn't need to be correct).  Why do you think it would be better?

Well I don't see that there's anything broken without cpu_relax() but 
using cpu_relax() seems to be the most common way of doing busy polling 
loops that I've seen. It's also a bit easier to read than a comment and 
semi-colon. Perhaps it's just personal preference.

cpu_relax() is a hint to the CPU to, for example, save power or be
less aggressive on the memory bus (to save power or be fairer).

Currently these architectures do more than just a barrier in cpu_relax():
x86, IA64, PowerPC, Tile and S390.

Although it's just a hint on ARM at the moment, it might change in
future - especially with power mattering on so many ARM systems.
(Even now, just changing it to a very short udelay might save power
on existing ARMs without breaking drivers.)


By the way, I see ARM defines cpu_relax as smp_mb() on arch >= 6.  Is
that correct and useful?  On other architectures*, barrier() is enough
of a barrier, but it's conceivable that smp_mb() would have some
ARM-specific fairness or bus activity benefit - in which case it
should probably be mb().

* - except Blackfin, which historically derived a lot from ARM headers.

-- Jamie