[RFC V2 0/3] drm/bridge: panel and chaining
Ajay kumar
ajaynumb at gmail.com
Fri May 9 08:05:24 PDT 2014
On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 7:29 PM, Rob Clark <robdclark at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 5:08 AM, Andrzej Hajda <a.hajda at samsung.com> wrote:
>> On 05/08/2014 08:24 PM, Rob Clark wrote:
>>> On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 2:41 AM, Andrzej Hajda <a.hajda at samsung.com> wrote:
>>>> On 05/05/2014 09:52 PM, Ajay Kumar wrote:
>>>>> This patchset is based on exynos-drm-next-todo branch of Inki Dae's tree at:
>>>>> git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/daeinki/drm-exynos.git
>>>>>
>>>>> I have just put up Rob's and Sean's idea of chaining up the bridges
>>>>> in code, and have implemented basic panel controls as a chained bridge.
>>>>> This works well with ptn3460 bridge chip on exynos5250-snow board.
>>>>>
>>>>> Still need to make use of standard list calls and figure out proper way
>>>>> of deleting the bridge chain. So, this is just a rough version.
>>>>
>>>> As I understand this patchset tries to solve two things:
>>>> 1. Implement panel as drm_bridge, to ease support for hardware chains:
>>>> Crtc -> Encoder -> Bridge -> Panel
>>>> 2. Add support to drm_bridge chaining, to allow software chains:
>>>> drm_crtc -> drm_encoder -> drm_bridge -> drm_bridge,panel
>>>>
>>>> It is done using Russian doll schema, ops from the bridge calls the same
>>>> ops from the next bridge and the next bridge ops can do the same.
>>>>
>>>> This schema means that all the bridges including the last one are seen
>>>> from the drm core point of view as a one big drm_bridge. Additionally in
>>>> this particular case, the first bridge (ptn3460) implements connector
>>>> so it is hard to guess what is the location of the 2nd bridge in video
>>>> stream chain, sometimes it is after the connector, sometimes before.
>>>> All this is quite confusing.
>>>>
>>>> But if you look at the bridge from upstream video interface point of
>>>> view it is just a panel, edp panel in case of ptn3460, ie ptn3460 on its
>>>> video input side acts as a panel. On the output side it expects a panel,
>>>> lvds panel in this case.
>>>
>>> tbh, this is mostly about what we call it. Perhaps "bridge" isn't the
>>> best name.. I wouldn't object to changing it.
>>>
>>> But my thinking was to leave in drm_panel_funcs things that are just
>>> needed by the connector (get_modes().. and maybe some day we need
>>> detect/etc). Then leave everything else in drm_bridge_funcs. A panel
>>> could (if needed) implement both interfaces.
>>>
>>> That is basically the same as what you are proposing, but without
>>> renaming bridge to panel ;-)
>>
>> Good to hear that. However there are points which are not clear for me.
>> But first lets clarify names, I will use panel and bridge words
>> to describe the hardware, and drm_panel, drm_bridge to describe the
>> software interfaces.
>>
>> What bothers me:
>> 1. You want to leave connector related callbacks in drm_panel and
>> the rest in drm_bridge. In case of ptn3460 it does not work, ptn3460
>> must implement connector internally because of this limitation. I guess
>> it is quite typical bridge. This problem does not exists in case
>> of using drm_panel for ptn3460.
>>
>> 2. drm_bridge is attached to the encoder, this and the callback order
>> suggests the video data flow should be as below:
>> drm_crtc -> drm_encoder [-> drm_bridge] -> drm_connector [-> drm_panel]
>>
>> ptn3460 implements drm_bridge and drm_connector so it suggests its
>> drm_bridge should be the last one, so there should be no place to add
>> lvds panel implemented as a drm_bridge after it, as it is done in this
>> patchset.
>>
>> Additionally it clearly shows that there should be two categories of
>> drm_bridges - non-terminal and terminal.
>>
>> 3. drm_dev uses all-or-nothing approach, ie. it will start only when all
>> its components are up. It simplifies synchronization but is quite
>> fragile - the whole drm will be down due to error in some of its components.
>> For this reason I prefer drm_panel as it is not real drm component
>> it can be attached/detached to/from drm_connector anytime. I am not
>> really sure but drm_bridge does not allow for that.
>
> So I do think we need to stick to this all-or-nothing approach for
> anything that is visible to userspace
> (drm_{plane,crtc,encoder,connector}). We don't currently have a way
> to "hotplug" those so I don't see a real smooth upgrade path to add
> that in a backwards compatible way that won't cause problems with old
> userspace.
>
> But, that said, we have more flexibility with things not visible to
> userspace (drm_{panel,bridge}). I'm not sure how much we want to
> allow things to be completely dynamic (we already have some hard
> enough locking fun). But proposals/rfcs/etc welcome.
>
> I guess I'm not completely familiar w/ ptn3460, but the fact that it
> needs to implement drm_connector makes me a bit suspicious. Seems
> like a symptom of missing things in drm_panel_funcs. It would be
> better to always create the connector statically, and just have
> _detect() -> disconnected if panel==NULL.
This is something which only Sean can answer!
I guess he implemented ptn3460 as connector thinking that bridge would
be the last
entity in the video pipeline. If that's a real problem, we can still
move out the
connector part.
Regards,
Ajay
>> Real life example to show importance of it: I have a phone with MIPI-DSI
>> panel and HDMI. Due to initialization issues HDMI bridge driver
>> sometimes fails during probe and the drmdev do not start. Of course this
>> is development stage so I have serial console I can diagnose the
>> problem, disable HDMI, fix the problem, etc...
>> But what happens in case of end-user. He will see black screen - bricked
>> phone. In case the bridge will be implemented using drm_panel
>> he will have working phone with broken HDMI, much better.
>
> well, tbh, I don't think an end-user will see the device if hdmi were broken ;-)
>
> I suppose if bridge/panel where loaded dynamically (or at least after
> drm device and drm_{connector,encoder,etc} are created, it would help
> a bit here. I'd kinda hope that isn't the only benefit/reason to make
> things more dynamic. Especially if we allow bridges/panels to be
> unloaded.. (just loading them dynamically doesn't seem as scary from
> locking perspective)
>
>> 4. And the last thing, it is more about the concept/design. drm_bridge,
>> drm_hw_block suggests that those interfaces describes the whole device:
>> bridge, panel, whatever.
>
> hmm, I don't think this is the case. I can easily see things like:
>
> struct foo_panel {
> struct drm_panel base;
> struct drm_bridge bridge;
> ...
> }
>
> where a panel implementation implements both panel and bridge. In
> fact that is kinda what I was encouraging.
>
> BR,
> -R
>
>> In my approach I have an interface
>> to describe only one video input port of the device. And drm_panel is
>> in fact misleading name, drm_sink may be better. So real panel
>> would implement drm_sink interface. Bridge would implement drm_sink
>> interface and it will request other drm_sink interface, to interact with
>> the panel which is after it.
>> This approach seems to me more flexible. Beside things I have described
>> above it will allow to implement also more complicated devices, dsi
>> hubs, video mixers, etc.
>>
>>
>> Regards
>> Andrzej
>>
>>>
>>> BR,
>>> -R
>>>
>>>> So why not implement ptn3460 bridge as drm_panel which internally uses
>>>> another drm_panel. With this approach everything fits much better.
>>>> You do not need those (pre|post)_(enable|disable) calls, you do not need
>>>> to implement connector in the bridge and you have a driver following
>>>> linux driver model. And no single bit changed in drm core.
>>>>
>>>> I have implemented this way DSI/LVDS bridge, it was sent as RFC [1][2].
>>>> It was not accepted as Inki preferred drm_bridge but as I see the
>>>> problems with drm_bridges I have decide to attract attention to much
>>>> more cleaner solution.
>>>>
>>>> [1]: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.drivers.devicetree/61559
>>>> [2]: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.samsung-soc/27044
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>> Andrzej
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Ajay Kumar (3):
>>>>> [RFC V2 1/3] drm: implement chaining of drm bridges
>>>>> [RFC V2 2/3] drm/bridge: add a dummy panel driver to support lvds bridges
>>>>> [RFC V2 3/3] drm/bridge: ptn3460: support bridge chaining
>>>>>
>>>>> .../bindings/drm/bridge/bridge_panel.txt | 45 ++++
>>>>> drivers/gpu/drm/bridge/Kconfig | 6 +
>>>>> drivers/gpu/drm/bridge/Makefile | 1 +
>>>>> drivers/gpu/drm/bridge/bridge_panel.c | 240 +++++++++++++++++++++
>>>>> drivers/gpu/drm/bridge/ptn3460.c | 21 +-
>>>>> drivers/gpu/drm/drm_crtc.c | 13 +-
>>>>> include/drm/bridge/bridge_panel.h | 37 ++++
>>>>> include/drm/drm_crtc.h | 2 +
>>>>> 8 files changed, 360 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
>>>>> create mode 100644 Documentation/devicetree/bindings/drm/bridge/bridge_panel.txt
>>>>> create mode 100644 drivers/gpu/drm/bridge/bridge_panel.c
>>>>> create mode 100644 include/drm/bridge/bridge_panel.h
>>>>>
>>>>
>>
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