How to handle disconnection of eDP panels due to dynamic display mux switches

Fri Apr 3 19:59:12 UTC 2020

On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 8:06 PM Daniel Dadap <ddadap at nvidia.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 4/3/20 2:16 AM, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 3, 2020 at 8:54 AM Daniel Dadap <ddadap at nvidia.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 4/2/20 6:39 AM, Lukas Wunner wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On Fri, Mar 27, 2020 at 04:25:19PM -0500, Daniel Dadap wrote:
> >>>> A number of hybrid GPU notebook computer designs with dual (integrated plus
> >>>> discrete) GPUs are equipped with multiplexers (muxes) that allow display
> >>>> panels to be driven by either the integrated GPU or the discrete GPU.
> >>>> Typically, this is a selection that can be made at boot time as a menu
> >>>> option in the system firmware's setup screen, and the mux selection stays
> >>>> fixed for as long as the system is running and persists across reboots until
> >>>> it is explicitly changed. However, some muxed hybrid GPU systems have
> >>>> dynamically switchable muxes which can be switched while the system is
> >>>> running.
> >>> As you may be aware, there's drivers/gpu/vga/vga_switcheroo.c (of which
> >>> I'm listed as a reviewer in MAINTAINERS) to support such hardware.
> >>>
> >>> It also supports muxed configurations, including those that support
> >>> switching at runtime (and not only at boot) such as the MacBook Pro,
> >>> which uses drivers/platform/x86/apple-gmux.c to interface between
> >>> vga_switcheroo and the hardware mux.
> >>>
> >>> However, so far switching only actually works on LVDS-based MacBook Pros,
> >>> i.e. all pre-retina machines introduced between Late 2008 and Mid 2012,
> >>> because that hardware is capable of switching the DDC pins separately
> >>> from the display, so we lock and switch them when probing the EDID.
> >>
> >> I have observed that on at least some systems, the EDID for the internal
> >> panel can be read via the ACPI _DDC method regardless of whether it's
> >> actively muxed in. I don't know whether that's true for all systems
> >> where the DDC line can't be switched independently, but maybe
> >> vga_switcheroo could also export an interface for GPU drivers to cache
> >> EDIDs so that a muxed-away GPU can read an EDID that was previously read
> >> by another GPU? I guess the utility of that would depend on how
> >> prevalent the combination of no DDC muxing + no ACPI EDID reads turns
> >> out to be.
> >>
> >>
> >>> The retina machines introduced from Mid 2012 onward use eDP and run
> >>> into the issues you're describing:  The AUX channel cannot be switched
> >>> separately from the display, so link training fails unless the entire
> >>> display is switched.  Nevertheless macOS can switch the panel seamlessly.
> >>> So how are they doing it?
> >>>
> >>> Well, I don't own a retina MacBook Pro, hence never got very far with
> >>> supporting them, but I did some research and experiments in the 2015/2016
> >>> time frame which a colleague, Bruno Bierbaumer, tested on his machine:
> >>>
> >>> First of all, there's DPCD byte 3 bit 6 (NO_AUX_HANDSHAKE_LINK_TRAINING)
> >>> which is documented as follows:
> >>>
> >>>       Does not require AUX CH handshake when the link configuration is
> >>>       already known. [...] The known-good drive current and pre-emphasis
> >>>       level (or those used in the last "full" link training with AUX CH
> >>>       handshake) must be used when the link training is performed without
> >>>       AUX CH handshake.
> >>>
> >>> That bit is set on the MacBook Pros in question.
> >>
> >> I'll check one of the eDP-based systems I've been experimenting on to
> >> see if setting the VGA_SWITCHER_NEEDS_EDP_CONFIG capability in the
> >> handler is sufficient to make i915 avoid poking the AUX channel when
> >> it's mux-switched away. (This would be in addition to hacking the
> >> can_switch() callback in the GPU drivers to allow switching while there
> >> are still active KMS clients for the purposes of this experiment, unless
> >> somebody can point me to a tree with the WIP per-output switching Daniel
> >> Vetter mentioned.
> > Two things: I thought (but not sure) that for the output switching
> > muxes we'd run vgaswitcheroo in a different mode, where it doesn't
> > check whether whether the driver can be killed. Because it wont. On a
> > quick search only thing I've found is the ddc-only switching done by
> > vga_switcheroo_lock/unlock_ddc. Maybe misremembering, but I thought
> > there was more. But been a while I last looked at this all in detail.
> >
> > Wrt per-output switching WIP branch. That would be something you'd
> > need to type ofc, I was just laying out what I think would make sense
> > as a possible path to integrate this into upstream.
> > -Daniel
>
>
> Okay. I misunderstood. When you said that vga-switcheroo could switch
> individual outputs and do so without powering down the
> switched-away-from GPU, I took that to mean that this feature had
> already been implemented somewhere, despite appearances to the contrary
> upstream. I agree that adding per-output switching support to
> vga-switcheroo would be a sensible path.

So I looked again, and maybe another clarification. What I think is
already there is the use-case of switching one integrated panel. I
checked the code now, this is supported with
DRM_SWITCH_POWER_DYNAMIC_OFF. Essentially this allows you to always
open the gpu cdev node, no matter the vgaswitcheroo state. And the
vgaswitcheroo only controls where the outputs are connected (and most
designs only switch the integrated panel, external outputs go to the
discrete gpu).

The ddc switching is so that the external gpu can still probe the
panel when it's connected to the integrated gpu.

What's not there is switching for outputs indivually.

Note that's at least my understanding, I dont have a system supporting this.

So my suggestio would be:
- mayke the nvidia blob work with the current stuff first. I assume
you'll need that :-)
- look into fixing the locking and refcounting bugs. There's FIXME's
all over the code, and we kinda need to address this before we make
everything worse.

That gets us a baseline. Next up I think enabling the seamless edp
switching would be nice. For that we don't really need any per-output
switching yet, the current vgaswitcheroo model still works. But what
we probably need:
- some coordination between drm drivers, probably going through
userspace so we follow the sequence correctly
- a new uapi which userspace can use without going into debugfs (which
is a no-go really for shipping to enduser). Probably something that's
tied to drm_connectors so we can extend it later on
- the userspace which makes this work seamlessly, if you want this
with X that probably means -modesetting.

> Does this sound like a sensible high-level design?
>
>
> * vga-switcheroo-capable GPU drivers can register muxable outputs.
> * Each GPU driver must register each unique muxable output with the same
> identifier. The outputs will be registered together with individual
> devices they can be muxed to, in order to support e.g. muxing between
> different GPU devices driven by the same vendor. (I'm not aware of any
> designs that actually support this, but it seems reasonable to design
> for.) The output identifier may be platform-specific (e.g. ACPI handle,
> simple index). For example, two GPU drivers may each register an
> internal panel with identifier "0" and an external port with identifier "1".
> * For each output that was registered with more than one device,
> vga-switcheroo will expose a sysfs file listing the devices that output
> can be muxed to, and a sysfs file allowing the selection of a particular
> device. Perhaps these could be the same file (e.g., on reading it prints
> a list with an indicator to mark the currently selected device, write a
> device ID to switch to that device).

With my plan the above isn't needed, at least not at first. Naming and
identifying stuff is a really hard problem, so probably best we delay
it so we have more time to figure this out.

> I think this would allow flexibility across N muxable outputs that can
> each be switched to one of M GPU devices, without requiring that each of
> the outputs be switchable to all M possible GPUs.
>
>
> In addition to the above mechanism for advertising the switchability of
> individual outputs and providing an interface, the following would also
> be needed to support PSR:
>
>
> * A new callback for GPU drivers so vga-switcheroo can tell them an
> output is being switched to a GPU.
> * vga-switcheroo can call this callback for all devices once before
> switching the mux, and then again after the mux switch is complete. A
> parameter of the callback would indicate whether the mux switch is
> pending, completed, or failed, allowing GPU drivers to do any necessary
> pre-switch setup, post-switch cleanup, or failed-switch recovery in
> response to events from vga-switcheroo.
> * Maybe a similar callback for mux handlers so vga-switcheroo can signal
> pre- and post-switch events to the handler driver. The PSR designs I'm
> aware of are GPU-driven, but I can imagine a design that is driven by
> some component other than a GPU, in which case it would make sense for
> the mux handler to drive PSR. I suppose this could be left out for now
> and then added later if such a design emerges.
> * It would probably be good to let userspace drive the pre/switch/post
> operations independently, e.g. so that userspace can prepare the first
> frame for presentation on the switched-to GPU before PSR is disabled.

This more or less matches what I'm suggesting too. Except no new
callbacks just because we might need them, we're only going to add
what the drivers actually need to orchestrate a given use case. The
drivers = i915 + nouveau + whatever vgaswitcheroo mux driver you have,
all in upstream.

> Now, I'm not sure if it makes more sense to also implement the AUX
> channel proxying that Lukas had prototyped a while back, or to update
> i915 and any other vga-switcheroo-compatible drivers that assume that
> eDP is always connected to allow for the possibility of eDP being
> disconnected due to being muxed away. I personally think disconnecting
> the eDP output makes more sense, since it more accurately reflects
> reality than proxying the AUX channel through to the GPU that's muxed
> in, but if there's another reason the AUX proxying makes more sense, we
> could plan on making that work (on a per-output basis, since I think
> e.g. regular DP for external connectors wouldn't need this) as well.

I think if we expect userspace to drive the seamless edp transition,
then probably a disconnected state that reflects reality is needed.

otoh, and I think that's the driver behind Lukas' work: Current
drivers need the edp state to set everything up at driver load. If
they can only fully probe the features of the integrated panel later
on it's too late. That's also why we have the ddx mux, so that drivers
can load as if they're connected to the panel.

So I think we still need Lukas' edp proxying patches most likely. What
the userspace visible connection_status will be like needs to be
figured out with how exactly we're going to drive the switchover.
-Daniel

> >>> So I think what we should be doing here is that the DRM driver which
> >>> happens to be muxed to the panel on boot performs link training and
> >>> informs vga_switcheroo of the drive current, pre-emph level, etc.
> >>> The other DRM driver is notified when that information is available
> >>> and uses it to set up its eDP output, skipping an actual AUX CH
> >>> handshake.
> >>>
> >>> At least i915 probes various capabilities in the DPCD without any
> >>> consideration that the AUX channel may currently not be available.
> >>> Back in the day I experimented with a read-only proxy mechanism
> >>> to make that work, whereby the inactive DRM driver uses the active
> >>> DRM driver to access the DPCD:
> >>>
> >>> https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/7000591/
> >>>
> >>> An alternative would be to have the active DRM driver cache the
> >>> required portions of the DPCD for use by the inactive DRM driver.
> >>>
> >>> Note that vga_switcheroo is currently controlled via debugfs.
> >>> That is a historic artefact.  The kernel has since gained a
> >>> mux subsystem in drivers/mux/ which could be used to represent
> >>> the display mux in a standardized way in regular sysfs.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks,
> >>>
> >>> Lukas
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> dri-devel mailing list
> >> dri-devel at lists.freedesktop.org
> >> https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/dri-devel
> >
> >
> > --
> > Daniel Vetter
> > Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
> > +41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch

-- 
Daniel Vetter
Software Engineer, Intel Corporation
+41 (0) 79 365 57 48 - http://blog.ffwll.ch