[PATCH v6 00/12] ARM/MIPS: DTS: add child nodes describing the PVRSGX GPU present in some OMAP SoC and JZ4780 (and many more)

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi Neil,

> Am 23.04.2020 um 17:00 schrieb Neil Armstrong <narmstrong at baylibre.com>:
>> One thing we can learn is that "core" seems to be a de facto standard 
>> for the core clock-name. An alternative "gpu" is used by nvidia,gk20a.txt.
> 
> Usually IPs needs a few clocks:
> - pclk or apb or reg: the clock clocking the "slave" bus to serve the registers
> - axi or bus or ahb: the bus clocking the the "master" bus to get data from system memory
> - core: the actual clock feeding the GPU logic

And the sgx544 seems to have two such clocks.

> Sometimes you have a single clock for slave and master bus.
> 
> But you can also have separate clocks for shader cores, .. this depends on the IP and it's architecture.
> The IP can also have memories with separate clocks, etc...

Indeed.

> But all these clocks can be source by an unique clock on a SoC, but different on another
> SoC, this is why it's important to list them all, even optional.
> 
> You'll certainly have at least a reset signal, and a power domain, these should exist and be optional.

Well, they exist only as hints in block diagrams of some SoC data sheets
(so we do not know if they represent the imagination definitions) and the
current driver code doesn't make use of it. Still the gpu core works.

So I do not see any urgent need to add a complete list to the bindings now.

Unless some special SoC integration makes use of them. Then it is IMHO easier
to extend the bindings by a follow-up patch than now thinking about all
potential options and bloating the bindings with things we (the open source
community) doesn't and can't know.

My goal is to keep the bindings as minimalistic as possible. And reset lines
and power domains are (at least for those we have in the works) not needed
to make working systems.

Therefore, for clocks I also would start with a minimalistic approach for
a single optional GPU core clock and leave out reset and power completely.

BR and thanks,
Nikolaus