It's been a very long time since I reviewed earlier versions, and I am still lost on terminology and concepts. The explanations below should really be added as a .rst file in Documentation for reference, not just as a cover letter.
Several Qualcomm based chipsets can support USB audio offloading to a dedicated audio DSP, which can take over issuing transfers to the USB host controller. The intention is to reduce the load on the main processors in the SoC, and allow them to be placed into lower power modes. There are several parts to this design:
- Adding ASoC binding layer
- Create a USB backend for Q6DSP
"backend" is a loaded terms for ASoC. Can you clarify which part of the ascii art below is a 'backend'?
Introduce XHCI interrupter support
Create vendor ops for the USB SND driver
USB | ASoC
| _________________________ | |sm8250 platform card | | |_________________________| | | | | ___V____ ____V____ | |Q6USB | |Q6AFE | | |"codec" | |"cpu" | | |________| |_________| | ^ ^ ^ | | |________| | ___V____ | | |SOC-USB | |________ ________ | | | |USB SND |<--->|QC offld|<------------>|________| | |(card.c)| | |<---------- | |________| |________|___ | | | ^ ^ | | | ____________V_________ | | | | | |APR/GLINK | __ V_______________V_____ | | | |______________________| |USB SND (endpoint.c) | | | | ^ |_________________________| | | | | ^ | | | ___________V___________ | | | |->|audio DSP | ___________V_____________ | | |_______________________| |XHCI HCD |<- | |_________________________| |
Adding ASoC binding layer: soc-usb: Intention is to treat a USB port similar to a headphone jack.
What is a 'port'? USB refers to "interfaces" and "endpoints". Is a "port" a 1:1 mapping to "endpoint"?
Below I read "AFE port" so not sure what concepts refer to what.
The port is always present on the device, but cable/pin status can be enabled/disabled. Expose mechanisms for USB backend ASoC drivers to communicate with USB SND.
Create a USB backend for Q6DSP: q6usb: Basic backend driver that will be responsible for maintaining the
The asciiart above suggests that q6usb exposes a codec DAI - but the backend dailink is created by the platform card?
resources needed to initiate a playback stream using the Q6DSP. Will
is capture supported? there's explicit references to "num_capture" in following patches.
be the entity that checks to make sure the connected USB audio device supports the requested PCM format. If it does not, the PCM open call will fail, and userpsace ALSA can take action accordingly.
Introduce XHCI interrupter support: XHCI HCD supports multiple interrupters, which allows for events to be routed to different event rings. This is determined by "Interrupter Target" field specified in Section "6.4.1.1 Normal TRB" of the XHCI specification.
Events in the offloading case will be routed to an event ring that is assigned to the audio DSP.
Create vendor ops for the USB SND driver: qc_audio_offload: This particular driver has several components associated with it:
- QMI stream request handler
- XHCI interrupter and resource management
- audio DSP memory management
When the audio DSP wants to enable a playback stream, the request is first received by the ASoC platform sound card. Depending on the selected route, ASoC will bring up the individual DAIs in the path. The Q6USB backend DAI will send an AFE port start command (with enabling the USB playback path), and the audio DSP will handle the request accordingly.
what about capture, e.g. for a headset?
Part of the AFE USB port start handling will have an exchange of control messages using the QMI protocol. The qc_audio_offload driver will populate the buffer information:
- Event ring base address
- EP transfer ring base address
and pass it along to the audio DSP. All endpoint management will now be handed over to the DSP, and the main processor is not involved in transfers.
Overall, implementing this feature will still expose separate sound card and PCM devices for both the platorm card and USB audio device:
typo: platform
0 [SM8250MTPWCD938]: sm8250 - SM8250-MTP-WCD9380-WSA8810-VA-D SM8250-MTP-WCD9380-WSA8810-VA-DMIC
How do you plan on exposing the USB PCM device?
The lines above are really cryptic, and with no USB reference in any of the short/long card names it's not obvious that this card is different from the no-offload case, is it?
1 [Audio ]: USB-Audio - USB Audio Generic USB Audio at usb-xhci-hcd.1.auto-1.4, high speed
likewise some sort of qualifier would be useful to show that card 0 and card 1 can target the same USB endpoints.
This is to ensure that userspace ALSA entities can decide which route to take when executing the audio playback. In the above, if card#1 is selected, then USB audio data will take the legacy path over the USB PCM drivers, etc...
This feature was validated using:
- tinymix: set/enable the multimedia path to route to USB backend
- tinyplay: issue playback on platform card