[alsa-devel] Dynamic HDMI PCM creation

[Jaroslav Kysela]

Date 17.9.2012 12:40, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> At Mon, 17 Sep 2012 12:15:23 +0200,
> David Henningsson wrote:
>>
>> On 09/10/2012 03:01 PM, Takashi Iwai wrote:
>>> Hi David,
>>>
>>> as we discussed at Plumbers, I tried some hack to create/delete
>>> HDMI/DP PCM stream per hotplug/unplug.  Test patches are found in
>>> sound-unstable git tree topic/hdmi-dynamic-pcm branch
>>>    git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tiwai/sound-unstable.git
>>>
>>> The patches are all small and easy, but it's still in a pretty rough
>>> cut.  It won't handle some cases, e.g. unplug during suspend, or
>>> such, I'm afraid.  After all, it's just a test.
>>>
>>> With these patches, the PCM device appears and disappears properly
>>> upon HDMI/DP hotplug/unplug on my system.  On mine, it appears as
>>> /dev/snd/pcmC0D8 as it's an Intel on-board.  So far, so good.
>>>
>>> Now the problem is that PA gets confused when this happens.  It can
>>> switch to HDMI/DP, but then the analog output disappears from PA's
>>> profile.  You cannot switch back to analog output after that, even
>>> after you unplug HDMI/DP cable.
>>>
>>> Or, it might be my PA version...  I'll check newer one.
>>> But it'd be good if you also check in your side.
>>
>> Hmm.
>>
>> As you probably know, PA does extensively test opening device strings at 
>> startup, and then never again.
>> As such, I can understand that PA gets confused if you start adding and 
>> removing PCM devices, because that changes whether and how different 
>> device strings can be opened.
>>
>> Looking forward, with HDMI, it's a reality that this will happen. And 
>> therefore we need to deal with it in PA somehow, even if this is 
>> non-trivial. So the first question would be - what notification 
>> mechanism should we have to trigger "reprobing"? Are we recommended to 
>> use the jack detection kcontrol API, or is there something else that 
>> tells us that suddenly "hdmi:1,2" will actually be worth trying again?
> 
> The kcontrol API is already implemented, so it's good to support for
> it.

You refer ELD interface?

> If we do check the dynamic PCM probing for HDMI, I'd propose for
> adding a new PCM class SNDRV_PCM_CLASS_HDMI or such, and set this

I'm not sure if HDMI devices are different than others. For example, for
digital S/PDIF inputs, the input stream parameters can change too
including the signal presence. It would be good to propose one mechanism
for all plug-and-play wiring schemas.

> class in patch_hdmi.c.  Then PA can check the sysfs entry and
> decide whether to reprobe the HDMI entry.

Please, could you describe more, why we need to have dynamic PCMs for
HDMI? I would prefer to have just a notification, if the cable is
connected and the PCM layer is ready (ELD stuff). Also, if some physical
connectors are not used on some hardware, they should/may be blacklisted
so the driver won't create PCM devices for them.

Also, the stream parameter checks seems missing in the HDMI PCM
implementation. It may be good to fail with -EIO when the cable is not
connected or unplugged and, eventually, if the end-point PCM parameters
are changed.

If the dynamic HDMI PCMs are implemented, are the device numbers fixed
(related) to physical connectors?

					Thanks,
						Jaroslav

-- 
Jaroslav Kysela <perex at perex.cz>
Linux Kernel Sound Maintainer
ALSA Project; Red Hat, Inc.