[alsa-devel] Haswell: Ensuring HDA codec pins refer to physical outputs

[Wang xingchao]

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 09:00:06AM +0200, David Henningsson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I want to take this problem up again, because it's important we get
> this right.
> 
> The HDA driver assumes that a codec pin widget node always refers to
> the same physical output. With Haswell, it seems like this is not
> guaranteed to be true. I would like to see this fixed on the
> graphics side. If not, I don't know how to work around it on the
> audio side.

in gfx side, eld valid bit was set according to *pipe*, not physical outputs.
For haswell, the codec pin output connected to transcoder(pipe) directly.
I cannot confirm whether the three codec Pins are fixed connected to three
transcoders(pipes) atm, i assume it is as i cannot find any programing manual
in bspec(please correct me if i'm wrong here).

And between transcoder and external DDI ports, there's cross-point mux used
for selection: pipe/transcoder can select the output DDI ports. 
i.e. the physical HDMI cable is connected to DDI port B. if current using pipe
is PIPE A, the eld valid bit for PIPE A is set. But we cannot guarantee only
the first hdmi device is available for audio output. when play audio through 
first codec pin, it means output audio data to Transcoder A(Pipe A), that depends
on whether PIPE A select DDI port B. If output data to second codec PIN, it
outputs data to PIPE B, if pipe B select DDI B too, you can hear sound, even
the second pin doesnt have valid eld info.

thanks
--xingchao

> 
> The problems that occur on the audio side are:
> 
>  1) Some BIOSes set default pin config. E g, if the machine has a
> single HDMI out, it can set two of the codec pins to "not connected"
> and let the third remain "jack". As a result, the HDA driver will
> ignore the two codec pins and only enable the third. As such, HDMI
> audio will not work correctly, unless it's the third codec pin that
> is connected to the physical output.
> 
>  2) Saving and restoring mutes, volumes etc is done on a per-pin
> basis. E g, imagine that a user has a dual monitor setup and always
> wants audio output from the left side monitor, and keep the right
> side monitor silent. If it is not reliable which codec pin refers to
> which physical output, one day suddenly the sound might come out on
> the right side monitor instead.
> 
> -- 
> David Henningsson, Canonical Ltd.
> https://launchpad.net/~diwic