[alsa-devel] Need your advice: Add a new communication inteface between HD-Audio and Gfx drivers for hotplug notification/ELD update

[Takashi Iwai]

At Wed, 22 Jan 2014 15:18:21 +0100,
Daniel Vetter wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 12:48:04PM +0000, Lin, Mengdong wrote:
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: daniel.vetter at ffwll.ch [mailto:daniel.vetter at ffwll.ch] On Behalf Of
> > > Daniel Vetter
> > > Sent: Tuesday, January 21, 2014 9:11 PM
> > > To: Lin, Mengdong
> > > Cc: Takashi Iwai (tiwai at suse.de); Barnes, Jesse; Zanoni, Paulo R;
> > > alsa-devel at alsa-project.org; intel-gfx at lists.freedesktop.org
> > > Subject: Re: Need your advice: Add a new communication inteface
> > > between HD-Audio and Gfx drivers for hotplug notification/ELD update
> > > 
> > > On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 1:35 PM, Lin, Mengdong <mengdong.lin at intel.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > Dear audio and gfx stakeholders,
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > We hope to add a new interface between audio and gfx driver, for gfx
> > > > driver to notify audio about HDMI/DP hot-plug and ELD update.
> > > >
> > > > Would you please share some comments on the proposal below?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Background of this issue: On Intel Haswell/Broadwell platforms, there
> > > > is a HW restriction that after the display HD-Audio controller is in
> > > > D3,
> > > >
> > > > it cannot be waken up by HDMI/DP hot-plug. Consequently, although the
> > > > gfx driver can still detect the HDMI/DP hot-plug,
> > > >
> > > > audio driver has no idea about this and cannot notify user space
> > > > whether the external HDMI/DP monitor is available for audio playback,
> > > >
> > > > because the audio controller cannot wake up to D0 and receive HW
> > > > unsolicited event about hot-plug from the audio codec.
> > > >
> > > > This limitation will affect user space to decide whether we can output
> > > > audio over HDMI/DP.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > To solve the above limitation, Takashi suggested to add a new
> > > > communication interface between audio and gfx driver: create a
> > > common
> > > > object
> > > >
> > > > containing the ops registered by both graphics and audio drivers, then
> > > > communicate through it, something like vga_switcheroo.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Is it okay to create this kernel object in i915 driver?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I915 can export an API like "display_register_audio_client" for audio
> > > > driver to register a client and hot-plug notification ops.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > I915 can also call some API like "display_register_gfx_client" itself
> > > > and register ops for audio driver to query monitor presence and ELD
> > > > info on a specific port.
> > > >
> > > > It would be faster for audio driver than quering ELD by
> > > > command/response over the HD-A bus, thus avoid delay in i915 mode
> > > set.
> > > >
> > > > This will also avoid waking up the audio devices unnecessarily if the
> > > > user space does not really want to use HDMI/DP for audio playback.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Whenever i195 enables/disables audio on a port in modeset, it can call
> > > > some API like "display_set_audio_state()" on this kernel object and
> > > > trigger notifications to the audio driver.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > When the audio driver is probed (in the delayed probe stage), it can
> > > > request
> > > > i915 API symbol to register the audio client for this communication
> > > > kernel object.
> > > >
> > > > Since the 1st i915 mode set may happen before audio driver registers
> > > > the ops, we'll let audio driver check ELD once after registering the
> > > > audio client ops.
> > > >
> > > > And for the platforms which uses this communication interface, we can
> > > > disable unsolicited event for HDMI/DP hot-plug in the audio driver.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > We hope to hear your feedback and start to work out more details.
> > 
> > Thanks for your advice, Daniel!
> > 
> > > Yeah, I've discussed this at KS with Takashi and we've agreed that some
> > > common object to facilitate driver interactions. A few things
> > > though:
> > > - This should be common infrastructure useable by all alsa and drm
> > > drivers, not just i915 and snd-hda. Especially on embedded platforms this
> > > issue is fairly rampant ...
> > 
> > Agree. Where to put this common object? 
> > Is it okay to put it under /driver/gpu/drm, similar to vga_switchroo?
> > Shall we divide clients into audio and gfx categories, and define
> > different ops for them? Since different info/request flow in different
> > direction between audio and gfx.
> 
> I guess we could place them into drivers/gpu, yeah. For a name I'd suggest
> avsink or something like that, to make it clear that it's the combination
> of audio+video. For the actual interfaces I guess we just need one object
> in the device model, but the interface should be split into things called
> from the audio side only, functions for the video driver side only and
> stuff which can be called from both sides. This matters mostly just so we
> don't end up with deadlocks since we need a lock to protect the avsink
> state itself (e.g. the EDL or the audio_output_connected state).
> 
> > > - While at it it should also encompass power management handling of the
> > > shared hw imo so that we can get rid of the hsw specific hacks for the
> > > power well code. Or at least we need to rework the power well code to
> > > reuse this new infrastructure, I don't really want to maintain a few copies
> > > of the lazy symbol_get logic this kind of stuff requires.
> > 
> > Sounds good.
> > 
> > > - I think the biggest problem is figuring out who should register these
> > > device nodes. I think it makes the most sense if we do this in the gfx driver,
> > > but that requires some trickery on the alsa side (probably with using
> > > -EPROBE_DEFER or something like that.
> > 
> > Can the new infrastructure allow audio driver to query whether gfx driver is ready?
> > Maybe audio can wait until gfx is ready. For HD-Audio driver, the most
> > time consuming part is delayed after the probe stage, and actually we
> > can wait in the delayed phase.
> 
> Tbh I haven't really thought about this really. EPROBE_DEFER looks like
> the technique used by embedded platforms, but there's also the new
> aggregate device driver infrastructure that Russell King is working on for
> the imx driver. Or maybe we need to hand-roll our own notification scheme.
> 
> On a hunch it's probably best if the gfx side registers this device (since
> it also owns the output state in general) and that the audio side waits
> until the gfx side has registered everything if it's not there yet. I also
> haven't though about how the audio side could probe for the right avsink
> node really ...

Yes, I think doing it first in the gfx side makes sense, too.

> > > - I agree that passing ELD and all the other information through this new
> > > structure makes lot more sense than the current mess we have with
> > > passing the ELD through some hardware buffer.
> > 
> > > - Finally I think we should assign some identifier to this link which will get
> > > exposed both on the drm side and in alsa, so that userspace can figure
> > > out which display connects to which output. With that media player could
> > > do the Right Thing and automatically place the audio stream on the right
> > > pin in alsa.
> > 
> > Is there something that blocks media player from doing the right thing now?
> > For HD-Audio, the eld entries under /proc/asound/cardx expose the ELD
> > info and can help user space to check if a monitor is usable on a pin.
> > Current limitation is these eld entries cannot update if the audio
> > controller is in D3, so we need the new infrastructure to notify audio
> > driver to update them. But I'm not sure about embedded audio, maybe
> > Takashi would like to share more info.
> 
> ELD doesn't contain the serial number from the EDID, so if you have two
> monitors of the same model userspace can't figure out which audio output
> is connected to which screen.

Right.  And, comparing two different data just for knowing whether A
and B are relevant is merely a pain.


thanks,

Takashi