[alsa-devel] [PATCH RFC v5 4/8] drm/i2c: tda998x: Add support of a DT graph of ports

[Jyri Sarha]

On 02/26/16 02:43, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 03:42:50PM +0200, Jyri Sarha wrote:
>> On 02/18/16 16:35, Rob Herring wrote:
>>> This should be implied from the port unit address. In other words,
>>> port at 0 is defined to be the rgb port. Now, if this is one of several
>>> modes for the video port, then that is a different story.
>>>
>>
>> Do you suggest that also the audio i2s and s/p-dif port-types should be
>> coded in the port unit addresses? Something like: port at 0 is always rgb,
>> port at 1 is i2s, and port at 2 is spdif?
>
> For the audio inputs, the port address corresponds to the input pin.
> TDA998x devices can have multiple streams routed to the pins, and can
> select between them.
>
> For example, there may be four I2S data pins and one I2S clock pin.
> When using stereo, you can select which of the four I2S data pins
> carries the audio data.
>

Sure, but I do not think that would be the usual setup. The only 
"normal" situation I can think for having a need to have two alternative 
audio setups would one for i2s and another for s/p-dif. But then again 
it is possible to come up with a design with multiple alternative audio 
wirings and it relatively simple handle that in DT binding, so why not.

> When using SPDIF, there may be two SPDIF inputs, and you can select
> which SPDIF input is used.
>
> So, "reg" may not be an address in terms of a CPU visible address, but
> it's an address as far as selecting the appropriate input - and it
> fits in with the requirements of ePAPR, which are that if you have
> a unit-address (which is required to distinguish different port nodes)
> then you must have a matching "reg" property.
>

Still I do not see why it is desirable to reuse reg property, when we 
can introduce new property for describing the audio wiring.

> I don't particularly like the video node using the RGB routing register
> value either for the reg property, but I've kept quiet because I have
> nothing to offer there: again, this comes down to ePAPR requirements
> and the need to specify multiple "port { }" nodes.  You can't have two
> "port { }" nodes without using a unit-address, and we'd need to chose
> a unit-address for it which doesn't conflict with the audio ports...
> so there's a kind of logic to using the RGB routing value, which will
> never conflict.
>

If we after all decide to go with using reg property for audio wiring 
(and essentially writing the value directly to AP_ENA register), then we 
could also agree that video port's unit address is always 0 as it 
corresponds to audio disabled in AP_ENA register and would not collide 
with any audio "address". Then we could keep the old video-ports 
property to configure the video wiring. How does this sound?

Best regards,
Jyri

ps. Then we still have the alternative of not using the graph/ports 
binding for audio at all. No other audio driver is currently using that 
and the graph binding is not particularly well suited for i2s 
connections as there may be more than two components connected to the 
same wires and sharing the bandwidth with both TDM and different data 
wires. But I am not sure if I want to go there any more as I have a 
feeling that I have been running in circles for couple of years with 
this now.