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

[Jyri Sarha]

On 02/26/16 13:21, Russell King - ARM Linux wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 12:14:44PM +0200, Jyri Sarha wrote:
>> 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.
>
> There's another reason: if you want to support 8 channel audio using I2S
> rather than SPDIF, then you need to use four I2S data inputs.  Each I2S
> data input can support only two channels.
>

Yes, but surely in the situation where there is 4 data wires, those 
should all be seen as a single audio port, as they are all sharing the 
same bit and frame clock wires. In such a situation I can't see why we 
would ever want to configure anything less that all four connected 
wires. ALSA and CPU—DAI driver can then deal with the situations when we 
only have two channels of data, or the HDMI sink can only play stereo.

If we start to think how to describe multiple alternative endpoints for 
I have to have a unit address, but do I have to have a reg property? I 
did not know about such a rule when I already made an alternative 
binding and implementation that appears to work just fine with multiple 
ports without reg property, but maybe I have over looked some piece of 
specification that forbids that.essentially the same entity (=the single 
i2s port, with up to 4 data wires), then there is no upper limit to the 
amount of ports we'd need to support.

On the other hand, if there are multiple i2s components sharing the same 
clock wires (and maybe some data wires with TDM too), then graph-style 
binding is probably not the best way to describe that kind of setup.

The more I think about this the more I think the graph binding is a bad 
choice to for i2s connections. For SPDIF the graph works better, but why 
use something that does not work for every DAI format?

>>> 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.
>
> Different people have different opinions.  Your opinion is just another
> example of someone holding a different view.
>
> You _have_ to have a unit address, and therefore you _have_ to have a
> reg property.  If you want to use some other property to describe the

I have to have a unit address, but do I have to have a reg property? I 
did not know about such a rule when I already made an alternative 
binding and implementation that appears to work just fine with multiple 
ports without reg property, but maybe I have over looked some piece of 
specification that forbids that.

> audio input pin, then you will need to make up a totally ficticious
> unit-address and reg property for each audio input pin.
>
> That's adding complexity, arguably unnecessary complexity, and making
> the binding unnecessarily more complex for no good reason.
>
>>> 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?
>
> Sub-standard :)
>
> This has actually been discussed before.  See the thread:
>
> "[PATCH v9 1/4] drm/i2c: tda998x: Add DT support for audio"
>
> from January 2015.
>

Yes, this started sound strangely familiar :). Well, I've been trying to 
come up with an upstremable implementation for Beaglebone-Black HDMI 
audio for almost three years already. At this point I am ready to make 
almost what ever compromise if I just could get the code in. I just want 
to explain my point of view.

Luckily the HDMI-codec part is mostly agnostic about these things so 
maybe I can have life of its own.

Best regards,
Jyri