Re: [RFC PATCH v3 0/9] accel: rocket: Add RK3568 NPU support

[Chaoyi Chen <chaoyi.chen@rock-chips.com>]

Hi Midgy,

On 6/9/2026 7:11 PM, Midgy Balon wrote:
> Hello Chaoyi,
> 
> You were right - building rocket as a module fixes it. Thanks for the pointer.
> 
> I rebuilt with CONFIG_DRM_ACCEL_ROCKET=m (everything else the same:
> need_regulator on
> the RK3568 NPU power domain via a DOMAIN_M_R variant, domain-supply =
> <&vdd_npu>, and the
> regulator-always-on workaround dropped). The board now boots cleanly
> and, more importantly,
> an NPU job submit no longer hangs: I ran the test workload five times
> with no RCU stall and
> no freeze.
> 
> So with rocket=m the need_regulator approach works on RK3568, and I'll
> keep it for v4
> (domain-supply + need_regulator, instead of marking vdd_npu
> always-on). rocket=m is the
> normal configuration anyway; my earlier hang came from building it =y
> in a self-contained
> image, so it probed in the initcalls (around 2 s) and the genpd ->
> I2C-PMIC regulator
> transition ran before the system was ready. As a module it loads from
> udev much later
> (~6.8 s here), after the I2C controller and regulator core are fully up.
> 
> On your question of when the device-link error is printed - it is at
> power-domain
> controller probe, not at the rocket probe:
> 
>   [    2.700618] vdd_npu: Bringing 500000uV into 825000-825000uV
>   [    2.749637] rockchip-pm-domain fdd90000.power-management:power-controller:
>                  Failed to create device link (0x180) with supplier 0-0020 for
>                  /power-management@fdd90000/power-controller/power-domain@6
>   [    2.945955] platform fde40000.npu: Adding to iommu group 3
>   ...
>   [    6.840374] rocket: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
>   [    6.877647] [drm] Initialized rocket 0.0.0 for rknn on minor 0
>   [    6.879950] rocket fde40000.npu: Rockchip NPU core 0 version: 0
> 
> So the device-link to the rk809 PMIC (0-0020) fails to form at ~2.75
> s, well before rocket
> loads at ~6.8 s. It is non-fatal here - the vdd_npu rail is brought up
> by the regulator core
> and all jobs run - and there is no "failed to get ack on domain npu"
> NoC warning this boot
> (the always-on kernel had one). The complete boot log is attached.
> 
> Two notes / one question:
> - This boot used fw_devlink=permissive on the command line. Is the
> "Failed to create device
>   link ... supplier 0-0020" at pmdomain probe expected/benign, or is
> there a clean way to make
>   it order correctly (so it also works without permissive, and a =y
> build wouldn't deadlock in
>   the initcalls)?

We encountered the same issue on the RK3588 NPU before. And it was
resolved with the following patch at that time.

https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251216055247.13150-1-rmxpzlb@gmail.com/

Please compare the differences in NPU pmdomain and DTS configuration
between the RK3568 and RK3588.

> - (The convolution output is still uniform zero-point / the job times
> out - that is the
>   separate NPU compute-completion issue, unrelated to the power-domain
> work. Finley, that is
>   the one I flagged earlier re PVTPLL/NoC.)
> 
> Kind regards,
> Midgy
> 

-- 
Best, 
Chaoyi