Re: [PATCH] bus: mhi: host: Add userspace character interface

[Jeffrey Hugo <quic_jhugo@quicinc.com>]

On 5/31/2023 9:04 AM, Jeffrey Hugo wrote:
> On 5/31/2023 8:35 AM, Greg KH wrote:
>> On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 07:58:03PM +0530, Manivannan Sadhasivam wrote:
>>> + Jakub (who NACKed the previous submission of UCI driver)
>>> Link to previous submission: 
>>> https://lore.kernel.org/all/1606533966-22821-1-git-send-email-hemantk@codeaurora.org/ 
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, May 22, 2023 at 01:04:59PM -0600, Jeffrey Hugo wrote:
>>>> From: Pranjal Ramajor Asha Kanojiya <quic_pkanojiy@quicinc.com>
>>>>
>>>> I2C, USB, and PCIe are examples of buses which have a mechanism to give
>>>> userspace direct access to a device on those buses. The MHI userspace
>>>> character interface (uci) is the MHI bus analogue.
>>>>
>>>> The MHI bus devices are MHI channels which ferry blocks of data from 
>>>> one
>>>> end to the other. With this simple purpose, we can define a simple
>>>> interface to userspace - a character device that supports 
>>>> open/close/read/
>>>> write/poll operations. Since bus devices can only have a single 
>>>> consumer
>>>> we encode a whitelist of MHI channels to be exported to userspace so as
>>>> to avoid conflicts.
>>>>
>>>> We also make this mechanism open to any device that implements MHI.
>>>> Today this includes WLAN (Wi-Fi), WWAN (4G/5G cellular), and ML/AI
>>>> devices. More devices are expected in the future.
>>>>
>>>> In addition to implementing the framework for uci, we include an 
>>>> initial
>>>> usecase - the QAIC Sahara device.
>>>>
>>>> Sahara is a file transfer protocol that is commonly used for two 
>>>> purposes
>>>> when interacting with a device - transferring firmware to the device 
>>>> and
>>>> transferring crashdumps from the device. The Sahara protocol puts the
>>>> receiver of the data in control of the transfer. A firmware transfer
>>>> operation would have the device requesting the specific firmware images
>>>> that the device wants, and the host satisfying those requests.
>>>>
>>>> In most cases, including for AIC100, Sahara is used as part of a two 
>>>> stage
>>>> loading process. The device will boot a very limited bootloader that 
>>>> does
>>>> the base minimum initialization and jump to the next stage. A 
>>>> simple, one-
>>>> shot protocol like BHI is used to send the next stage bootloader to the
>>>> device. This second stage bootloader contains more functionality and
>>>> implements the Sahara protocol. The second stage determines from 
>>>> various
>>>> inputs what set of runtime firmware is required to boot the device 
>>>> into an
>>>> operational status, and requests those pieces from the host.  With 
>>>> those
>>>> images transferred over, the device can funnly initialize.
>>>>
>>>> Each AIC100 instance (currently, up to 16) in a system will create a
>>>> MHI device for QAIC_SAHARA. MHI_uci will consume each of these and 
>>>> create
>>>> a unique chardev which will be found as
>>>> /dev/<mhi instance>_QAIC_SAHARA
>>>> For example - /dev/mhi0_QAIC_SAHARA
>>>>
>>>> An open userspace application that can consume these devices for 
>>>> firmware
>>>> transfers is located at https://github.com/andersson/qdl
>>>>
>>>> Signed-off-by: Pranjal Ramajor Asha Kanojiya 
>>>> <quic_pkanojiy@quicinc.com>
>>>> [jhugo: Rename to uci, plumb to mhi, rewrite commit text]
>>>> Signed-off-by: Jeffrey Hugo <quic_jhugo@quicinc.com>
>>>
>>> The previous attempt on adding UCI driver was NACKed by Jakub. For 
>>> merging this
>>> patch, I need an ACK from Jakub.
>>
>> Given that this fails the kernel robot tests, why would anyone ack it
>> as-is?
> 
> I think Mani I looking for some "guidance" on the "architecture", and 
> frankly so am I.  An official Ack from Jakub might not be quite the 
> right thing at this stage, but at-least Jakub could come in and say he 
> isn't planning on NACKing this right off the bat, in particular because 
> this functionality can be used by WWAN devices which seems to be what 
> caused the mess the last time around.
> 
> We've gone full circle here.  This functionality was proposed as part of 
> the bus.  Jakub came in an NACKed that, which resulted in the WWAN 
> subsystem and the guidance that this functionally belongs with the 
> devices.  I tried to put it with the AIC100/QAIC device based on that, 
> and that got NACKed by Daniel (GPU) saying that this belongs with the 
> bus.  You (Greg) seemed to agree with Daniel on that.
> 
> Fixing kernel robot tests is one thing (I haven't seen any reports on 
> this iteration), but if there is no agreement on where this lives, isn't 
> it DOA?

I went hunting for a report and found it.  Not sure why it hasn't hit my 
inbox.  The issue looks trivial and really doesn't seem to prevent 
discussions on this IMO.

> 
> In summary, if you don't like this, please give some clear guidance. 
> Greg, you've told me in the past that you don't discuss "architecture" 
> without seeing the code.  Here is some code.  I don't claim it is 
> perfect (you mentioned the QAIC version had some issues you were going 
> to help with), but I would like to see some input.
> 
> -Jeff
>