[U-Boot] [PATCH 3/9] arm: Move CP15 init out of cpu_init_crit()

[Simon Glass]

Hi Albert,

On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 12:56 AM, Albert ARIBAUD
<albert.u.boot at aribaud.net> wrote:
> Le 22/10/2011 07:05, Simon Glass a écrit :
>
>>>> Well I actually haven't moved it! It is just that previously it was
>>>> impossible to call cp15_init from anywhere later.
>>>
>>> It is moved, in that it belongs to low level init... of A9.
>>
>> OK, I see - you mean moved in order if not in source code file.
>
> Yes. In the code, though, it belongs to low-level init.

Arguably this could go in a library like arch/arm/cpu/armv7/lib/cache.S

>
>>>> What you say can be done, it would involve some assembler though and
>>>> would need to be another CONFIG option. Was trying to avoid adding new
>>>> assembler.
>>>
>>> Low level init is about assembler and, well, low level. :)
>>
>> Yes but it's yuck. Part of the clean-up is to remove most of the
>> assembler - really very little is needed.
>
> I don't think "yuck" is a valid reasoned argument against assembly language
> :) but I assume what you mainly mean is 'hard to understand and replaceable
> by easy to understand C code'. I agree to the first part, and to the second
> one for the general case, but not for the startup path where, precisely, we
> don't have a working C run-time and most of the understanding requires
> knowledge of hardware, not only general programming knowledge. Past that, C

I'm not arguing for the cache init stuff to move to C, just trying to
avoid any creeping growth of assembler when C can do it.

> is ok -- but then beware: some C++ guy could chime in and contend that C is
> "yuck" by your own standards. :)

The C++ guy who finds himself in U-Boot is probably lost :-)

>
>>> But I don't see why there should be another CONFIG option. IIUC, you
>>> should
>>> be able to do with only CONFIG_SKIP_LOWLEVEL_INIT: within the low level
>>> init
>>> code under it, you would do the equivalent of a switch, with one branch
>>> for
>>> AVM (and DDR init etc) and one branch for A9 (with cp15 init etc).
>>
>> Yes I can, but I need to be able to call cp15_init. And I can't do
>> that because if CONFIG_SKIP_LOWLEVEL_INIT is defined, that code is
>> compiled out! So I need to move that cp15_init code outside the
>> CONFIG_SKIP_LOWLEVEL_INIT #ifdef. That is all I am trying to do,
>> honest!
>
> I understand, and I think the approach here is wrong, because you *do* want
> low-level init in the A9 case, and thus you should not have
> CONFIG_SKIP_LOWLEVEL_INIT set. But you also need the AVP low-level init to
> be empty, and the AVP and A9 must follow the same startup path. And all this
> it not necessarily required for all armv7 platforms, but some of them will
> want lowlevel init, and some not. Considering all this...
>
> For now, I would opt for a CONFIG_ARCH_GENERIC_LOWLEVEL_INIT option which
> start.S would use to compile out the low level init code definition (like
> CONFIG_SKIP_LOWLEVEL_INIT does) but not the the calls to it (UNline
> CONFIG_SKIP_LOWLEVEL_INIT does). Then you could provide a SoC-specific
> version of lowlevel_init.

If I understand you correctly, this is the opposite of what I want. It
is basically what we have now.

All ARMv7 chips are going to turn off MMU, caches, flush TLBs, and the
like - this is an architecture feature, not an SOC one. We have
conflated ARM arch init with SOC init as you say, but the solution is
not to force the SOC to copy code from start.S just so that it can do
ARM arch init later.

And I'd argue for LOWLEVEL_INIT being about setting up the memory so
we can run code, and in particular relocate it later. The cp15_init
stuff should arguably be in arch_cpu_init() (or perhaps a new
arch_init()) as the first thing called from board_init_f() in my view.

So how about I create a patch to move the cp15_init() code into
arch/arm/cpu/armv7/lib/lowlevel.S or similar so I can call it later?

>
> In the longer term, I would be more in favor of a weak definition system
> with hierarchical ARCH, ISA, SoC, board priority order (yes, I am kind of
> fond of it) for lowlevel init -- but that will require looking into asm weak
> symbol handling and may require splitting of the assembly code function by
> function.

I think you are trying to avoid the

#ifdef CONFIG_ARCH_CPU_INIT
   arch_cpu_init,
#endif
#ifdef ...
   some_other_thing
#endif

in the board_init_f() function table. Yes I agree it would tidy things
up, although I wonder if Graeme's initcall thing isn't better again.
It has the same confusion level coefficient (only the linker decides
what code is included) with a bit more flexibility. Then each arch /
board / cpu / soc / squirrel can decide on its own init and put it in
its own file. C only please :-)

Regards,
Simon

>
>> Regards,
>> Simon
>
> Amicalement,
> --
> Albert.
>