[U-Boot] How do ARM platform initialize DDR?

[York Sun]

On 09/19/2013 01:57 PM, Tom Rini wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 08:59:24AM -0700, York Sun wrote:
> 
>> Albert,
>>
>> Pardon me if this is a dumb question. I have been working on powerpc
>> platforms in the past. Now we (the developers I work with) are exploring
>> ARM cores. I am searching how memory is initialized and found different
>> solutions. Some platforms have memory ready before u-boot even starts,
>> some simply write to a set of registers. I understand many platforms
>> don't share the IP of DDR controller. I am wondering if there is generic
>> DDR driver used by many ARM platforms, like the one we have for
>> powerpc/mpc85xx SoCs.
> 
> Thinking back, as a rule of thumb, PowerPC has SPD I2C data
> available, usually.  That's not the rule for ARM.  One of a few choices
> happen:
> 1) ROM sets up DDR.
> 2) U-Boot/SPL sets up the DDR controller.
> 

So for ARM platforms, the majority don't have the flexibility of using
different DIMMs and/or clocks?

> The problem is that the DDR controller is usually vendor-specific.
> Perhaps the flip-side here is that there's not so much a generic DDR
> driver for mpc85xx but simply one vendor for mpc85xx.  Taking
> arch/powerpc/cpu/mpc85xx/ddr-gen3.c as what you're talking about,
> arch/arm/cpu/armv7/omap-common/emif-common.c would be an ARM-world
> example (the 'EMIF' is found on a large variety of TI parts, not just
> "omap" ones).

Does it make sense to share the Freescale DDR driver across ARM and
Powerpc? Or does it make more sense to selectively copy the mpc8xxx DDR
driver to Freescale ARM subfolder to start with. If the similarity
sustains then we merge them into common driver. If not, we maintain two
separated drivers.

For those who is not familiar with, Freescale is extending products to
ARM cores. I am expecting peripherals stay relatively close, so many
driver can be reused.

York