[U-Boot] [PATCH 1/2] mtd: vf610_nfc: mark page as dirty on block erase

[Bill Pringlemeir]

On 30 Mar 2015, scottwood at freescale.com wrote:

> On Mon, 2015-03-30 at 22:40 +0200, Stefan Agner wrote:

>> However, if removing the caching in the driver would lead to a
>> performance drop, I would rather prefer to keep it...

> What is special about this controller, that caching makes sense here
> but not on other controllers?  If it makes sense everywhere, then the
> upper layer is the place to do it.

While I observed some performance differences, but that is an aside.  I
think the mxc driver is similar in sub-page (or partial page) support.
Before doing a sub-page write, it reads a full page and then copies the
sub-page update to the buffer to be reprogrammed.  This works fine if
each and every sub-page has separate OOB data for software ECC.  The
hardware ECC of this vf610_nfc controller doesn't support this.

At least that is my understanding of this [mxc_nand] code,

        case NAND_CMD_SEQIN:
                if (column >= mtd->writesize) {
                        /*
                         * before sending SEQIN command for partial write,
                         * we need read one page out. FSL NFC does not support
                         * partial write. It always sends out 512+ecc+512+ecc
                         * for large page nand flash. But for small page nand
                         * flash, it does support SPARE ONLY operation.
                         */
                        if (host->pagesize_2k) {
                                /* call ourself to read a page */
                                mxc_nand_command(mtd, NAND_CMD_READ0, 0,
                                                page_addr);
                        }

in 'drivers/mtd/nand/mxc_nand.c'.  So, originally this was mainly for
sub-pages (an optimization but also functionality).

So the 'caching' is just to preserve read data before a partial write as
the vf610 requires a full page (like the mxc).  The same 'caching' was
keep for 'write followed by read' when the ECC is successful.

I realize that the upper layers may not like this so I mentioned it; I
guess that is proof that the patch is getting a good review and I am not
causing problems for Stefan ;)

I also agree with Stefan that setting the SECSZ in the 2nd patch will
result in less data transfer (and maybe less current/power and system
noise).  However, this will be inside the NFC controller.  Talking over
the AHB to the NFC controller is quite slow on the Vybrid.  Certainly it
seems a little more elegant to tell the controller to transfer nothing
(and that we [programmers] expect nothing as a sort of documentation)?

I think it would be worthwhile to benchmark without the cache.  Or maybe
Stefan already has some numbers?  Upper layers doing partial pages will
definitely benefit with the 'cache'; we would also need more DDR memory
as the NFC controller memory is being used as a scratch buffer.

Fwiw,
Bill Pringlemeir.