hwspinlock.txt

Hardware Spinlock Framework

1. Introduction

Hardware spinlock modules provide hardware assistance for synchronization
and mutual exclusion between heterogeneous processors and those not operating
under a single, shared operating system.

For example, OMAP4 has dual Cortex-A9, dual Cortex-M3 and a C64x+ DSP,
each of which is running a different Operating System (the master, A9,
is usually running Linux and the slave processors, the M3 and the DSP,
are running some flavor of RTOS).

A generic hwspinlock framework allows platform-independent drivers to use
the hwspinlock device in order to access data structures that are shared
between remote processors, that otherwise have no alternative mechanism
to accomplish synchronization and mutual exclusion operations.

This is necessary, for example, for Inter-processor communications:
on OMAP4, cpu-intensive multimedia tasks are offloaded by the host to the
remote M3 and/or C64x+ slave processors (by an IPC subsystem called Syslink).

To achieve fast message-based communications, a minimal kernel support
is needed to deliver messages arriving from a remote processor to the
appropriate user process.

This communication is based on simple data structures that is shared between
the remote processors, and access to it is synchronized using the hwspinlock
module (remote processor directly places new messages in this shared data
structure).

A common hwspinlock interface makes it possible to have generic, platform-
independent, drivers.

2. User API

  struct hwspinlock *hwspin_lock_request(void);
   - dynamically assign an hwspinlock and return its address, or NULL
     in case an unused hwspinlock isn't available. Users of this
     API will usually want to communicate the lock's id to the remote core
     before it can be used to achieve synchronization.
     Should be called from a process context (might sleep).

  struct hwspinlock *hwspin_lock_request_specific(unsigned int id);
   - assign a specific hwspinlock id and return its address, or NULL
     if that hwspinlock is already in use. Usually board code will
     be calling this function in order to reserve specific hwspinlock
     ids for predefined purposes.
     Should be called from a process context (might sleep).

  int hwspin_lock_free(struct hwspinlock *hwlock);
   - free a previously-assigned hwspinlock; returns 0 on success, or an
     appropriate error code on failure (e.g. -EINVAL if the hwspinlock
     is already free).
     Should be called from a process context (might sleep).

  int hwspin_lock_timeout(struct hwspinlock *hwlock, unsigned int timeout);
   - lock a previously-assigned hwspinlock with a timeout limit (specified in
     msecs). If the hwspinlock is already taken, the function will busy loop
     waiting for it to be released, but give up when the timeout elapses.
     Upon a successful return from this function, preemption is disabled so
     the caller must not sleep, and is advised to release the hwspinlock as
     soon as possible, in order to minimize remote cores polling on the
     hardware interconnect.
     Returns 0 when successful and an appropriate error code otherwise (most
     notably -ETIMEDOUT if the hwspinlock is still busy after timeout msecs).
     The function will never sleep.

  int hwspin_lock_timeout_irq(struct hwspinlock *hwlock, unsigned int timeout);
   - lock a previously-assigned hwspinlock with a timeout limit (specified in
     msecs). If the hwspinlock is already taken, the function will busy loop
     waiting for it to be released, but give up when the timeout elapses.
     Upon a successful return from this function, preemption and the local
     interrupts are disabled, so the caller must not sleep, and is advised to
     release the hwspinlock as soon as possible.
     Returns 0 when successful and an appropriate error code otherwise (most
     notably -ETIMEDOUT if the hwspinlock is still busy after timeout msecs).
     The function will never sleep.

  int hwspin_lock_timeout_irqsave(struct hwspinlock *hwlock, unsigned int to,
							unsigned long *flags);
   - lock a previously-assigned hwspinlock with a timeout limit (specified in
     msecs). If the hwspinlock is already taken, the function will busy loop
     waiting for it to be released, but give up when the timeout elapses.
     Upon a successful return from this function, preemption is disabled,
     local interrupts are disabled and their previous state is saved at the
     given flags placeholder. The caller must not sleep, and is advised to
     release the hwspinlock as soon as possible.
     Returns 0 when successful and an appropriate error code otherwise (most
     notably -ETIMEDOUT if the hwspinlock is still busy after timeout msecs).
     The function will never sleep.

  int hwspin_trylock(struct hwspinlock *hwlock);
   - attempt to lock a previously-assigned hwspinlock, but immediately fail if
     it is already taken.
     Upon a successful return from this function, preemption is disabled so
     caller must not sleep, and is advised to release the hwspinlock as soon as
     possible, in order to minimize remote cores polling on the hardware
     interconnect.
     Returns 0 on success and an appropriate error code otherwise (most
     notably -EBUSY if the hwspinlock was already taken).
     The function will never sleep.

  int hwspin_trylock_irq(struct hwspinlock *hwlock);
   - attempt to lock a previously-assigned hwspinlock, but immediately fail if
     it is already taken.
     Upon a successful return from this function, preemption and the local
     interrupts are disabled so caller must not sleep, and is advised to
     release the hwspinlock as soon as possible.
     Returns 0 on success and an appropriate error code otherwise (most
     notably -EBUSY if the hwspinlock was already taken).
     The function will never sleep.

  int hwspin_trylock_irqsave(struct hwspinlock *hwlock, unsigned long *flags);
   - attempt to lock a previously-assigned hwspinlock, but immediately fail if
     it is already taken.
     Upon a successful return from this function, preemption is disabled,
     the local interrupts are disabled and their previous state is saved
     at the given flags placeholder. The caller must not sleep, and is advised
     to release the hwspinlock as soon as possible.
     Returns 0 on success and an appropriate error code otherwise (most
     notably -EBUSY if the hwspinlock was already taken).
     The function will never sleep.

  void hwspin_unlock(struct hwspinlock *hwlock);
   - unlock a previously-locked hwspinlock. Always succeed, and can be called
     from any context (the function never sleeps). Note: code should _never_
     unlock an hwspinlock which is already unlocked (there is no protection
     against this).

  void hwspin_unlock_irq(struct hwspinlock *hwlock);
   - unlock a previously-locked hwspinlock and enable local interrupts.
     The caller should _never_ unlock an hwspinlock which is already unlocked.
     Doing so is considered a bug (there is no protection against this).
     Upon a successful return from this function, preemption and local
     interrupts are enabled. This function will never sleep.

  void
  hwspin_unlock_irqrestore(struct hwspinlock *hwlock, unsigned long *flags);
   - unlock a previously-locked hwspinlock.
     The caller should _never_ unlock an hwspinlock which is already unlocked.
     Doing so is considered a bug (there is no protection against this).
     Upon a successful return from this function, preemption is reenabled,
     and the state of the local interrupts is restored to the state saved at
     the given flags. This function will never sleep.

  int hwspin_lock_get_id(struct hwspinlock *hwlock);
   - retrieve id number of a given hwspinlock. This is needed when an
     hwspinlock is dynamically assigned: before it can be used to achieve
     mutual exclusion with a remote cpu, the id number should be communicated
     to the remote task with which we want to synchronize.
     Returns the hwspinlock id number, or -EINVAL if hwlock is null.

3. Typical usage

#include <linux/hwspinlock.h>
#include <linux/err.h>

int hwspinlock_example1(void)
{
	struct hwspinlock *hwlock;
	int ret;

	/* dynamically assign a hwspinlock */
	hwlock = hwspin_lock_request();
	if (!hwlock)
		...

	id = hwspin_lock_get_id(hwlock);
	/* probably need to communicate id to a remote processor now */

	/* take the lock, spin for 1 sec if it's already taken */
	ret = hwspin_lock_timeout(hwlock, 1000);
	if (ret)
		...

	/*
	 * we took the lock, do our thing now, but do NOT sleep
	 */

	/* release the lock */
	hwspin_unlock(hwlock);

	/* free the lock */
	ret = hwspin_lock_free(hwlock);
	if (ret)
		...

	return ret;
}

int hwspinlock_example2(void)
{
	struct hwspinlock *hwlock;
	int ret;

	/*
	 * assign a specific hwspinlock id - this should be called early
	 * by board init code.
	 */
	hwlock = hwspin_lock_request_specific(PREDEFINED_LOCK_ID);
	if (!hwlock)
		...

	/* try to take it, but don't spin on it */
	ret = hwspin_trylock(hwlock);
	if (!ret) {
		pr_info("lock is already taken\n");
		return -EBUSY;
	}

	/*
	 * we took the lock, do our thing now, but do NOT sleep
	 */

	/* release the lock */
	hwspin_unlock(hwlock);

	/* free the lock */
	ret = hwspin_lock_free(hwlock);
	if (ret)
		...

	return ret;
}


4. API for implementors

  int hwspin_lock_register(struct hwspinlock *hwlock);
   - to be called from the underlying platform-specific implementation, in
     order to register a new hwspinlock instance. Should be called from
     a process context (this function might sleep).
     Returns 0 on success, or appropriate error code on failure.

  struct hwspinlock *hwspin_lock_unregister(unsigned int id);
   - to be called from the underlying vendor-specific implementation, in order
     to unregister an existing (and unused) hwspinlock instance.
     Should be called from a process context (this function might sleep).
     Returns the address of hwspinlock on success, or NULL on error (e.g.
     if the hwspinlock is sill in use).

5. struct hwspinlock

This struct represents an hwspinlock instance. It is registered by the
underlying hwspinlock implementation using the hwspin_lock_register() API.

/**
 * struct hwspinlock - vendor-specific hwspinlock implementation
 *
 * @dev: underlying device, will be used with runtime PM api
 * @ops: vendor-specific hwspinlock handlers
 * @id: a global, unique, system-wide, index of the lock.
 * @lock: initialized and used by hwspinlock core
 */
struct hwspinlock {
	struct device *dev;
	const struct hwspinlock_ops *ops;
	int id;
	spinlock_t lock;
};

The underlying implementation is responsible to assign the dev, ops and id
members. The lock member, OTOH, is initialized and used by the hwspinlock
core.

6. Implementation callbacks

There are three possible callbacks defined in 'struct hwspinlock_ops':

struct hwspinlock_ops {
	int (*trylock)(struct hwspinlock *lock);
	void (*unlock)(struct hwspinlock *lock);
	void (*relax)(struct hwspinlock *lock);
};

The first two callbacks are mandatory:

The ->trylock() callback should make a single attempt to take the lock, and
return 0 on failure and 1 on success. This callback may _not_ sleep.

The ->unlock() callback releases the lock. It always succeed, and it, too,
may _not_ sleep.

The ->relax() callback is optional. It is called by hwspinlock core while
spinning on a lock, and can be used by the underlying implementation to force
a delay between two successive invocations of ->trylock(). It may _not_ sleep.