On Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 02:00:37PM +0200, Frank van der Linden wrote:
> On FreeBSD and NetBSD bus_dma, what you do is basically
> the following:
> 
> 	* FreeBSD creates bus_dma tags from parent tags, and stores
> 	  some parameters in them. We don't do that. Just use the
> 	  bus_dma tag passed in through the attach argument structure.
> 	  But, remember some of the parameters passed to the FreeBSD
> 	  bus_dmatag_create call, they are used in some NetBSD
> 	  bus_dma calls explicitly (where FreeBSD only passes the tag)
> 
> 	* The callback function for the bus_dmamap_load function in
> 	  FreeBSD: just inline the callback function from the FreeBSD
> 	  source directly after the bus_dmamap_load call in NetBSD.

Thanks indeed for the advice, but I'm still in fairly deep water here.
Perhaps Sam or yourself could tell me if I'm understanding the current
(i.e. FreeBSD-designed) code correctly:

* There is a device-wide DMA tag: sc->sc_dmat.
* These is a device-wide area of DMA memory, described by sc->sc_ddmamap,
  created, alloc'd and loaded early in ath_desc_alloc. A pointer to the
  "KVA mapping" (whatever that is) of this memory is placedin sc->sc_desc 
  by bus_dma_alloc. The callback from bus_dma_load puts a pointer to
  the pysical address of the memory into sc->sc_desc_paddr.
* There is an area of memory, provided by malloc(), pointed to by
  sc->sc_bufptr.
* The following then takes place:

	ds = sc->sc_desc;
	bf = sc->sc_bufptr;
	[...]
        TAILQ_INIT(&sc->sc_rxbuf);
        for (i = 0; i < ATH_RXBUF; i++, bf++, ds++) {
                bf->bf_desc = ds;
                bf->bf_daddr = sc->sc_desc_paddr +
                    ((caddr_t)ds - (caddr_t)sc->sc_desc);
                error = bus_dmamap_create(sc->sc_dmat, BUS_DMA_NOWAIT,
                                          &bf->bf_dmamap);
                if (error != 0)
                        break;
                TAILQ_INSERT_TAIL(&sc->sc_rxbuf, bf, bf_list);
        }


  Three questions at this point:

  - How does the kernel know what size to alloc for the DMA memory
    at sc->sc_desc? FreeBSD's bus_dmamap_alloc does not take a size,
    wheras NetBSD's does. What size should I use?
  - How do I get the equivalent of a "KVA mapping" using NetBSD? I would
    need that in order to make a correspondence between descriptors and
    buffers.
  - Why does this code create a seperate DMA map for each buffer? Surely
    they are all the same (i.e. each call to dmamap_create returns an
    identical data structure)? But if so, why not just bcopy them? 

That is the immediate problem I'm struggling with. However, there are
a couple of showstoppers that are becoming apparent:

* We have no taskqueue API, or anything remotely like it. 
* We don't have mutexes, although we have simple locks. The taskqueue
  API in FreeBSD requires mutexes, although a cursory glance suggests
  that it would be possible to substitute simple locks for mutexes
  (in particular, it uses no recursive mutexes).

Changing if_ath.c to avoid using these features would amount to rewriting
most of the driver, which is beyond my spare time if not ability. Although
I might be able to hack FreeBSD's taskqueue_subr.c to use locks, and get it
to compile, (a) doing so would make it very difficult to debug the driver, 
because many, many more things could go wrong and (b) adding an important,
general API is something that should be done _right_.

I'm willing to keep plugging away at this, but I'm not going to spend
hours fooling around with bus_dma stuff, only for it all to be in vain 
due to a lack of taskqueues.

-- 
Bruce J.A. Nourish <bjan+JUNK@bjan.net>