[PATCH] ISA DMA API documentation

Documentation for how the ISA DMA controller is handled in the kernel.

Signed-off-by: Pierre Ossman <drzeus@drzeus.cx>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 151 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/DMA-ISA-LPC.txt b/Documentation/DMA-ISA-LPC.txt
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+                        DMA with ISA and LPC devices
+                        ============================
+
+                      Pierre Ossman <drzeus@drzeus.cx>
+
+This document describes how to do DMA transfers using the old ISA DMA
+controller. Even though ISA is more or less dead today the LPC bus
+uses the same DMA system so it will be around for quite some time.
+
+Part I - Headers and dependencies
+---------------------------------
+
+To do ISA style DMA you need to include two headers:
+
+#include <linux/dma-mapping.h>
+#include <asm/dma.h>
+
+The first is the generic DMA API used to convert virtual addresses to
+physical addresses (see Documentation/DMA-API.txt for details).
+
+The second contains the routines specific to ISA DMA transfers. Since
+this is not present on all platforms make sure you construct your
+Kconfig to be dependent on ISA_DMA_API (not ISA) so that nobody tries
+to build your driver on unsupported platforms.
+
+Part II - Buffer allocation
+---------------------------
+
+The ISA DMA controller has some very strict requirements on which
+memory it can access so extra care must be taken when allocating
+buffers.
+
+(You usually need a special buffer for DMA transfers instead of
+transferring directly to and from your normal data structures.)
+
+The DMA-able address space is the lowest 16 MB of _physical_ memory.
+Also the transfer block may not cross page boundaries (which are 64
+or 128 KiB depending on which channel you use).
+
+In order to allocate a piece of memory that satisfies all these
+requirements you pass the flag GFP_DMA to kmalloc.
+
+Unfortunately the memory available for ISA DMA is scarce so unless you
+allocate the memory during boot-up it's a good idea to also pass
+__GFP_REPEAT and __GFP_NOWARN to make the allocater try a bit harder.
+
+(This scarcity also means that you should allocate the buffer as
+early as possible and not release it until the driver is unloaded.)
+
+Part III - Address translation
+------------------------------
+
+To translate the virtual address to a physical use the normal DMA
+API. Do _not_ use isa_virt_to_phys() even though it does the same
+thing. The reason for this is that the function isa_virt_to_phys()
+will require a Kconfig dependency to ISA, not just ISA_DMA_API which
+is really all you need. Remember that even though the DMA controller
+has its origins in ISA it is used elsewhere.
+
+Note: x86_64 had a broken DMA API when it came to ISA but has since
+been fixed. If your arch has problems then fix the DMA API instead of
+reverting to the ISA functions.
+
+Part IV - Channels
+------------------
+
+A normal ISA DMA controller has 8 channels. The lower four are for
+8-bit transfers and the upper four are for 16-bit transfers.
+
+(Actually the DMA controller is really two separate controllers where
+channel 4 is used to give DMA access for the second controller (0-3).
+This means that of the four 16-bits channels only three are usable.)
+
+You allocate these in a similar fashion as all basic resources:
+
+extern int request_dma(unsigned int dmanr, const char * device_id);
+extern void free_dma(unsigned int dmanr);
+
+The ability to use 16-bit or 8-bit transfers is _not_ up to you as a
+driver author but depends on what the hardware supports. Check your
+specs or test different channels.
+
+Part V - Transfer data
+----------------------
+
+Now for the good stuff, the actual DMA transfer. :)
+
+Before you use any ISA DMA routines you need to claim the DMA lock
+using claim_dma_lock(). The reason is that some DMA operations are
+not atomic so only one driver may fiddle with the registers at a
+time.
+
+The first time you use the DMA controller you should call
+clear_dma_ff(). This clears an internal register in the DMA
+controller that is used for the non-atomic operations. As long as you
+(and everyone else) uses the locking functions then you only need to
+reset this once.
+
+Next, you tell the controller in which direction you intend to do the
+transfer using set_dma_mode(). Currently you have the options
+DMA_MODE_READ and DMA_MODE_WRITE.
+
+Set the address from where the transfer should start (this needs to
+be 16-bit aligned for 16-bit transfers) and how many bytes to
+transfer. Note that it's _bytes_. The DMA routines will do all the
+required translation to values that the DMA controller understands.
+
+The final step is enabling the DMA channel and releasing the DMA
+lock.
+
+Once the DMA transfer is finished (or timed out) you should disable
+the channel again. You should also check get_dma_residue() to make
+sure that all data has been transfered.
+
+Example:
+
+int flags, residue;
+
+flags = claim_dma_lock();
+
+clear_dma_ff();
+
+set_dma_mode(channel, DMA_MODE_WRITE);
+set_dma_addr(channel, phys_addr);
+set_dma_count(channel, num_bytes);
+
+dma_enable(channel);
+
+release_dma_lock(flags);
+
+while (!device_done());
+
+flags = claim_dma_lock();
+
+dma_disable(channel);
+
+residue = dma_get_residue(channel);
+if (residue != 0)
+        printk(KERN_ERR "driver: Incomplete DMA transfer!"
+                " %d bytes left!\n", residue);
+
+release_dma_lock(flags);
+
+Part VI - Suspend/resume
+------------------------
+
+It is the driver's responsibility to make sure that the machine isn't
+suspended while a DMA transfer is in progress. Also, all DMA settings
+are lost when the system suspends so if your driver relies on the DMA
+controller being in a certain state then you have to restore these
+registers upon resume.