Common bindings for device graphs General concept --------------- The hierarchical organisation of the device tree is well suited to describe control flow to devices, but there can be more complex connections between devices that work together to form a logical compound device, following an arbitrarily complex graph. There already is a simple directed graph between devices tree nodes using phandle properties pointing to other nodes to describe connections that can not be inferred from device tree parent-child relationships. The device tree graph bindings described herein abstract more complex devices that can have multiple specifiable ports, each of which can be linked to one or more ports of other devices. These common bindings do not contain any information about the direction or type of the connections, they just map their existence. Specific properties may be described by specialized bindings depending on the type of connection. To see how this binding applies to video pipelines, for example, see Documentation/devicetree/bindings/media/video-interfaces.txt. Here the ports describe data interfaces, and the links between them are the connecting data buses. A single port with multiple connections can correspond to multiple devices being connected to the same physical bus. Organisation of ports and endpoints ----------------------------------- Ports are described by child 'port' nodes contained in the device node. Each port node contains an 'endpoint' subnode for each remote device port connected to this port. If a single port is connected to more than one remote device, an 'endpoint' child node must be provided for each link. If more than one port is present in a device node or there is more than one endpoint at a port, or a port node needs to be associated with a selected hardware interface, a common scheme using '#address-cells', '#size-cells' and 'reg' properties is used to number the nodes. device { ... #address-cells = <1>; #size-cells = <0>; port@0 { #address-cells = <1>; #size-cells = <0>; reg = <0>; endpoint@0 { reg = <0>; ... }; endpoint@1 { reg = <1>; ... }; }; port@1 { reg = <1>; endpoint { ... }; }; }; All 'port' nodes can be grouped under an optional 'ports' node, which allows to specify #address-cells, #size-cells properties for the 'port' nodes independently from any other child device nodes a device might have. device { ... ports { #address-cells = <1>; #size-cells = <0>; port@0 { ... endpoint@0 { ... }; endpoint@1 { ... }; }; port@1 { ... }; }; }; Links between endpoints ----------------------- Each endpoint should contain a 'remote-endpoint' phandle property that points to the corresponding endpoint in the port of the remote device. In turn, the remote endpoint should contain a 'remote-endpoint' property. If it has one, it must not point to anything other than the local endpoint. Two endpoints with their 'remote-endpoint' phandles pointing at each other form a link between the containing ports. device-1 { port { device_1_output: endpoint { remote-endpoint = <&device_2_input>; }; }; }; device-2 { port { device_2_input: endpoint { remote-endpoint = <&device_1_output>; }; }; }; Required properties ------------------- If there is more than one 'port' or more than one 'endpoint' node or 'reg' property present in the port and/or endpoint nodes then the following properties are required in a relevant parent node: - #address-cells : number of cells required to define port/endpoint identifier, should be 1. - #size-cells : should be zero. Optional endpoint properties ---------------------------- - remote-endpoint: phandle to an 'endpoint' subnode of a remote device node.