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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/driver-api/firmware/firmware_cache.rst')
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diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/firmware_cache.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/firmware_cache.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..2210e5bfb332 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/firmware_cache.rst @@ -0,0 +1,51 @@ +============== +Firmware cache +============== + +When Linux resumes from suspend some device drivers require firmware lookups to +re-initialize devices. During resume there may be a period of time during which +firmware lookups are not possible, during this short period of time firmware +requests will fail. Time is of essence though, and delaying drivers to wait for +the root filesystem for firmware delays user experience with device +functionality. In order to support these requirements the firmware +infrastructure implements a firmware cache for device drivers for most API +calls, automatically behind the scenes. + +The firmware cache makes using certain firmware API calls safe during a device +driver's suspend and resume callback. Users of these API calls needn't cache +the firmware by themselves for dealing with firmware loss during system resume. + +The firmware cache works by requesting for firmware prior to suspend and +caching it in memory. Upon resume device drivers using the firmware API will +have access to the firmware immediately, without having to wait for the root +filesystem to mount or dealing with possible race issues with lookups as the +root filesystem mounts. + +Some implementation details about the firmware cache setup: + +* The firmware cache is setup by adding a devres entry for each device that + uses all synchronous call except :c:func:`request_firmware_into_buf`. + +* If an asynchronous call is used the firmware cache is only set up for a + device if if the second argument (uevent) to request_firmware_nowait() is + true. When uevent is true it requests that a kobject uevent be sent to + userspace for the firmware request. For details refer to the Fackback + mechanism documented below. + +* If the firmware cache is determined to be needed as per the above two + criteria the firmware cache is setup by adding a devres entry for the + device making the firmware request. + +* The firmware devres entry is maintained throughout the lifetime of the + device. This means that even if you release_firmware() the firmware cache + will still be used on resume from suspend. + +* The timeout for the fallback mechanism is temporarily reduced to 10 seconds + as the firmware cache is set up during suspend, the timeout is set back to + the old value you had configured after the cache is set up. + +* Upon suspend any pending non-uevent firmware requests are killed to avoid + stalling the kernel, this is done with kill_requests_without_uevent(). Kernel + calls requiring the non-uevent therefore need to implement their own firmware + cache mechanism but must not use the firmware API on suspend. + |