kernel_samsung_msm8974/Documentation/ata/ahci_msm.txt

Introduction
============
The SATA Host Controller developed for Qualcomm SoC is used
to facilitate SATA storage devices that connect to SoC through a
standard SATA cable interface. The MSM Advanced Host Controller
Interface (AHCI) driver interfaces with the generic Linux AHCI driver
and communicates with the AHCI controller for data movement between
system memory and SATA devices (persistent storage).

Hardware description
====================
Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) is a communication
protocol designed to transfer data between a computer and storage
devices (Hard Disk Drive(HDD), Solid State Drives(SSD) etc.).
First generation (Gen1) SATA interfaces communicate at a serial
rate of 1.5Gb/s and use low-voltage differential signaling on
serial links. With 8b-10b encoding, the effective data throughput
for Gen1 interface is 150MB/s.

The SATA host controller in Qualcomm chipsets adheres to the AHCI 1.3
specification which describes the interface between system software
and the host controller, as well as the functional behavior needed
for software to communicate with the SATA host controller.

The SATA PHY hardware macro in Qualcomm chipsets adheres to the
SATA 3.0 specification with Gen1 serial interface. This is used to
serialize and de-serialize data and communicates with SATA HDD. Also,
the PHY can detect SATA HDD during hot swap and raise an interrupt to
the CPU through AHCI controller to notify about the detection/removal.

The following figure shows the SATA architecture block diagram as
implemented in MSM chipsets.

                        +---------+
                        |SATA Disk|
                        |  Drive  |
                        +---------+
                           ^   ^
                        Tx |   | Rx
                           v   v
+--------------+     +--------------+     +-----------+
| System Memory|     |   SATA PHY   |     |    CPU    |
+--------------+     +--------------+     +-----------+
      ^                 ^       ^           ^     ^
      |                 |       |           |     |
      |                 v       v           |     |
      |            +------------------+(Interrupt)|
      |            | SATA CONTROLLER  |-----+     |
      |            +------------------+           |
      |                 ^       ^                 |
      |                 |       |                 |
      v                 v       v                 v
 <--------------------------------------------------------->
<             System Fabric (Control and Data)              >
 <--------------------------------------------------------->

Some controller capabilities:
- Supports 64-bit addressing
- Supports native command queueing (upto 32 commands)
- Supports First-party DMA to move data to and from system memory
- ATA-7 command set compliant
- Port multiplier support for some chipsets
- Supports aggressive power management (partial, slumber modes)
- Supports asynchronous notification

Software description
====================
The SATA driver uses the generic interface to read/write data to
the Hard Disk Drive (HDD). It uses following components in Linux
to interface with the generic block layer which then interfaces
with file system or user processes.

1) AHCI platform Driver (includes MSM-specific glue driver)
2) LIBAHCI
3) LIBATA
4) SCSI

AHCI platform driver registers as a device driver for platform
device registered during SoC board initialization. It is responsible
for platform specific tasks like PHY configuration, clock initial-
ization, claiming memory resources etc. Also, implements certain
functionality that deviates from the standard specification.

Library "LIBAHCI" implements software layer functionality described
in the standard AHCI specification. It interfaces with the LIBATA
framework to execute SATA the command set. It converts ATA task files
into AHCI command descriptors and pass them to the controller for
execution. It handles controller interrupts and sends command
completion events to the upper layers. It implements a controller-
specific reset and recover mechanism in case of errors. It implements
link power management policies - partial, slumber modes, runtime power
management and platform power management. It abstracts the low-level
controller details from the LIBATA framework.

"LIBATA" is a helper library for implementing ATA and SATA command
protocol as described in standard ATA and SATA specifications. It
builds read/write requests from SCSI commands and pass them to the
low-level controller driver (LLD). It handshakes with the SATA
device using standard commands to understand capabilities and carry
out device configurations. It interfaces with the SCSI layer to manage
underlying disks. It manages different devices connected to each host
port using a port multiplier. Also, it manages the link PHY component,
the interconnect interface and any external interface (cables, etc.)
that follow the SATA electrical specification.

The SCSI layer is a helper library for translating generic block layer
commands to SCSI commands and pass them on to the LIBATA framework.
Certain generic stuff like device scan, media change, and hot plug
detection are handled. This layer handles all types of SCSI devices,
and SATA storage devices are one class of SCSI devices. It also provides
the IOCTL interface to manage disks from userspace.

Following is the logical code flow:

                        +------------------------+
                        | File System (ext4 etc.)|
                        +------------------------+
                                   ^
                                   |
                                   v
                        +------------------------+
                        |  Generic Block Layer   |
                        +------------------------+
                                   ^
                                   |
                                   v
                        +------------------------+
                        |       SCSI Layer       |
                        +------------------------+
                                   ^
                                   |
                                   v
                        +------------------------+
                        |     LIBATA library     |
                        +------------------------+
                                   ^
                                   |
                                   v
                        +------------------------+
                        |     LIBAHCI library    |
                        +------------------------+
                                   ^
                                   |
                                   v
                        +------------------------+
                        | AHCI platform driver + |
                        | MSM AHCI glue driver   |
                        +------------------------+

Design
======
The MSM AHCI driver acts as a glue driver for the Linux
AHCI controller driver. It provides the following functionality:
- Registers as a driver for msm_sata device which has an AHCI-compliant
  controller and PHY as resources.
- Registers an AHCI platform device in the probe function providing
  ahci platform data
- AHCI platform data consists of the following callbacks:
	- init
		o PHY resource acquisition
		o Clock and voltage regulator initialization
		o PHY calibration
	- exit
		o PHY power down
		o Clock and voltage regulator turn off
	- suspend
	- resume
		o Sequence described in the next section.
- The Linux AHCI platform driver then probes the AHCI device and
  initializes it according to the standard AHCI specification.
- The SATA drive is detected as part of scsi_scan_host() called by
  LIBAHCI after controller initialization.

Power Management
================
Various power modes are supported by this driver.

Platform suspend/resume:
During suspend:
- PHY analog blocks are powered down
- Controller and PHY is kept in Power-on-Reset (POR) mode
- Clocks and voltage regulators are gated

During resume:
- Clocks and voltage regulators are ungated
- PHY is powered up and calibrated to functional mode
- Controller is re-initialized to process commands.

Runtime suspend/resume:
- Execute the same steps as in platform suspend/resume.
- Runtime suspend/resume is disabled by default due to regressions
  in hot-plug detection (specification limitation). The users can
  enable runtime power management with following shell commands.

  # cd /sys/devices/platform/msm_sata.0/ahci.0/
  # echo auto > ./power/control
  # echo auto > ./ata1/power/control
  # echo auto > ./ata1/host0/target0:0:0/0:0:0:0/power/control

  Note: The device will be runtime-suspended only when user unmounts
  all the partitions.

Link power management (defined by AHCI 1.3 specification):
- Automatic low power mode transition are supported.
- AHCI supports two power modes: partial and slumber.
- Software uses Inteface Communication Control (ICC) bits in AHCI
  register space to enable automatic partial/slumber state.
- Partial mode:
	- Software asserts automatic partial mode when the use
	  case demands low latency resume.
	- Upon receiving partial mode signal, PHY disables byte clocks
	  and re-enables them during resume and thus has low latency.
- Slumber mode:
	- Software asserts automatic slumber mode when the use
	  case demands low power consumption and can withstand
	  high resume latencies.
	- Upon receiving slumber mode signal, PHY disables byte
	  clocks and some internal circuitry. Upon resume PHY
	  enables byte clocks and reacquires the PLL lock.
- Once the software enables partial/slumber modes, the transitioning
  into these modes are automatic and is handled by hardware without
  software intervention while the controller is idle with no outstanding
  commands to process.

- The Linux AHCI link power management defines three modes:
	- max_performance (default mode)
	  Doesn't allow partial/slumber transition when host is idle.
	- medium_power (Partial mode)
	  Following shell commands are used to enable this mode:

	  # cd /sys/devices/platform/msm_sata.0/ahci.0/
	  # echo medium_power > ./ata1/host0/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy

	- min_power (Slumber mode)
	  Following shell commands are used to enable this mode:

	  # cd /sys/devices/platform/msm_sata.0/ahci.0/
	  # echo min_power > ./ata1/host0/scsi_host/host0/link_power_management_policy

SMP/multi-core
==============
The MSM AHCI driver hooks only init, exit, suspend, resume callbacks to
the AHCI driver which are serialized by design and hence the driver, which
is inherently SMP safe.

Security
========
None.

Performance
===========
The theoretical performance with Gen1 SATA PHY is 150MB/s (8b/10b encoding).
The performance is dependent on various factors, mainly:
- Capabilities of the external SATA hard disk connected to the MSM SATA port
- Various system bus frequencies and system loads
- System memory capabilities
- Benchmark test applications that collect performance numbers

One example of the maximum performance achieved in a specific system
configuration follows:

Benchmark: Iozone sequential performance
Block size: 128K
File size: 1GB
Platform: APQ8064 V2 CDP
CPU Governor: Performance

SanDisk SSD (i100 64GB):
Read - 135MB/s
Write - 125MB/s

Western Digital HDD (WD20EURS 2TB):
Read - 121MB/s
Write - 98MB/s

Interface
=========
The MSM AHCI controller driver provides function pointers as the
required interface to the Linux AHCI controller driver. The main
routines implemented are init, exit, suspend, and resume for handling
MSM-specific initialization, freeing of resources on exit, and
MSM-specific power management tweaks during suspend power collapse.

Driver parameters
=================
None.

Config options
==============
Config option SATA_AHCI_MSM in drivers/ata/Kconfig enables this driver.

Dependencies
============
The MSM AHCI controller driver is dependent on Linux AHCI driver,
Linux ATA framework, Linux SCSI framework and Linux generic block layer.

While configuring the kernel, the following options should be set:

- CONFIG_BLOCK
- CONFIG_SCSI
- CONFIG_ATA
- CONFIG_SATA_AHCI_PLATFORM

User space utilities
====================
Any user space component that can mount a block device can be used to
read/write data into persistent storage. However, at the time of this
writing there are no utilities that author is aware of that can manage
h/w from userspace.

Other
=====
None.

Known issues
============
None.

To do
=====
- Device tree support.
- MSM bus frequency voting support.