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authorWolfram Sang <wsa+renesas@sang-engineering.com>2024-06-20 11:41:58 +0200
committerBartosz Golaszewski <bartosz.golaszewski@linaro.org>2024-07-01 10:54:11 +0200
commit7828b7bbbf2074dd7dd14d87f50bc5ce9036d692 (patch)
tree4274f1036aab287eff744f22947dad42ee21d061 /Documentation/dev-tools
parentDocumentation: gpio: Reconfiguration with unset direction (uAPI v2) (diff)
downloadlinux-7828b7bbbf2074dd7dd14d87f50bc5ce9036d692.tar.xz
linux-7828b7bbbf2074dd7dd14d87f50bc5ce9036d692.zip
gpio: add sloppy logic analyzer using polling
This is a sloppy logic analyzer using GPIOs. It comes with a script to isolate a CPU for polling. While this is definitely not a production level analyzer, it can be a helpful first view when remote debugging. Read the documentation for details. Signed-off-by: Wolfram Sang <wsa+renesas@sang-engineering.com> Reviewed-by: Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20240620094159.6785-2-wsa+renesas@sang-engineering.com [Bartosz: moved the Kconfig entry into a different category] Signed-off-by: Bartosz Golaszewski <bartosz.golaszewski@linaro.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/dev-tools')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/dev-tools/gpio-sloppy-logic-analyzer.rst93
-rw-r--r--Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst1
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diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/gpio-sloppy-logic-analyzer.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/gpio-sloppy-logic-analyzer.rst
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@@ -0,0 +1,93 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+=============================================
+Linux Kernel GPIO based sloppy logic analyzer
+=============================================
+
+:Author: Wolfram Sang
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+This document briefly describes how to run the GPIO based in-kernel sloppy
+logic analyzer running on an isolated CPU.
+
+The sloppy logic analyzer will utilize a few GPIO lines in input mode on a
+system to rapidly sample these digital lines, which will, if the Nyquist
+criteria is met, result in a time series log with approximate waveforms as they
+appeared on these lines. One way to use it is to analyze external traffic
+connected to these GPIO lines with wires (i.e. digital probes), acting as a
+common logic analyzer.
+
+Another feature is to snoop on on-chip peripherals if the I/O cells of these
+peripherals can be used in GPIO input mode at the same time as they are being
+used as inputs or outputs for the peripheral. That means you could e.g. snoop
+I2C traffic without any wiring (if your hardware supports it). In the pin
+control subsystem such pin controllers are called "non-strict": a certain pin
+can be used with a certain peripheral and as a GPIO input line at the same
+time.
+
+Note that this is a last resort analyzer which can be affected by latencies,
+non-deterministic code paths and non-maskable interrupts. It is called 'sloppy'
+for a reason. However, for e.g. remote development, it may be useful to get a
+first view and aid further debugging.
+
+Setup
+=====
+
+Your kernel must have CONFIG_DEBUG_FS and CONFIG_CPUSETS enabled. Ideally, your
+runtime environment does not utilize cpusets otherwise, then isolation of a CPU
+core is easiest. If you do need cpusets, check that helper script for the
+sloppy logic analyzer does not interfere with your other settings.
+
+Tell the kernel which GPIOs are used as probes. For a Device Tree based system,
+you need to use the following bindings. Because these bindings are only for
+debugging, there is no official schema::
+
+ i2c-analyzer {
+ compatible = "gpio-sloppy-logic-analyzer";
+ probe-gpios = <&gpio6 21 GPIO_OPEN_DRAIN>, <&gpio6 4 GPIO_OPEN_DRAIN>;
+ probe-names = "SCL", "SDA";
+ };
+
+Note that you must provide a name for every GPIO specified. Currently a
+maximum of 8 probes are supported. 32 are likely possible but are not
+implemented yet.
+
+Usage
+=====
+
+The logic analyzer is configurable via files in debugfs. However, it is
+strongly recommended to not use them directly, but to use the script
+``tools/gpio/gpio-sloppy-logic-analyzer``. Besides checking parameters more
+extensively, it will isolate the CPU core so you will have the least
+disturbance while measuring.
+
+The script has a help option explaining the parameters. For the above DT
+snippet which analyzes an I2C bus at 400kHz on a Renesas Salvator-XS board, the
+following settings are used: The isolated CPU shall be CPU1 because it is a big
+core in a big.LITTLE setup. Because CPU1 is the default, we don't need a
+parameter. The bus speed is 400kHz. So, the sampling theorem says we need to
+sample at least at 800kHz. However, falling edges of both signals in an I2C
+start condition happen faster, so we need a higher sampling frequency, e.g.
+``-s 1500000`` for 1.5MHz. Also, we don't want to sample right away but wait
+for a start condition on an idle bus. So, we need to set a trigger to a falling
+edge on SDA while SCL stays high, i.e. ``-t 1H+2F``. Last is the duration, let
+us assume 15ms here which results in the parameter ``-d 15000``. So,
+altogether::
+
+ gpio-sloppy-logic-analyzer -s 1500000 -t 1H+2F -d 15000
+
+Note that the process will return you back to the prompt but a sub-process is
+still sampling in the background. Unless this has finished, you will not find a
+result file in the current or specified directory. For the above example, we
+will then need to trigger I2C communication::
+
+ i2cdetect -y -r <your bus number>
+
+Result is a .sr file to be consumed with PulseView or sigrok-cli from the free
+`sigrok`_ project. It is a zip file which also contains the binary sample data
+which may be consumed by other software. The filename is the logic analyzer
+instance name plus a since-epoch timestamp.
+
+.. _sigrok: https://sigrok.org/
diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst
index efa49cdc8e2e..6971ed581c08 100644
--- a/Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/dev-tools/index.rst
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ Documentation/dev-tools/testing-overview.rst
kunit/index
ktap
checkuapi
+ gpio-sloppy-logic-analyzer
.. only:: subproject and html