5.6. PSCI Power Domain Tree Structure

5.6.1. Requirements

  1. A platform must export the plat_get_aff_count() and plat_get_aff_state() APIs to enable the generic PSCI code to populate a tree that describes the hierarchy of power domains in the system. This approach is inflexible because a change to the topology requires a change in the code.

    It would be much simpler for the platform to describe its power domain tree in a data structure.

  2. The generic PSCI code generates MPIDRs in order to populate the power domain tree. It also uses an MPIDR to find a node in the tree. The assumption that a platform will use exactly the same MPIDRs as generated by the generic PSCI code is not scalable. The use of an MPIDR also restricts the number of levels in the power domain tree to four.

    Therefore, there is a need to decouple allocation of MPIDRs from the mechanism used to populate the power domain topology tree.

  3. The current arrangement of the power domain tree requires a binary search over the sibling nodes at a particular level to find a specified power domain node. During a power management operation, the tree is traversed from a ‘start’ to an ‘end’ power level. The binary search is required to find the node at each level. The natural way to perform this traversal is to start from a leaf node and follow the parent node pointer to reach the end level.

    Therefore, there is a need to define data structures that implement the tree in a way which facilitates such a traversal.

  4. The attributes of a core power domain differ from the attributes of power domains at higher levels. For example, only a core power domain can be identified using an MPIDR. There is no requirement to perform state coordination while performing a power management operation on the core power domain.

    Therefore, there is a need to implement the tree in a way which facilitates this distinction between a leaf and non-leaf node and any associated optimizations.


5.6.2. Design

5.6.2.1. Describing a power domain tree

To fulfill requirement 1., the existing platform APIs plat_get_aff_count() and plat_get_aff_state() have been removed. A platform must define an array of unsigned chars such that:

  1. The first entry in the array specifies the number of power domains at the highest power level implemented in the platform. This caters for platforms where the power domain tree does not have a single root node, for example, the FVP has two cluster power domains at the highest level (1).

  2. Each subsequent entry corresponds to a power domain and contains the number of power domains that are its direct children.

  3. The size of the array minus the first entry will be equal to the number of non-leaf power domains.

  4. The value in each entry in the array is used to find the number of entries to consider at the next level. The sum of the values (number of children) of all the entries at a level specifies the number of entries in the array for the next level.

The following example power domain topology tree will be used to describe the above text further. The leaf and non-leaf nodes in this tree have been numbered separately.

                               +-+
                               |0|
                               +-+
                              /   \
                             /     \
                            /       \
                           /         \
                          /           \
                         /             \
                        /               \
                       /                 \
                      /                   \
                     /                     \
                  +-+                       +-+
                  |1|                       |2|
                  +-+                       +-+
                 /   \                     /   \
                /     \                   /     \
               /       \                 /       \
              /         \               /         \
           +-+           +-+         +-+           +-+
           |3|           |4|         |5|           |6|
           +-+           +-+         +-+           +-+
  +---+-----+    +----+----|     +----+----+     +----+-----+-----+
  |   |     |    |    |    |     |    |    |     |    |     |     |
  |   |     |    |    |    |     |    |    |     |    |     |     |
  v   v     v    v    v    v     v    v    v     v    v     v     v
+-+  +-+   +-+  +-+  +-+  +-+   +-+  +-+  +-+   +-+  +--+  +--+  +--+
|0|  |1|   |2|  |3|  |4|  |5|   |6|  |7|  |8|   |9|  |10|  |11|  |12|
+-+  +-+   +-+  +-+  +-+  +-+   +-+  +-+  +-+   +-+  +--+  +--+  +--+

This tree is defined by the platform as the array described above as follows:

#define PLAT_NUM_POWER_DOMAINS       20
#define PLATFORM_CORE_COUNT          13
#define PSCI_NUM_NON_CPU_PWR_DOMAINS \
                   (PLAT_NUM_POWER_DOMAINS - PLATFORM_CORE_COUNT)

unsigned char plat_power_domain_tree_desc[] = { 1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 4};

5.6.2.2. Removing assumptions about MPIDRs used in a platform

To fulfill requirement 2., it is assumed that the platform assigns a unique number (core index) between 0 and PLAT_CORE_COUNT - 1 to each core power domain. MPIDRs could be allocated in any manner and will not be used to populate the tree.

plat_core_pos_by_mpidr(mpidr) will return the core index for the core corresponding to the MPIDR. It will return an error (-1) if an MPIDR is passed which is not allocated or corresponds to an absent core. The semantics of this platform API have changed since it is required to validate the passed MPIDR. It has been made a mandatory API as a result.

Another mandatory API, plat_my_core_pos() has been added to return the core index for the calling core. This API provides a more lightweight mechanism to get the index since there is no need to validate the MPIDR of the calling core.

The platform should assign the core indices (as illustrated in the diagram above) such that, if the core nodes are numbered from left to right, then the index for a core domain will be the same as the index returned by plat_core_pos_by_mpidr() or plat_my_core_pos() for that core. This relationship allows the core nodes to be allocated in a separate array (requirement 4.) during psci_setup() in such an order that the index of the core in the array is the same as the return value from these APIs.

5.6.2.2.1. Dealing with holes in MPIDR allocation

For platforms where the number of allocated MPIDRs is equal to the number of core power domains, for example, Juno and FVPs, the logic to convert an MPIDR to a core index should remain unchanged. Both Juno and FVP use a simple collision proof hash function to do this.

It is possible that on some platforms, the allocation of MPIDRs is not contiguous or certain cores have been disabled. This essentially means that the MPIDRs have been sparsely allocated, that is, the size of the range of MPIDRs used by the platform is not equal to the number of core power domains.

The platform could adopt one of the following approaches to deal with this scenario:

  1. Implement more complex logic to convert a valid MPIDR to a core index while maintaining the relationship described earlier. This means that the power domain tree descriptor will not describe any core power domains which are disabled or absent. Entries will not be allocated in the tree for these domains.

  2. Treat unallocated MPIDRs and disabled cores as absent but still describe them in the power domain descriptor, that is, the number of core nodes described is equal to the size of the range of MPIDRs allocated. This approach will lead to memory wastage since entries will be allocated in the tree but will allow use of a simpler logic to convert an MPIDR to a core index.

5.6.2.3. Traversing through and distinguishing between core and non-core power domains

To fulfill requirement 3 and 4, separate data structures have been defined to represent leaf and non-leaf power domain nodes in the tree.

/*******************************************************************************
 * The following two data structures implement the power domain tree. The tree
 * is used to track the state of all the nodes i.e. power domain instances
 * described by the platform. The tree consists of nodes that describe CPU power
 * domains i.e. leaf nodes and all other power domains which are parents of a
 * CPU power domain i.e. non-leaf nodes.
 ******************************************************************************/
typedef struct non_cpu_pwr_domain_node {
    /*
     * Index of the first CPU power domain node level 0 which has this node
     * as its parent.
     */
    unsigned int cpu_start_idx;

    /*
     * Number of CPU power domains which are siblings of the domain indexed
     * by 'cpu_start_idx' i.e. all the domains in the range 'cpu_start_idx
     * -> cpu_start_idx + ncpus' have this node as their parent.
     */
    unsigned int ncpus;

    /* Index of the parent power domain node */
    unsigned int parent_node;

    -----
} non_cpu_pd_node_t;

typedef struct cpu_pwr_domain_node {
    u_register_t mpidr;

    /* Index of the parent power domain node */
    unsigned int parent_node;

    -----
} cpu_pd_node_t;

The power domain tree is implemented as a combination of the following data structures.

non_cpu_pd_node_t psci_non_cpu_pd_nodes[PSCI_NUM_NON_CPU_PWR_DOMAINS];
cpu_pd_node_t psci_cpu_pd_nodes[PLATFORM_CORE_COUNT];

5.6.2.4. Populating the power domain tree

The populate_power_domain_tree() function in psci_setup.c implements the algorithm to parse the power domain descriptor exported by the platform to populate the two arrays. It is essentially a breadth-first-search. The nodes for each level starting from the root are laid out one after another in the psci_non_cpu_pd_nodes and psci_cpu_pd_nodes arrays as follows:

psci_non_cpu_pd_nodes -> [[Level 3 nodes][Level 2 nodes][Level 1 nodes]]
psci_cpu_pd_nodes -> [Level 0 nodes]

For the example power domain tree illustrated above, the psci_cpu_pd_nodes will be populated as follows. The value in each entry is the index of the parent node. Other fields have been ignored for simplicity.

      +-------------+     ^
CPU0  |      3      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU1  |      3      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU2  |      3      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU3  |      4      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU4  |      4      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU5  |      4      |     | PLATFORM_CORE_COUNT
      +-------------+     |
CPU6  |      5      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU7  |      5      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU8  |      5      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU9  |      6      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU10 |      6      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU11 |      6      |     |
      +-------------+     |
CPU12 |      6      |     v
      +-------------+

The psci_non_cpu_pd_nodes array will be populated as follows. The value in each entry is the index of the parent node.

      +-------------+     ^
PD0   |      -1     |     |
      +-------------+     |
PD1   |      0      |     |
      +-------------+     |
PD2   |      0      |     |
      +-------------+     |
PD3   |      1      |     | PLAT_NUM_POWER_DOMAINS -
      +-------------+     | PLATFORM_CORE_COUNT
PD4   |      1      |     |
      +-------------+     |
PD5   |      2      |     |
      +-------------+     |
PD6   |      2      |     |
      +-------------+     v

Each core can find its node in the psci_cpu_pd_nodes array using the plat_my_core_pos() function. When a core is turned on, the normal world provides an MPIDR. The plat_core_pos_by_mpidr() function is used to validate the MPIDR before using it to find the corresponding core node. The non-core power domain nodes do not need to be identified.


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