William,
I must be missing something, because I see remoteproc as a
communication and management mechanism for code on CPUs other than the
main processor. The actual code that you are running on those
subsidiary processors does not depend on the mechanism you use for
talking to it (other than the parts that do the talking, of course).
In particular, running ADC, I2C or GPIO should be the same, regardless
whether you use remoteproc or not—what changes is how you tell this
code what to do.
Does it make sense to you?
What it is suppose to do hs always made sense to me. How exactlyit is done, is another story.
with uio_prussdrv, you have a driver module, which sets various things up, loads the PRU binary, and then enables / runs the PRU(s). On the PRU side, the code runs, communicates with various peripherals as needed( usually one, if any ), and then the PRU code performs it’s function as specified in assembly. Sometimes, dumping data into ddr3( as per the example ), and sometimes not.
Anyway, the above is a fairly rough description, but how each aspect communicates with the other is abundantly clear in code. Some have even attempted to describe what happens, but if you ask me inadequately. No matter though the code is pretty clear.
With remoteproc, the Documentation/*txt documentation is very minimal, and does not describe the process in which it works very well. However, the code is fairly clear as to how the ARM, and PRU sides communicate with one another( rpmsg ). However, what is not clear, is how the PRU code actually manipulates the physics on system hardware. Additionally, to confuse matters even more, the assembler has changed to a compiler( C - clpru ), and there is something like “map” files for hardware configuration that do not seem to be very well documented. Just some examples, that are not very clear as to how, or why these are even needed.
So here I am, attempting to learn a few things new to me. Documentation is very poor, TI refuses to answer any questions in relation to PRUs on their e2e forums(" go to beagleboard.org google groups . . ." ). I spend several days learning about everything PRU related, and immediately pick up the concept of uio_prussdrv. Still having a hard time with the TI C compiler on the PRU side of things, largely due to these mysterious configuration files. But no matter, the TI Assembler is fairly straight forward, the PRU instruction set is a minimal Cortex M3 set, and easy.
Anyway, for context of my competence level. Not long ago I wrote a set of processes / applications to read from the CANBUS in realtime, decode the CANBUS data, and shuffle this decoded data out over a websocket. This required me learning several aspect of Linux systems programming from scratch. Including POSIX shared memory files, socketCAN, and process spawning / management. All from scratch, since this was my first major Linux application. All of this including reverse engineering parts of the high level CANBUS protocol took me around a month. The point here is, I have no problem picking up / understanding technologies, and / or API’s, libraries, and such that I’ve previously have had no experience with. So long as there is at least a little decent documentation on the subject, or I can talk to someone who does understand things that may be confusing to me.
Additionally, I’m not saying exactly that remoteproc can’t be made to work, because obviously it can. What I am saying is that since the concept is so poorly documented, is still in experimental phase, and now I learn that it is slower than traditional prussdrv drivers / methods. That it’s just not worth my time to even attempt to get working.
That and I have spent some time ( roughly a week ), just because I’m the type that does not mind experimenting with new technology in software. But only new technology that is not too argumentative. As my time is far too valuable to me than to screw around with technology that honestly makes very little sense to me.
Also for what it is worth. remoteproc / rpmsg in my own mind is far more useful in cases where a processor may have multiple application / general purpose cores. In that one core can be made to run Linux, while the others can be made to run bare metal - Simultaneously. Less useful on the case of the PRUs since we already have a software layer that is well documented, works very well, and quite honestly far superior to remoteproc / rpmsg in this case. If nothing else. Speed.
