Composite Devices

This document is part of the Zircon Driver Development Kit documentation.

Introduction

In this section, we look at composite devices. A composite device is a device composed of other devices.

These devices address the case of hardware-level composition, in which a “device” (from the user's perspective) is implemented by several distinct hardware blocks.

Examples include:

• a touch panel composed of an I2C device and a GPIO,
• an ethernet device composed of a MAC chip and one or more PHYs, or
• an audio device composed of an audio controller and a set of codecs.

In these situations, the relationship of the hardware is known to the board driver at boot time (either statically or through a dynamic means, such as ACPI).

We'll use the astro-audio device for our examples:

This device features:

• an I2C bus interface
• two sets of GPIOs (one for fault, one for enable)
• MMIO (memory mapped I/O) for bulk data transfer, and
• an IRQ (interrupt request) line to generate interrupts to the driver.

Note that the ZX_PROTOCOL_I2C and ZX_PROTOCOL_GPIO protocols are used to transfer data; that is, I2C messages, and GPIO pin status are sent and received via the respective drivers.

The ZX_PROTOCOL_PDEV part is different. Here, the protocol is used only to grant access (the green checkmarks in the diagram) to the MMIO and IRQ; the actual MMIO data and interrupts are not handled by the PDEV; they're handled directly by the astro-audio driver itself.

Creating a composite device

To create a composite device, a number of data structures need to be set up.

Binding instructions

We need a number of binding instructions (zx_bind_inst_t) that tell us which devices we match. These binding instructions are the ones we've already discussed in the “Registration” topic in the introduction section.

For the astro-audio device, we have:

static const zx_bind_inst_t root_match[] = {
    BI_MATCH(),
};

static const zx_bind_inst_t i2c_match[] = {
    BI_ABORT_IF(NE, BIND_PROTOCOL, ZX_PROTOCOL_I2C),
    BI_ABORT_IF(NE, BIND_I2C_BUS_ID, ASTRO_I2C_3),
    BI_MATCH_IF(EQ, BIND_I2C_ADDRESS, I2C_AUDIO_CODEC_ADDR),
};

static const zx_bind_inst_t fault_gpio_match[] = {
    BI_ABORT_IF(NE, BIND_PROTOCOL, ZX_PROTOCOL_GPIO),
    BI_MATCH_IF(EQ, BIND_GPIO_PIN, GPIO_AUDIO_SOC_FAULT_L),
};

static const zx_bind_inst_t enable_gpio_match[] = {
    BI_ABORT_IF(NE, BIND_PROTOCOL, ZX_PROTOCOL_GPIO),
    BI_MATCH_IF(EQ, BIND_GPIO_PIN, GPIO_SOC_AUDIO_EN),
};

These binding instructions are used to find the devices.

We have four binding instruction arrays; a root_match[], which contains common information for the other three, and then the three devices: the I2C (i2c_match[]) device and the two GPIOs (fault_gpio_match[] and enable_gpio_match[]).

These instructions are then placed into an array of structures (device_fragment_part_t) which defines each fragment:

In the astro-audio device, we have:

static const device_fragment_part_t i2c_fragment[] = {
    { countof(root_match), root_match },
    { countof(i2c_match), i2c_match },
};

static const device_fragment_part_t fault_gpio_fragment[] = {
    { countof(root_match), root_match },
    { countof(fault_gpio_match), fault_gpio_match },
};

static const device_fragment_part_t enable_gpio_fragment[] = {
    { countof(root_match), root_match },
    { countof(enable_gpio_match), enable_gpio_match },
};

At this point, we have three fragment devices, i2c_fragment[], fault_gpio_fragment[], and enable_gpio_fragment[].

Fragment device matching rules

The following rules apply:

1. The first element must describe the root of the device tree — this is why we've used the mnemonic root_match identifier. Note that this requirement is likely to change, since most users provide an “always match” anyway.
2. The last element must describe the target device itself.
3. The remaining elements must match devices on the path from the root to the target device, in order. Some of those devices may be skipped, but every element must be matched.
4. Every device on the path that has a property from the range BIND_TOPO_START through BIND_TOPO_END (basically buses, like I2C and PCI) must be matched. These sequences of matches must be unique.

Finally, we combine them into an aggregate called fragments[] of type device_fragment_t:

This now gives us a single identifier, fragments[], that we can use when creating the composite device.

In astro-audio, this looks like:

static const device_fragment_t fragments[] = {
    { "i2c", countof(i2c_fragment), i2c_fragment },
    { "gpio-fault", countof(fault_gpio_fragment), fault_gpio_fragment },
    { "gpio-enable", countof(enable_gpio_fragment), enable_gpio_fragment },
};

Creating the device

For simple (non-composite) devices, we used device_add() (which we saw in the “Registration” section previously).

For composite devices, we use device_add_composite():

zx_status_t device_add_composite(
    zx_device_t* dev,
    const char* name,
    const zx_device_prop_t* props,
    size_t props_count,
    const device_fragment_t* fragments,
    size_t fragments_count,
    uint32_t coresident_device_index);

The arguments are as follows:

Argument	Meaning
dev	Parent device
name	The name of the device
props	Properties (see “Declaring a Driver”)
props_count	How many entries are in props
fragments	The individual fragment devices
fragments_count	How many entries are in fragments
coresident_device_index	Which driver host to use

The dev value must be the zx_device_t corresponding to the “sys” device (i.e., the platform bus driver's device).

Note that the coresident_device_index is used to indicate which driver host the new device should use. If you specify UINT32_MAX, the device will reside in a new driver host.

Note that astro-audio uses pbus_composite_device_add() rather than device_add_composite(). The difference is that pbus_composite_device_add() is an API provided by the platform bus driver that wraps device_add_composite() and inserts an additional fragment for ferrying over direct-access resources such as MMIO, IRQs, and BTIs.

Using a composite device

From a programming perspective, a composite device acts like an ordinary device that implements a ZX_PROTOCOL_COMPOSITE protocol. This allows you to access all of the individual fragments that make up the composite device.

The first thing to retrieve a device for each fragment. This is done via composite_get_fragment():

bool composite_get_fragment (
     composite_protocol_t* composite,
     const char* fragment_name,
     zx_device_t** fragment);

The arguments are as follows:

Argument	Meaning
composite	The protocol handle
fragment_name	The name of the fragment you wish to fetch
fragment	Pointer to zx_device_t representing the fragment

The program starts by calling device_get_protocol() to get the protocol for the composite driver:

composite_protocol_t composite;

auto status = device_get_protocol(parent, ZX_PROTOCOL_COMPOSITE, &composite);

Assuming there aren't any errors (status is equal to ZX_OK), the next step is to declare an array of zx_device_t* pointers to hold the devices, and call composite_get_fragment():

zx_device_t* fragment; bool found = composite_get_fragments(&composite, “fragment-name”, &fragment); if (!found) { zxlogf(ERROR, “could not get fragment-name”); return ZX_ERR_INTERNAL; }

> The name of fragment supplied to **device_get_fragment()**
> is the same as the one in **device_fragment_t** entries supplied to
> the **device_add_composite()** call by the board driver.

## Advanced Topics

Here we discuss some specialized / advanced topics.

### Composite devices and proxies

What's actually going on in the `astro-audio` driver is a little more complex than
initially shown:

![Figure: Composite hardware device using proxies](composite-proxy.png)

The fragments are bound to an internal driver (located in the
[//src/devices/internal/drivers/fragment][fragment] directory).

The driver handles proxying across process boundaries if necessary.
This proxying uses the `DEVICE_ADD_MUST_ISOLATE` mechanism (introduced
in the [Isolate devices][isolate] section).

When a device is added with `DEVICE_ADD_MUST_ISOLATE`, two devices
end up being created:
the normal device, in the same process as its parent, and a proxy.

The proxy is created in a new driver host; if the normal device's
driver is `normal.so`, then its driver is `normal.proxy.so`.
This driver is expected to implement a **create()** method which calls
**device_add()** and stashes the IPC channel it's given.
That channel will be used later for communicating with the normal
device in order to satisfy the proxy's children's requests.

The normal device implements the `rxrpc` hook, which is invoked by
the driver runtime each time a message is received from the channel
shared with the proxy.

So, in order to implement a new protocol proxy, one must modify the
`fragment.proxy.so` drivers to handle the desired protocol by sending
messages to the normal device, and modify the `fragment.so` driver to
service those messages appropriately.

The fragment proxy is implemented in
[/src/devices/internal/drivers/fragment/fragment-proxy.cc][fragment-proxy.cc], and
the other half in
[/src/devices/internal/drivers/fragment/fragment.cc][fragment.cc].

<!-- xrefs -->

[fragment-proxy.cc]: /src/devices/internal/drivers/fragment/fragment-proxy.cc
[fragment.cc]: /src/devices/internal/drivers/fragment/fragment.cc
[fragment]: /src/devices/internal/drivers/fragment/
[composite.banjo]: /zircon/system/banjo/fuchsia.hardware.composite/composite.banjo
[driver.h]: /src/lib/ddk/include/ddk/driver.h
[isolate]: driver-development.md#isolate-devices

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