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Asahi Linux: Updates galore! November 2022 Progress Report (UPDATED)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 23, 2022,
updated Nov 24, 2022

Until now, Asahi Linux has only supported USB2 on the Thunderbolt ports. While the hardware USB2/3 controllers are reasonably well supported by Linux already, and the Type-C port controllers are also based on existing partially-supported hardware, there was one big missing piece: the PHY driver.

M1 and later Apple Silicon machines use Apple-designed (or Apple-customized?) PHY hardware called “Apple Type-C PHY” (ATCPHY) that supports USB3, DisplayPort, and TB3/USB4 modes. This piece of hardware is in charge of turning the USB3/DP/TB protocol data into signals on the wires. Since we’re dealing with very high-speed signals (up to 20Gbps per pair), the PHY has to be very complex and there are a lot of analog knobs that need to be individually calibrated. With USB2, you can get away with having universal settings that work for every device, but that won’t work for USB3 and other higher-speed protocols!

The job of the PHY driver is to configure the physical hardware with settings specific to your particular chip, which are calibrated at the factory, and to manage reconfiguration of the entire PHY hardware as different modes are switched in and out. In practice, this means a huge number of “magic” register pokes, including some with variable data that comes from factory-written eFuses. Sven has been working hard reverse engineer all of this, and this new release includes his new ATCPHY driver with support for USB3 mode!

In addition to driving the PHY itself, the PHY driver has to very carefully coordinate with the USB controller driver (dwc3) and the Type C port controller driver (tipd). When devices are connected and disconnected, there is a complex dance of negotiation that has to happen that eventually leads to a decision on what protocols to run over which wires. This information has to be communicated to the PHY (including things like what orientation you plugged the cable in) so it can route its signals appropriately, and only after everything has been initialized in the right order can the USB controller be brought up. To make matters even trickier, the hardware is quite temperamental and if anything goes wrong the controller is likely to just lock up or fail to work!

We think USB3 mode should be pretty solid, but you can expect some glitches when doing things like hotplugging devices quickly at this point. The good news is that, since mode-switching when you hotplug the cable involves resetting almost everything, any transient issues can usually be solved by just disconnecting and reconnecting the device. Actual USB3 operation should be solid once connected, but do let us know if you encounter any issues.

Read on

Also: Asahi Linux November 2022 progress report [LWN.net]

UPDATE

Also here:

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