1 .. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0+
3 How USB works with driver model
4 ===============================
9 Driver model USB support makes use of existing features but changes how
10 drivers are found. This document provides some information intended to help
11 understand how things work with USB in U-Boot when driver model is enabled.
14 Enabling driver model for USB
15 -----------------------------
17 A new CONFIG_DM_USB option is provided to enable driver model for USB. This
18 causes the USB uclass to be included, and drops the equivalent code in
19 usb.c. In particular the usb_init() function is then implemented by the
23 Support for EHCI and XHCI
24 -------------------------
26 So far OHCI is not supported. Both EHCI and XHCI drivers should be declared
27 as drivers in the USB uclass. For example:
31 static const struct udevice_id ehci_usb_ids[] = {
32 { .compatible = "nvidia,tegra20-ehci", .data = USB_CTLR_T20 },
33 { .compatible = "nvidia,tegra30-ehci", .data = USB_CTLR_T30 },
34 { .compatible = "nvidia,tegra114-ehci", .data = USB_CTLR_T114 },
38 U_BOOT_DRIVER(usb_ehci) = {
41 .of_match = ehci_usb_ids,
42 .of_to_plat = ehci_usb_of_to_plat,
43 .probe = tegra_ehci_usb_probe,
44 .remove = tegra_ehci_usb_remove,
46 .plat_auto = sizeof(struct usb_platdata),
47 .priv_auto = sizeof(struct fdt_usb),
48 .flags = DM_FLAG_ALLOC_PRIV_DMA,
51 Here ehci_usb_ids is used to list the controllers that the driver supports.
52 Each has its own data value. Controllers must be in the UCLASS_USB uclass.
54 The of_to_plat() method allows the controller driver to grab any
55 necessary settings from the device tree.
57 The ops here are ehci_usb_ops. All EHCI drivers will use these same ops in
58 most cases, since they are all EHCI-compatible. For EHCI there are also some
59 special operations that can be overridden when calling ehci_register().
61 The driver can use priv_auto to set the size of its private data.
62 This can hold run-time information needed by the driver for operation. It
63 exists when the device is probed (not when it is bound) and is removed when
64 the driver is removed.
66 Note that usb_platdata is currently only used to deal with setting up a bus
67 in USB device mode (OTG operation). It can be omitted if that is not
70 The driver's probe() method should do the basic controller init and then
71 call ehci_register() to register itself as an EHCI device. It should call
72 ehci_deregister() in the remove() method. Registering a new EHCI device
73 does not by itself cause the bus to be scanned.
75 The old ehci_hcd_init() function is no-longer used. Nor is it necessary to
76 set up the USB controllers from board init code. When 'usb start' is used,
77 each controller will be probed and its bus scanned.
79 XHCI works in a similar way.
85 The following primary data structures are in use:
88 This holds information about a device on the bus. All devices have
89 this structure, even the root hub. The controller itself does not
90 have this structure. You can access it for a device 'dev' with
91 dev_get_parent_priv(dev). It matches the old structure except that the
92 parent and child information is not present (since driver model
93 handles that). Once the device is set up, you can find the device
94 descriptor and current configuration descriptor in this structure.
96 - struct usb_platdata:
97 This holds platform data for a controller. So far this is only used
98 as a work-around for controllers which can act as USB devices in OTG
99 mode, since the gadget framework does not use driver model.
101 - struct usb_dev_platdata:
102 This holds platform data for a device. You can access it for a
103 device 'dev' with dev_get_parent_plat(dev). It holds the device
104 address and speed - anything that can be determined before the device
105 driver is actually set up. When probing the bus this structure is
106 used to provide essential information to the device driver.
108 - struct usb_bus_priv:
109 This is private information for each controller, maintained by the
110 controller uclass. It is mostly used to keep track of the next
111 device address to use.
113 Of these, only struct usb_device was used prior to driver model.
119 Given a controller, you know the bus - it is the one attached to the
120 controller. Each controller handles exactly one bus. Every controller has a
121 root hub attached to it. This hub, which is itself a USB device, can provide
122 one or more 'ports' to which additional devices can be attached. It is
123 possible to power up a hub and find out which of its ports have devices
126 Devices are given addresses starting at 1. The root hub is always address 1,
127 and from there the devices are numbered in sequence. The USB uclass takes
128 care of this numbering automatically during enumeration.
130 USB devices are enumerated by finding a device on a particular hub, and
131 setting its address to the next available address. The USB bus stretches out
132 in a tree structure, potentially with multiple hubs each with several ports
133 and perhaps other hubs. Some hubs will have their own power since otherwise
134 the 5V 500mA power supplied by the controller will not be sufficient to run
137 Enumeration in U-Boot takes a long time since devices are probed one at a
138 time, and each is given sufficient time to wake up and announce itself. The
139 timeouts are set for the slowest device.
141 Up to 127 devices can be on each bus. USB has four bus speeds: low
142 (1.5Mbps), full (12Mbps), high (480Mbps) which is only available with USB2
143 and newer (EHCI), and super (5Gbps) which is only available with USB3 and
144 newer (XHCI). If you connect a super-speed device to a high-speed hub, you
145 will only get high-speed.
151 As before driver model, messages can be sent using submit_bulk_msg() and the
152 like. These are now implemented by the USB uclass and route through the
153 controller drivers. Note that messages are not sent to the driver of the
154 device itself - i.e. they don't pass down the stack to the controller.
155 U-Boot simply finds the controller to which the device is attached, and sends
156 the message there with an appropriate 'pipe' value so it can be addressed
157 properly. Having said that, the USB device which should receive the message
158 is passed in to the driver methods, for use by sandbox. This design decision
159 is open for review and the code impact of changing it is small since the
160 methods are typically implemented by the EHCI and XHCI stacks.
162 Controller drivers (in UCLASS_USB) themselves provide methods for sending
163 each message type. For XHCI an additional alloc_device() method is provided
164 since XHCI needs to allocate a device context before it can even read the
167 These methods use a 'pipe' which is a collection of bit fields used to
168 describe the type of message, direction of transfer and the intended
169 recipient (device number).
175 USB devices are found using a simple algorithm which works through the
176 available hubs in a depth-first search. Devices can be in any uclass, but
177 are attached to a parent hub (or controller in the case of the root hub) and
178 so have parent data attached to them (this is struct usb_device).
180 By the time the device's probe() method is called, it is enumerated and is
181 ready to talk to the host.
183 The enumeration process needs to work out which driver to attach to each USB
184 device. It does this by examining the device class, interface class, vendor
185 ID, product ID, etc. See struct usb_driver_entry for how drivers are matched
186 with USB devices - you can use the USB_DEVICE() macro to declare a USB
187 driver. For example, usb_storage.c defines a USB_DEVICE() to handle storage
188 devices, and it will be used for all USB devices which match.
192 Technical details on enumeration flow
193 -------------------------------------
195 It is useful to understand precisely how a USB bus is enumerating to avoid
196 confusion when dealing with USB devices.
198 Device initialisation happens roughly like this:
200 - At some point the 'usb start' command is run
201 - This calls usb_init() which works through each controller in turn
202 - The controller is probed(). This does no enumeration.
203 - Then usb_scan_bus() is called. This calls usb_scan_device() to scan the
204 (only) device that is attached to the controller - a root hub
205 - usb_scan_device() sets up a fake struct usb_device and calls
206 usb_setup_device(), passing the port number to be scanned, in this case
208 - usb_setup_device() first calls usb_prepare_device() to set the device
209 address, then usb_select_config() to select the first configuration
210 - at this point the device is enumerated but we do not have a real struct
211 udevice for it. But we do have the descriptor in struct usb_device so we can
212 use this to figure out what driver to use
213 - back in usb_scan_device(), we call usb_find_child() to try to find an
214 existing device which matches the one we just found on the bus. This can
215 happen if the device is mentioned in the device tree, or if we previously
216 scanned the bus and so the device was created before
217 - if usb_find_child() does not find an existing device, we call
218 usb_find_and_bind_driver() which tries to bind one
219 - usb_find_and_bind_driver() searches all available USB drivers (declared
220 with USB_DEVICE()). If it finds a match it binds that driver to create a
222 - If it does not, it binds a generic driver. A generic driver is good enough
223 to allow access to the device (sending it packets, etc.) but all
224 functionality will need to be implemented outside the driver model.
225 - in any case, when usb_find_child() and/or usb_find_and_bind_driver() are
226 done, we have a device with the correct uclass. At this point we want to
228 - first we store basic information about the new device (address, port,
229 speed) in its parent platform data. We cannot store it its private data
230 since that will not exist until the device is probed.
231 - then we call device_probe() which probes the device
232 - the first probe step is actually the USB controller's (or USB hubs's)
233 child_pre_probe() method. This gets called before anything else and is
234 intended to set up a child device ready to be used with its parent bus. For
235 USB this calls usb_child_pre_probe() which grabs the information that was
236 stored in the parent platform data and stores it in the parent private data
237 (which is struct usb_device, a real one this time). It then calls
238 usb_select_config() again to make sure that everything about the device is
240 - note that we have called usb_select_config() twice. This is inefficient
241 but the alternative is to store additional information in the platform data.
242 The time taken is minimal and this way is simpler
243 - at this point the device is set up and ready for use so far as the USB
244 subsystem is concerned
245 - the device's probe() method is then called. It can send messages and do
246 whatever else it wants to make the device work.
248 Note that the first device is always a root hub, and this must be scanned to
249 find any devices. The above steps will have created a hub (UCLASS_USB_HUB),
250 given it address 1 and set the configuration.
252 For hubs, the hub uclass has a post_probe() method. This means that after
253 any hub is probed, the uclass gets to do some processing. In this case
254 usb_hub_post_probe() is called, and the following steps take place:
256 - usb_hub_post_probe() calls usb_hub_scan() to scan the hub, which in turn
257 calls usb_hub_configure()
258 - hub power is enabled
259 - we loop through each port on the hub, performing the same steps for each
260 - first, check if there is a device present. This happens in
261 usb_hub_port_connect_change(). If so, then usb_scan_device() is called to
262 scan the device, passing the appropriate port number.
263 - you will recognise usb_scan_device() from the steps above. It sets up the
264 device ready for use. If it is a hub, it will scan that hub before it
265 continues here (recursively, depth-first)
266 - once all hub ports are scanned in this way, the hub is ready for use and
267 all of its downstream devices also
268 - additional controllers are scanned in the same way
270 The above method has some nice properties:
272 - the bus enumeration happens by virtue of driver model's natural device flow
273 - most logic is in the USB controller and hub uclasses; the actual device
274 drivers do not need to know they are on a USB bus, at least so far as
276 - hub scanning happens automatically after a hub is probed
282 USB hubs are scanned as in the section above. While hubs have their own
283 uclass, they share some common elements with controllers:
285 - they both attach private data to their children (struct usb_device,
286 accessible for a child with dev_get_parent_priv(child))
287 - they both use usb_child_pre_probe() to set up their children as proper USB
291 Example - Mass Storage
292 ----------------------
294 As an example of a USB device driver, see usb_storage.c. It uses its own
295 uclass and declares itself as follows:
299 U_BOOT_DRIVER(usb_mass_storage) = {
300 .name = "usb_mass_storage",
301 .id = UCLASS_MASS_STORAGE,
302 .of_match = usb_mass_storage_ids,
303 .probe = usb_mass_storage_probe,
306 static const struct usb_device_id mass_storage_id_table[] = {
307 { .match_flags = USB_DEVICE_ID_MATCH_INT_CLASS,
308 .bInterfaceClass = USB_CLASS_MASS_STORAGE},
309 { } /* Terminating entry */
312 USB_DEVICE(usb_mass_storage, mass_storage_id_table);
314 The USB_DEVICE() macro attaches the given table of matching information to
315 the given driver. Note that the driver is declared in U_BOOT_DRIVER() as
316 'usb_mass_storage' and this must match the first parameter of USB_DEVICE.
318 When usb_find_and_bind_driver() is called on a USB device with the
319 bInterfaceClass value of USB_CLASS_MASS_STORAGE, it will automatically find
320 this driver and use it.
323 Counter-example: USB Ethernet
324 -----------------------------
326 As an example of the old way of doing things, see usb_ether.c. When the bus
327 is scanned, all Ethernet devices will be created as generic USB devices (in
328 uclass UCLASS_USB_DEV_GENERIC). Then, when the scan is completed,
329 usb_host_eth_scan() will be called. This looks through all the devices on
330 each bus and manually figures out which are Ethernet devices in the ways of
333 In fact, usb_ether should be moved to driver model. Each USB Ethernet driver
334 (e.g drivers/usb/eth/asix.c) should include a USB_DEVICE() declaration, so
335 that it will be found as part of normal USB enumeration. Then, instead of a
336 generic USB driver, a real (driver-model-aware) driver will be used. Since
337 Ethernet now supports driver model, this should be fairly easy to achieve,
338 and then usb_ether.c and the usb_host_eth_scan() will melt away.
344 All driver model uclasses must have tests and USB is no exception. To
345 achieve this, a sandbox USB controller is provided. This can make use of
346 emulation drivers which pretend to be USB devices. Emulations are provided
347 for a hub and a flash stick. These are enough to create a pretend USB bus
348 (defined by the sandbox device tree sandbox.dts) which can be scanned and
351 Tests in test/dm/usb.c make use of this feature. It allows much of the USB
352 stack to be tested without real hardware being needed.
354 Here is an example device tree fragment:
359 compatible = "sandbox,usb";
361 compatible = "usb-hub";
362 usb,device-class = <USB_CLASS_HUB>;
364 compatible = "sandbox,usb-hub";
365 #address-cells = <1>;
369 compatible = "sandbox,usb-flash";
370 sandbox,filepath = "flash.bin";
376 This defines a single controller, containing a root hub (which is required).
377 The hub is emulated by a hub emulator, and the emulated hub has a single
378 flash stick to emulate on one of its ports.
380 When 'usb start' is used, the following 'dm tree' output will be available::
383 usb_hub [ + ] `-- hub
384 usb_emul [ + ] |-- hub-emul
385 usb_emul [ + ] | `-- flash-stick
386 usb_mass_st [ + ] `-- usb_mass_storage
389 This may look confusing. Most of it mirrors the device tree, but the
390 'usb_mass_storage' device is not in the device tree. This is created by
391 usb_find_and_bind_driver() based on the USB_DRIVER in usb_storage.c. While
392 'flash-stick' is the emulation device, 'usb_mass_storage' is the real U-Boot
393 USB device driver that talks to it.
399 It is pretty uncommon to have a large USB bus with lots of hubs on an
400 embedded system. In fact anything other than a root hub is uncommon. Still
401 it would be possible to speed up enumeration in two ways:
403 - breadth-first search would allow devices to be reset and probed in
404 parallel to some extent
405 - enumeration could be lazy, in the sense that we could enumerate just the
406 root hub at first, then only progress to the next 'level' when a device is
407 used that we cannot find. This could be made easier if the devices were
408 statically declared in the device tree (which is acceptable for production
409 boards where the same, known, things are on each bus).
411 But in common cases the current algorithm is sufficient.
413 Other things that need doing:
414 - Convert usb_ether to use driver model as described above
415 - Test that keyboards work (and convert to driver model)
416 - Move the USB gadget framework to driver model
417 - Implement OHCI in driver model
418 - Implement USB PHYs in driver model
419 - Work out a clever way to provide lazy init for USB devices