1 ===============================
2 PINCTRL (PIN CONTROL) subsystem
3 ===============================
5 This document outlines the pin control subsystem in Linux
7 This subsystem deals with:
9 - Enumerating and naming controllable pins
11 - Multiplexing of pins, pads, fingers (etc) see below for details
13 - Configuration of pins, pads, fingers (etc), such as software-controlled
14 biasing and driving mode specific pins, such as pull-up, pull-down, open drain,
22 - A PIN CONTROLLER is a piece of hardware, usually a set of registers, that
23 can control PINs. It may be able to multiplex, bias, set load capacitance,
24 set drive strength, etc. for individual pins or groups of pins.
26 - PINS are equal to pads, fingers, balls or whatever packaging input or
27 output line you want to control and these are denoted by unsigned integers
28 in the range 0..maxpin. This numberspace is local to each PIN CONTROLLER, so
29 there may be several such number spaces in a system. This pin space may
30 be sparse - i.e. there may be gaps in the space with numbers where no
33 When a PIN CONTROLLER is instantiated, it will register a descriptor to the
34 pin control framework, and this descriptor contains an array of pin descriptors
35 describing the pins handled by this specific pin controller.
37 Here is an example of a PGA (Pin Grid Array) chip seen from underneath::
57 To register a pin controller and name all the pins on this package we can do
62 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinctrl.h>
64 const struct pinctrl_pin_desc foo_pins[] = {
69 PINCTRL_PIN(61, "F1"),
70 PINCTRL_PIN(62, "G1"),
71 PINCTRL_PIN(63, "H1"),
74 static struct pinctrl_desc foo_desc = {
77 .npins = ARRAY_SIZE(foo_pins),
81 int __init foo_init(void)
85 struct pinctrl_dev *pctl;
87 error = pinctrl_register_and_init(&foo_desc, <PARENT>, NULL, &pctl);
91 return pinctrl_enable(pctl);
94 To enable the pinctrl subsystem and the subgroups for PINMUX and PINCONF and
95 selected drivers, you need to select them from your machine's Kconfig entry,
96 since these are so tightly integrated with the machines they are used on.
97 See ``arch/arm/mach-ux500/Kconfig`` for an example.
99 Pins usually have fancier names than this. You can find these in the datasheet
100 for your chip. Notice that the core pinctrl.h file provides a fancy macro
101 called ``PINCTRL_PIN()`` to create the struct entries. As you can see the pins are
102 enumerated from 0 in the upper left corner to 63 in the lower right corner.
103 This enumeration was arbitrarily chosen, in practice you need to think
104 through your numbering system so that it matches the layout of registers
105 and such things in your driver, or the code may become complicated. You must
106 also consider matching of offsets to the GPIO ranges that may be handled by
109 For a padding with 467 pads, as opposed to actual pins, the enumeration will
110 be like this, walking around the edge of the chip, which seems to be industry
111 standard too (all these pads had names, too)::
125 Many controllers need to deal with groups of pins, so the pin controller
126 subsystem has a mechanism for enumerating groups of pins and retrieving the
127 actual enumerated pins that are part of a certain group.
129 For example, say that we have a group of pins dealing with an SPI interface
130 on { 0, 8, 16, 24 }, and a group of pins dealing with an I2C interface on pins
133 These two groups are presented to the pin control subsystem by implementing
134 some generic ``pinctrl_ops`` like this:
138 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinctrl.h>
140 static const unsigned int spi0_pins[] = { 0, 8, 16, 24 };
141 static const unsigned int i2c0_pins[] = { 24, 25 };
143 static const struct pingroup foo_groups[] = {
144 PINCTRL_PINGROUP("spi0_grp", spi0_pins, ARRAY_SIZE(spi0_pins)),
145 PINCTRL_PINGROUP("i2c0_grp", i2c0_pins, ARRAY_SIZE(i2c0_pins)),
148 static int foo_get_groups_count(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev)
150 return ARRAY_SIZE(foo_groups);
153 static const char *foo_get_group_name(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
154 unsigned int selector)
156 return foo_groups[selector].name;
159 static int foo_get_group_pins(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
160 unsigned int selector,
161 const unsigned int **pins,
164 *pins = foo_groups[selector].pins;
165 *npins = foo_groups[selector].npins;
169 static struct pinctrl_ops foo_pctrl_ops = {
170 .get_groups_count = foo_get_groups_count,
171 .get_group_name = foo_get_group_name,
172 .get_group_pins = foo_get_group_pins,
175 static struct pinctrl_desc foo_desc = {
177 .pctlops = &foo_pctrl_ops,
180 The pin control subsystem will call the ``.get_groups_count()`` function to
181 determine the total number of legal selectors, then it will call the other functions
182 to retrieve the name and pins of the group. Maintaining the data structure of
183 the groups is up to the driver, this is just a simple example - in practice you
184 may need more entries in your group structure, for example specific register
185 ranges associated with each group and so on.
191 Pins can sometimes be software-configured in various ways, mostly related
192 to their electronic properties when used as inputs or outputs. For example you
193 may be able to make an output pin high impedance (Hi-Z), or "tristate" meaning it is
194 effectively disconnected. You may be able to connect an input pin to VDD or GND
195 using a certain resistor value - pull up and pull down - so that the pin has a
196 stable value when nothing is driving the rail it is connected to, or when it's
199 Pin configuration can be programmed by adding configuration entries into the
200 mapping table; see section `Board/machine configuration`_ below.
202 The format and meaning of the configuration parameter, PLATFORM_X_PULL_UP
203 above, is entirely defined by the pin controller driver.
205 The pin configuration driver implements callbacks for changing pin
206 configuration in the pin controller ops like this:
210 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinconf.h>
211 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinctrl.h>
213 #include "platform_x_pindefs.h"
215 static int foo_pin_config_get(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
217 unsigned long *config)
219 struct my_conftype conf;
221 /* ... Find setting for pin @ offset ... */
223 *config = (unsigned long) conf;
226 static int foo_pin_config_set(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
228 unsigned long config)
230 struct my_conftype *conf = (struct my_conftype *) config;
233 case PLATFORM_X_PULL_UP:
239 static int foo_pin_config_group_get(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
241 unsigned long *config)
246 static int foo_pin_config_group_set(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
248 unsigned long config)
253 static struct pinconf_ops foo_pconf_ops = {
254 .pin_config_get = foo_pin_config_get,
255 .pin_config_set = foo_pin_config_set,
256 .pin_config_group_get = foo_pin_config_group_get,
257 .pin_config_group_set = foo_pin_config_group_set,
260 /* Pin config operations are handled by some pin controller */
261 static struct pinctrl_desc foo_desc = {
263 .confops = &foo_pconf_ops,
266 Interaction with the GPIO subsystem
267 ===================================
269 The GPIO drivers may want to perform operations of various types on the same
270 physical pins that are also registered as pin controller pins.
272 First and foremost, the two subsystems can be used as completely orthogonal,
273 see the section named `Pin control requests from drivers`_ and
274 `Drivers needing both pin control and GPIOs`_ below for details. But in some
275 situations a cross-subsystem mapping between pins and GPIOs is needed.
277 Since the pin controller subsystem has its pinspace local to the pin controller
278 we need a mapping so that the pin control subsystem can figure out which pin
279 controller handles control of a certain GPIO pin. Since a single pin controller
280 may be muxing several GPIO ranges (typically SoCs that have one set of pins,
281 but internally several GPIO silicon blocks, each modelled as a struct
282 gpio_chip) any number of GPIO ranges can be added to a pin controller instance
287 #include <linux/gpio/driver.h>
289 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinctrl.h>
291 struct gpio_chip chip_a;
292 struct gpio_chip chip_b;
294 static struct pinctrl_gpio_range gpio_range_a = {
303 static struct pinctrl_gpio_range gpio_range_b = {
312 int __init foo_init(void)
314 struct pinctrl_dev *pctl;
316 pinctrl_add_gpio_range(pctl, &gpio_range_a);
317 pinctrl_add_gpio_range(pctl, &gpio_range_b);
321 So this complex system has one pin controller handling two different
322 GPIO chips. "chip a" has 16 pins and "chip b" has 8 pins. The "chip a" and
323 "chip b" have different ``pin_base``, which means a start pin number of the
326 The GPIO range of "chip a" starts from the GPIO base of 32 and actual
327 pin range also starts from 32. However "chip b" has different starting
328 offset for the GPIO range and pin range. The GPIO range of "chip b" starts
329 from GPIO number 48, while the pin range of "chip b" starts from 64.
331 We can convert a gpio number to actual pin number using this ``pin_base``.
332 They are mapped in the global GPIO pin space at:
335 - GPIO range : [32 .. 47]
336 - pin range : [32 .. 47]
338 - GPIO range : [48 .. 55]
339 - pin range : [64 .. 71]
341 The above examples assume the mapping between the GPIOs and pins is
342 linear. If the mapping is sparse or haphazard, an array of arbitrary pin
343 numbers can be encoded in the range like this:
347 static const unsigned int range_pins[] = { 14, 1, 22, 17, 10, 8, 6, 2 };
349 static struct pinctrl_gpio_range gpio_range = {
354 .npins = ARRAY_SIZE(range_pins),
358 In this case the ``pin_base`` property will be ignored. If the name of a pin
359 group is known, the pins and npins elements of the above structure can be
360 initialised using the function ``pinctrl_get_group_pins()``, e.g. for pin
365 pinctrl_get_group_pins(pctl, "foo", &gpio_range.pins, &gpio_range.npins);
367 When GPIO-specific functions in the pin control subsystem are called, these
368 ranges will be used to look up the appropriate pin controller by inspecting
369 and matching the pin to the pin ranges across all controllers. When a
370 pin controller handling the matching range is found, GPIO-specific functions
371 will be called on that specific pin controller.
373 For all functionalities dealing with pin biasing, pin muxing etc, the pin
374 controller subsystem will look up the corresponding pin number from the passed
375 in gpio number, and use the range's internals to retrieve a pin number. After
376 that, the subsystem passes it on to the pin control driver, so the driver
377 will get a pin number into its handled number range. Further it is also passed
378 the range ID value, so that the pin controller knows which range it should
381 Calling ``pinctrl_add_gpio_range()`` from pinctrl driver is DEPRECATED. Please see
382 section 2.1 of ``Documentation/devicetree/bindings/gpio/gpio.txt`` on how to bind
383 pinctrl and gpio drivers.
389 These calls use the pinmux_* naming prefix. No other calls should use that
396 PINMUX, also known as padmux, ballmux, alternate functions or mission modes
397 is a way for chip vendors producing some kind of electrical packages to use
398 a certain physical pin (ball, pad, finger, etc) for multiple mutually exclusive
399 functions, depending on the application. By "application" in this context
400 we usually mean a way of soldering or wiring the package into an electronic
401 system, even though the framework makes it possible to also change the function
404 Here is an example of a PGA (Pin Grid Array) chip seen from underneath::
408 8 | o | o o o o o o o
410 7 | o | o o o o o o o
412 6 | o | o o o o o o o
414 5 | o | o | o o o o o o
416 4 o o o o o o | o | o
418 3 o o o o o o | o | o
420 2 o o o o o o | o | o
421 +-------+-------+-------+---+---+
422 1 | o o | o o | o o | o | o |
423 +-------+-------+-------+---+---+
425 This is not tetris. The game to think of is chess. Not all PGA/BGA packages
426 are chessboard-like, big ones have "holes" in some arrangement according to
427 different design patterns, but we're using this as a simple example. Of the
428 pins you see some will be taken by things like a few VCC and GND to feed power
429 to the chip, and quite a few will be taken by large ports like an external
430 memory interface. The remaining pins will often be subject to pin multiplexing.
432 The example 8x8 PGA package above will have pin numbers 0 through 63 assigned
433 to its physical pins. It will name the pins { A1, A2, A3 ... H6, H7, H8 } using
434 pinctrl_register_pins() and a suitable data set as shown earlier.
436 In this 8x8 BGA package the pins { A8, A7, A6, A5 } can be used as an SPI port
437 (these are four pins: CLK, RXD, TXD, FRM). In that case, pin B5 can be used as
438 some general-purpose GPIO pin. However, in another setting, pins { A5, B5 } can
439 be used as an I2C port (these are just two pins: SCL, SDA). Needless to say,
440 we cannot use the SPI port and I2C port at the same time. However in the inside
441 of the package the silicon performing the SPI logic can alternatively be routed
442 out on pins { G4, G3, G2, G1 }.
444 On the bottom row at { A1, B1, C1, D1, E1, F1, G1, H1 } we have something
445 special - it's an external MMC bus that can be 2, 4 or 8 bits wide, and it will
446 consume 2, 4 or 8 pins respectively, so either { A1, B1 } are taken or
447 { A1, B1, C1, D1 } or all of them. If we use all 8 bits, we cannot use the SPI
448 port on pins { G4, G3, G2, G1 } of course.
450 This way the silicon blocks present inside the chip can be multiplexed "muxed"
451 out on different pin ranges. Often contemporary SoC (systems on chip) will
452 contain several I2C, SPI, SDIO/MMC, etc silicon blocks that can be routed to
453 different pins by pinmux settings.
455 Since general-purpose I/O pins (GPIO) are typically always in shortage, it is
456 common to be able to use almost any pin as a GPIO pin if it is not currently
457 in use by some other I/O port.
463 The purpose of the pinmux functionality in the pin controller subsystem is to
464 abstract and provide pinmux settings to the devices you choose to instantiate
465 in your machine configuration. It is inspired by the clk, GPIO and regulator
466 subsystems, so devices will request their mux setting, but it's also possible
467 to request a single pin for e.g. GPIO.
471 - FUNCTIONS can be switched in and out by a driver residing with the pin
472 control subsystem in the ``drivers/pinctrl`` directory of the kernel. The
473 pin control driver knows the possible functions. In the example above you can
474 identify three pinmux functions, one for spi, one for i2c and one for mmc.
476 - FUNCTIONS are assumed to be enumerable from zero in a one-dimensional array.
477 In this case the array could be something like: { spi0, i2c0, mmc0 }
478 for the three available functions.
480 - FUNCTIONS have PIN GROUPS as defined on the generic level - so a certain
481 function is *always* associated with a certain set of pin groups, could
482 be just a single one, but could also be many. In the example above the
483 function i2c is associated with the pins { A5, B5 }, enumerated as
484 { 24, 25 } in the controller pin space.
486 The Function spi is associated with pin groups { A8, A7, A6, A5 }
487 and { G4, G3, G2, G1 }, which are enumerated as { 0, 8, 16, 24 } and
488 { 38, 46, 54, 62 } respectively.
490 Group names must be unique per pin controller, no two groups on the same
491 controller may have the same name.
493 - The combination of a FUNCTION and a PIN GROUP determine a certain function
494 for a certain set of pins. The knowledge of the functions and pin groups
495 and their machine-specific particulars are kept inside the pinmux driver,
496 from the outside only the enumerators are known, and the driver core can
499 - The name of a function with a certain selector (>= 0)
500 - A list of groups associated with a certain function
501 - That a certain group in that list to be activated for a certain function
503 As already described above, pin groups are in turn self-descriptive, so
504 the core will retrieve the actual pin range in a certain group from the
507 - FUNCTIONS and GROUPS on a certain PIN CONTROLLER are MAPPED to a certain
508 device by the board file, device tree or similar machine setup configuration
509 mechanism, similar to how regulators are connected to devices, usually by
510 name. Defining a pin controller, function and group thus uniquely identify
511 the set of pins to be used by a certain device. (If only one possible group
512 of pins is available for the function, no group name need to be supplied -
513 the core will simply select the first and only group available.)
515 In the example case we can define that this particular machine shall
516 use device spi0 with pinmux function fspi0 group gspi0 and i2c0 on function
517 fi2c0 group gi2c0, on the primary pin controller, we get mappings
523 {"map-spi0", spi0, pinctrl0, fspi0, gspi0},
524 {"map-i2c0", i2c0, pinctrl0, fi2c0, gi2c0},
527 Every map must be assigned a state name, pin controller, device and
528 function. The group is not compulsory - if it is omitted the first group
529 presented by the driver as applicable for the function will be selected,
530 which is useful for simple cases.
532 It is possible to map several groups to the same combination of device,
533 pin controller and function. This is for cases where a certain function on
534 a certain pin controller may use different sets of pins in different
537 - PINS for a certain FUNCTION using a certain PIN GROUP on a certain
538 PIN CONTROLLER are provided on a first-come first-serve basis, so if some
539 other device mux setting or GPIO pin request has already taken your physical
540 pin, you will be denied the use of it. To get (activate) a new setting, the
541 old one has to be put (deactivated) first.
543 Sometimes the documentation and hardware registers will be oriented around
544 pads (or "fingers") rather than pins - these are the soldering surfaces on the
545 silicon inside the package, and may or may not match the actual number of
546 pins/balls underneath the capsule. Pick some enumeration that makes sense to
547 you. Define enumerators only for the pins you can control if that makes sense.
551 We assume that the number of possible function maps to pin groups is limited by
552 the hardware. I.e. we assume that there is no system where any function can be
553 mapped to any pin, like in a phone exchange. So the available pin groups for
554 a certain function will be limited to a few choices (say up to eight or so),
555 not hundreds or any amount of choices. This is the characteristic we have found
556 by inspecting available pinmux hardware, and a necessary assumption since we
557 expect pinmux drivers to present *all* possible function vs pin group mappings
564 The pinmux core takes care of preventing conflicts on pins and calling
565 the pin controller driver to execute different settings.
567 It is the responsibility of the pinmux driver to impose further restrictions
568 (say for example infer electronic limitations due to load, etc.) to determine
569 whether or not the requested function can actually be allowed, and in case it
570 is possible to perform the requested mux setting, poke the hardware so that
573 Pinmux drivers are required to supply a few callback functions, some are
574 optional. Usually the ``.set_mux()`` function is implemented, writing values into
575 some certain registers to activate a certain mux setting for a certain pin.
577 A simple driver for the above example will work by setting bits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5
578 into some register named MUX to select a certain function with a certain
579 group of pins would work something like this:
583 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinctrl.h>
584 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinmux.h>
586 static const unsigned int spi0_0_pins[] = { 0, 8, 16, 24 };
587 static const unsigned int spi0_1_pins[] = { 38, 46, 54, 62 };
588 static const unsigned int i2c0_pins[] = { 24, 25 };
589 static const unsigned int mmc0_1_pins[] = { 56, 57 };
590 static const unsigned int mmc0_2_pins[] = { 58, 59 };
591 static const unsigned int mmc0_3_pins[] = { 60, 61, 62, 63 };
593 static const struct pingroup foo_groups[] = {
594 PINCTRL_PINGROUP("spi0_0_grp", spi0_0_pins, ARRAY_SIZE(spi0_0_pins)),
595 PINCTRL_PINGROUP("spi0_1_grp", spi0_1_pins, ARRAY_SIZE(spi0_1_pins)),
596 PINCTRL_PINGROUP("i2c0_grp", i2c0_pins, ARRAY_SIZE(i2c0_pins)),
597 PINCTRL_PINGROUP("mmc0_1_grp", mmc0_1_pins, ARRAY_SIZE(mmc0_1_pins)),
598 PINCTRL_PINGROUP("mmc0_2_grp", mmc0_2_pins, ARRAY_SIZE(mmc0_2_pins)),
599 PINCTRL_PINGROUP("mmc0_3_grp", mmc0_3_pins, ARRAY_SIZE(mmc0_3_pins)),
602 static int foo_get_groups_count(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev)
604 return ARRAY_SIZE(foo_groups);
607 static const char *foo_get_group_name(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
608 unsigned int selector)
610 return foo_groups[selector].name;
613 static int foo_get_group_pins(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev, unsigned int selector,
614 const unsigned int **pins,
617 *pins = foo_groups[selector].pins;
618 *npins = foo_groups[selector].npins;
622 static struct pinctrl_ops foo_pctrl_ops = {
623 .get_groups_count = foo_get_groups_count,
624 .get_group_name = foo_get_group_name,
625 .get_group_pins = foo_get_group_pins,
628 static const char * const spi0_groups[] = { "spi0_0_grp", "spi0_1_grp" };
629 static const char * const i2c0_groups[] = { "i2c0_grp" };
630 static const char * const mmc0_groups[] = { "mmc0_1_grp", "mmc0_2_grp", "mmc0_3_grp" };
632 static const struct pinfunction foo_functions[] = {
633 PINCTRL_PINFUNCTION("spi0", spi0_groups, ARRAY_SIZE(spi0_groups)),
634 PINCTRL_PINFUNCTION("i2c0", i2c0_groups, ARRAY_SIZE(i2c0_groups)),
635 PINCTRL_PINFUNCTION("mmc0", mmc0_groups, ARRAY_SIZE(mmc0_groups)),
638 static int foo_get_functions_count(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev)
640 return ARRAY_SIZE(foo_functions);
643 static const char *foo_get_fname(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev, unsigned int selector)
645 return foo_functions[selector].name;
648 static int foo_get_groups(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev, unsigned int selector,
649 const char * const **groups,
650 unsigned int * const ngroups)
652 *groups = foo_functions[selector].groups;
653 *ngroups = foo_functions[selector].ngroups;
657 static int foo_set_mux(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev, unsigned int selector,
660 u8 regbit = BIT(group);
662 writeb((readb(MUX) | regbit), MUX);
666 static struct pinmux_ops foo_pmxops = {
667 .get_functions_count = foo_get_functions_count,
668 .get_function_name = foo_get_fname,
669 .get_function_groups = foo_get_groups,
670 .set_mux = foo_set_mux,
674 /* Pinmux operations are handled by some pin controller */
675 static struct pinctrl_desc foo_desc = {
677 .pctlops = &foo_pctrl_ops,
678 .pmxops = &foo_pmxops,
681 In the example activating muxing 0 and 2 at the same time setting bits
682 0 and 2, uses pin 24 in common so they would collide. All the same for
683 the muxes 1 and 5, which have pin 62 in common.
685 The beauty of the pinmux subsystem is that since it keeps track of all
686 pins and who is using them, it will already have denied an impossible
687 request like that, so the driver does not need to worry about such
688 things - when it gets a selector passed in, the pinmux subsystem makes
689 sure no other device or GPIO assignment is already using the selected
690 pins. Thus bits 0 and 2, or 1 and 5 in the control register will never
691 be set at the same time.
693 All the above functions are mandatory to implement for a pinmux driver.
696 Pin control interaction with the GPIO subsystem
697 ===============================================
699 Note that the following implies that the use case is to use a certain pin
700 from the Linux kernel using the API in ``<linux/gpio/consumer.h>`` with gpiod_get()
701 and similar functions. There are cases where you may be using something
702 that your datasheet calls "GPIO mode", but actually is just an electrical
703 configuration for a certain device. See the section below named
704 `GPIO mode pitfalls`_ for more details on this scenario.
706 The public pinmux API contains two functions named ``pinctrl_gpio_request()``
707 and ``pinctrl_gpio_free()``. These two functions shall *ONLY* be called from
708 gpiolib-based drivers as part of their ``.request()`` and ``.free()`` semantics.
709 Likewise the ``pinctrl_gpio_direction_input()`` / ``pinctrl_gpio_direction_output()``
710 shall only be called from within respective ``.direction_input()`` /
711 ``.direction_output()`` gpiolib implementation.
713 NOTE that platforms and individual drivers shall *NOT* request GPIO pins to be
714 controlled e.g. muxed in. Instead, implement a proper gpiolib driver and have
715 that driver request proper muxing and other control for its pins.
717 The function list could become long, especially if you can convert every
718 individual pin into a GPIO pin independent of any other pins, and then try
719 the approach to define every pin as a function.
721 In this case, the function array would become 64 entries for each GPIO
722 setting and then the device functions.
724 For this reason there are two functions a pin control driver can implement
725 to enable only GPIO on an individual pin: ``.gpio_request_enable()`` and
726 ``.gpio_disable_free()``.
728 This function will pass in the affected GPIO range identified by the pin
729 controller core, so you know which GPIO pins are being affected by the request
732 If your driver needs to have an indication from the framework of whether the
733 GPIO pin shall be used for input or output you can implement the
734 ``.gpio_set_direction()`` function. As described this shall be called from the
735 gpiolib driver and the affected GPIO range, pin offset and desired direction
736 will be passed along to this function.
738 Alternatively to using these special functions, it is fully allowed to use
739 named functions for each GPIO pin, the ``pinctrl_gpio_request()`` will attempt to
740 obtain the function "gpioN" where "N" is the global GPIO pin number if no
741 special GPIO-handler is registered.
747 Due to the naming conventions used by hardware engineers, where "GPIO"
748 is taken to mean different things than what the kernel does, the developer
749 may be confused by a datasheet talking about a pin being possible to set
750 into "GPIO mode". It appears that what hardware engineers mean with
751 "GPIO mode" is not necessarily the use case that is implied in the kernel
752 interface ``<linux/gpio/consumer.h>``: a pin that you grab from kernel code and then
753 either listen for input or drive high/low to assert/deassert some
756 Rather hardware engineers think that "GPIO mode" means that you can
757 software-control a few electrical properties of the pin that you would
758 not be able to control if the pin was in some other mode, such as muxed in
761 The GPIO portions of a pin and its relation to a certain pin controller
762 configuration and muxing logic can be constructed in several ways. Here
770 Physical pins --- pad --- pinmux -+- I2C
777 Here some electrical properties of the pin can be configured no matter
778 whether the pin is used for GPIO or not. If you multiplex a GPIO onto a
779 pin, you can also drive it high/low from "GPIO" registers.
780 Alternatively, the pin can be controlled by a certain peripheral, while
781 still applying desired pin config properties. GPIO functionality is thus
782 orthogonal to any other device using the pin.
784 In this arrangement the registers for the GPIO portions of the pin controller,
785 or the registers for the GPIO hardware module are likely to reside in a
786 separate memory range only intended for GPIO driving, and the register
787 range dealing with pin config and pin multiplexing get placed into a
788 different memory range and a separate section of the data sheet.
790 A flag "strict" in struct pinmux_ops is available to check and deny
791 simultaneous access to the same pin from GPIO and pin multiplexing
792 consumers on hardware of this type. The pinctrl driver should set this flag
800 Physical pins --- pad --- pinmux -+- I2C
807 In this arrangement, the GPIO functionality can always be enabled, such that
808 e.g. a GPIO input can be used to "spy" on the SPI/I2C/MMC signal while it is
809 pulsed out. It is likely possible to disrupt the traffic on the pin by doing
810 wrong things on the GPIO block, as it is never really disconnected. It is
811 possible that the GPIO, pin config and pin multiplex registers are placed into
812 the same memory range and the same section of the data sheet, although that
813 need not be the case.
815 In some pin controllers, although the physical pins are designed in the same
816 way as (B), the GPIO function still can't be enabled at the same time as the
817 peripheral functions. So again the "strict" flag should be set, denying
818 simultaneous activation by GPIO and other muxed in devices.
820 From a kernel point of view, however, these are different aspects of the
821 hardware and shall be put into different subsystems:
823 - Registers (or fields within registers) that control electrical
824 properties of the pin such as biasing and drive strength should be
825 exposed through the pinctrl subsystem, as "pin configuration" settings.
827 - Registers (or fields within registers) that control muxing of signals
828 from various other HW blocks (e.g. I2C, MMC, or GPIO) onto pins should
829 be exposed through the pinctrl subsystem, as mux functions.
831 - Registers (or fields within registers) that control GPIO functionality
832 such as setting a GPIO's output value, reading a GPIO's input value, or
833 setting GPIO pin direction should be exposed through the GPIO subsystem,
834 and if they also support interrupt capabilities, through the irqchip
837 Depending on the exact HW register design, some functions exposed by the
838 GPIO subsystem may call into the pinctrl subsystem in order to
839 coordinate register settings across HW modules. In particular, this may
840 be needed for HW with separate GPIO and pin controller HW modules, where
841 e.g. GPIO direction is determined by a register in the pin controller HW
842 module rather than the GPIO HW module.
844 Electrical properties of the pin such as biasing and drive strength
845 may be placed at some pin-specific register in all cases or as part
846 of the GPIO register in case (B) especially. This doesn't mean that such
847 properties necessarily pertain to what the Linux kernel calls "GPIO".
849 Example: a pin is usually muxed in to be used as a UART TX line. But during
850 system sleep, we need to put this pin into "GPIO mode" and ground it.
852 If you make a 1-to-1 map to the GPIO subsystem for this pin, you may start
853 to think that you need to come up with something really complex, that the
854 pin shall be used for UART TX and GPIO at the same time, that you will grab
855 a pin control handle and set it to a certain state to enable UART TX to be
856 muxed in, then twist it over to GPIO mode and use gpiod_direction_output()
857 to drive it low during sleep, then mux it over to UART TX again when you
858 wake up and maybe even gpiod_get() / gpiod_put() as part of this cycle. This
859 all gets very complicated.
861 The solution is to not think that what the datasheet calls "GPIO mode"
862 has to be handled by the ``<linux/gpio/consumer.h>`` interface. Instead view this as
863 a certain pin config setting. Look in e.g. ``<linux/pinctrl/pinconf-generic.h>``
864 and you find this in the documentation:
867 this will configure the pin in output, use argument
868 1 to indicate high level, argument 0 to indicate low level.
870 So it is perfectly possible to push a pin into "GPIO mode" and drive the
871 line low as part of the usual pin control map. So for example your UART
872 driver may look like this:
876 #include <linux/pinctrl/consumer.h>
878 struct pinctrl *pinctrl;
879 struct pinctrl_state *pins_default;
880 struct pinctrl_state *pins_sleep;
882 pins_default = pinctrl_lookup_state(uap->pinctrl, PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT);
883 pins_sleep = pinctrl_lookup_state(uap->pinctrl, PINCTRL_STATE_SLEEP);
886 retval = pinctrl_select_state(pinctrl, pins_default);
889 retval = pinctrl_select_state(pinctrl, pins_sleep);
891 And your machine configuration may look like this:
895 static unsigned long uart_default_mode[] = {
896 PIN_CONF_PACKED(PIN_CONFIG_DRIVE_PUSH_PULL, 0),
899 static unsigned long uart_sleep_mode[] = {
900 PIN_CONF_PACKED(PIN_CONFIG_OUTPUT, 0),
903 static struct pinctrl_map pinmap[] __initdata = {
904 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP("uart", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT, "pinctrl-foo",
906 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_PIN("uart", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT, "pinctrl-foo",
907 "UART_TX_PIN", uart_default_mode),
908 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP("uart", PINCTRL_STATE_SLEEP, "pinctrl-foo",
909 "u0_group", "gpio-mode"),
910 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_PIN("uart", PINCTRL_STATE_SLEEP, "pinctrl-foo",
911 "UART_TX_PIN", uart_sleep_mode),
916 pinctrl_register_mappings(pinmap, ARRAY_SIZE(pinmap));
919 Here the pins we want to control are in the "u0_group" and there is some
920 function called "u0" that can be enabled on this group of pins, and then
921 everything is UART business as usual. But there is also some function
922 named "gpio-mode" that can be mapped onto the same pins to move them into
925 This will give the desired effect without any bogus interaction with the
926 GPIO subsystem. It is just an electrical configuration used by that device
927 when going to sleep, it might imply that the pin is set into something the
928 datasheet calls "GPIO mode", but that is not the point: it is still used
929 by that UART device to control the pins that pertain to that very UART
930 driver, putting them into modes needed by the UART. GPIO in the Linux
931 kernel sense are just some 1-bit line, and is a different use case.
933 How the registers are poked to attain the push or pull, and output low
934 configuration and the muxing of the "u0" or "gpio-mode" group onto these
935 pins is a question for the driver.
937 Some datasheets will be more helpful and refer to the "GPIO mode" as
938 "low power mode" rather than anything to do with GPIO. This often means
939 the same thing electrically speaking, but in this latter case the
940 software engineers will usually quickly identify that this is some
941 specific muxing or configuration rather than anything related to the GPIO
945 Board/machine configuration
946 ===========================
948 Boards and machines define how a certain complete running system is put
949 together, including how GPIOs and devices are muxed, how regulators are
950 constrained and how the clock tree looks. Of course pinmux settings are also
953 A pin controller configuration for a machine looks pretty much like a simple
954 regulator configuration, so for the example array above we want to enable i2c
955 and spi on the second function mapping:
959 #include <linux/pinctrl/machine.h>
961 static const struct pinctrl_map mapping[] __initconst = {
963 .dev_name = "foo-spi.0",
964 .name = PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
965 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
966 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
967 .data.mux.function = "spi0",
970 .dev_name = "foo-i2c.0",
971 .name = PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
972 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
973 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
974 .data.mux.function = "i2c0",
977 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
978 .name = PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
979 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
980 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
981 .data.mux.function = "mmc0",
985 The dev_name here matches to the unique device name that can be used to look
986 up the device struct (just like with clockdev or regulators). The function name
987 must match a function provided by the pinmux driver handling this pin range.
989 As you can see we may have several pin controllers on the system and thus
990 we need to specify which one of them contains the functions we wish to map.
992 You register this pinmux mapping to the pinmux subsystem by simply:
996 ret = pinctrl_register_mappings(mapping, ARRAY_SIZE(mapping));
998 Since the above construct is pretty common there is a helper macro to make
999 it even more compact which assumes you want to use pinctrl-foo and position
1000 0 for mapping, for example:
1004 static struct pinctrl_map mapping[] __initdata = {
1005 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1006 "pinctrl-foo", NULL, "i2c0"),
1009 The mapping table may also contain pin configuration entries. It's common for
1010 each pin/group to have a number of configuration entries that affect it, so
1011 the table entries for configuration reference an array of config parameters
1012 and values. An example using the convenience macros is shown below:
1016 static unsigned long i2c_grp_configs[] = {
1021 static unsigned long i2c_pin_configs[] = {
1026 static struct pinctrl_map mapping[] __initdata = {
1027 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1028 "pinctrl-foo", "i2c0", "i2c0"),
1029 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_GROUP("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1030 "pinctrl-foo", "i2c0", i2c_grp_configs),
1031 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_PIN("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1032 "pinctrl-foo", "i2c0scl", i2c_pin_configs),
1033 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_PIN("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1034 "pinctrl-foo", "i2c0sda", i2c_pin_configs),
1037 Finally, some devices expect the mapping table to contain certain specific
1038 named states. When running on hardware that doesn't need any pin controller
1039 configuration, the mapping table must still contain those named states, in
1040 order to explicitly indicate that the states were provided and intended to
1041 be empty. Table entry macro ``PIN_MAP_DUMMY_STATE()`` serves the purpose of defining
1042 a named state without causing any pin controller to be programmed:
1046 static struct pinctrl_map mapping[] __initdata = {
1047 PIN_MAP_DUMMY_STATE("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT),
1054 As it is possible to map a function to different groups of pins an optional
1055 .group can be specified like this:
1061 .dev_name = "foo-spi.0",
1062 .name = "spi0-pos-A",
1063 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1064 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1066 .group = "spi0_0_grp",
1069 .dev_name = "foo-spi.0",
1070 .name = "spi0-pos-B",
1071 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1072 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1074 .group = "spi0_1_grp",
1078 This example mapping is used to switch between two positions for spi0 at
1079 runtime, as described further below under the heading `Runtime pinmuxing`_.
1081 Further it is possible for one named state to affect the muxing of several
1082 groups of pins, say for example in the mmc0 example above, where you can
1083 additively expand the mmc0 bus from 2 to 4 to 8 pins. If we want to use all
1084 three groups for a total of 2 + 2 + 4 = 8 pins (for an 8-bit MMC bus as is the
1085 case), we define a mapping like this:
1091 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1093 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1094 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1096 .group = "mmc0_1_grp",
1099 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1101 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1102 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1104 .group = "mmc0_1_grp",
1107 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1109 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1110 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1112 .group = "mmc0_2_grp",
1115 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1117 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1118 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1120 .group = "mmc0_1_grp",
1123 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1125 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1126 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1128 .group = "mmc0_2_grp",
1131 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1133 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1134 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1136 .group = "mmc0_3_grp",
1140 The result of grabbing this mapping from the device with something like
1141 this (see next paragraph):
1145 p = devm_pinctrl_get(dev);
1146 s = pinctrl_lookup_state(p, "8bit");
1147 ret = pinctrl_select_state(p, s);
1153 p = devm_pinctrl_get_select(dev, "8bit");
1155 Will be that you activate all the three bottom records in the mapping at
1156 once. Since they share the same name, pin controller device, function and
1157 device, and since we allow multiple groups to match to a single device, they
1158 all get selected, and they all get enabled and disable simultaneously by the
1162 Pin control requests from drivers
1163 =================================
1165 When a device driver is about to probe the device core will automatically
1166 attempt to issue ``pinctrl_get_select_default()`` on these devices.
1167 This way driver writers do not need to add any of the boilerplate code
1168 of the type found below. However when doing fine-grained state selection
1169 and not using the "default" state, you may have to do some device driver
1170 handling of the pinctrl handles and states.
1172 So if you just want to put the pins for a certain device into the default
1173 state and be done with it, there is nothing you need to do besides
1174 providing the proper mapping table. The device core will take care of
1177 Generally it is discouraged to let individual drivers get and enable pin
1178 control. So if possible, handle the pin control in platform code or some other
1179 place where you have access to all the affected struct device * pointers. In
1180 some cases where a driver needs to e.g. switch between different mux mappings
1181 at runtime this is not possible.
1183 A typical case is if a driver needs to switch bias of pins from normal
1184 operation and going to sleep, moving from the ``PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT`` to
1185 ``PINCTRL_STATE_SLEEP`` at runtime, re-biasing or even re-muxing pins to save
1186 current in sleep mode.
1188 A driver may request a certain control state to be activated, usually just the
1189 default state like this:
1193 #include <linux/pinctrl/consumer.h>
1197 struct pinctrl_state *s;
1203 /* Allocate a state holder named "foo" etc */
1204 struct foo_state *foo = ...;
1206 foo->p = devm_pinctrl_get(&device);
1207 if (IS_ERR(foo->p)) {
1208 /* FIXME: clean up "foo" here */
1209 return PTR_ERR(foo->p);
1212 foo->s = pinctrl_lookup_state(foo->p, PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT);
1213 if (IS_ERR(foo->s)) {
1214 /* FIXME: clean up "foo" here */
1215 return PTR_ERR(foo->s);
1218 ret = pinctrl_select_state(foo->p, foo->s);
1220 /* FIXME: clean up "foo" here */
1225 This get/lookup/select/put sequence can just as well be handled by bus drivers
1226 if you don't want each and every driver to handle it and you know the
1227 arrangement on your bus.
1229 The semantics of the pinctrl APIs are:
1231 - ``pinctrl_get()`` is called in process context to obtain a handle to all pinctrl
1232 information for a given client device. It will allocate a struct from the
1233 kernel memory to hold the pinmux state. All mapping table parsing or similar
1234 slow operations take place within this API.
1236 - ``devm_pinctrl_get()`` is a variant of pinctrl_get() that causes ``pinctrl_put()``
1237 to be called automatically on the retrieved pointer when the associated
1238 device is removed. It is recommended to use this function over plain
1241 - ``pinctrl_lookup_state()`` is called in process context to obtain a handle to a
1242 specific state for a client device. This operation may be slow, too.
1244 - ``pinctrl_select_state()`` programs pin controller hardware according to the
1245 definition of the state as given by the mapping table. In theory, this is a
1246 fast-path operation, since it only involved blasting some register settings
1247 into hardware. However, note that some pin controllers may have their
1248 registers on a slow/IRQ-based bus, so client devices should not assume they
1249 can call ``pinctrl_select_state()`` from non-blocking contexts.
1251 - ``pinctrl_put()`` frees all information associated with a pinctrl handle.
1253 - ``devm_pinctrl_put()`` is a variant of ``pinctrl_put()`` that may be used to
1254 explicitly destroy a pinctrl object returned by ``devm_pinctrl_get()``.
1255 However, use of this function will be rare, due to the automatic cleanup
1256 that will occur even without calling it.
1258 ``pinctrl_get()`` must be paired with a plain ``pinctrl_put()``.
1259 ``pinctrl_get()`` may not be paired with ``devm_pinctrl_put()``.
1260 ``devm_pinctrl_get()`` can optionally be paired with ``devm_pinctrl_put()``.
1261 ``devm_pinctrl_get()`` may not be paired with plain ``pinctrl_put()``.
1263 Usually the pin control core handled the get/put pair and call out to the
1264 device drivers bookkeeping operations, like checking available functions and
1265 the associated pins, whereas ``pinctrl_select_state()`` pass on to the pin controller
1266 driver which takes care of activating and/or deactivating the mux setting by
1267 quickly poking some registers.
1269 The pins are allocated for your device when you issue the ``devm_pinctrl_get()``
1270 call, after this you should be able to see this in the debugfs listing of all
1273 NOTE: the pinctrl system will return ``-EPROBE_DEFER`` if it cannot find the
1274 requested pinctrl handles, for example if the pinctrl driver has not yet
1275 registered. Thus make sure that the error path in your driver gracefully
1276 cleans up and is ready to retry the probing later in the startup process.
1279 Drivers needing both pin control and GPIOs
1280 ==========================================
1282 Again, it is discouraged to let drivers lookup and select pin control states
1283 themselves, but again sometimes this is unavoidable.
1285 So say that your driver is fetching its resources like this:
1289 #include <linux/pinctrl/consumer.h>
1290 #include <linux/gpio/consumer.h>
1292 struct pinctrl *pinctrl;
1293 struct gpio_desc *gpio;
1295 pinctrl = devm_pinctrl_get_select_default(&dev);
1296 gpio = devm_gpiod_get(&dev, "foo");
1298 Here we first request a certain pin state and then request GPIO "foo" to be
1299 used. If you're using the subsystems orthogonally like this, you should
1300 nominally always get your pinctrl handle and select the desired pinctrl
1301 state BEFORE requesting the GPIO. This is a semantic convention to avoid
1302 situations that can be electrically unpleasant, you will certainly want to
1303 mux in and bias pins in a certain way before the GPIO subsystems starts to
1306 The above can be hidden: using the device core, the pinctrl core may be
1307 setting up the config and muxing for the pins right before the device is
1308 probing, nevertheless orthogonal to the GPIO subsystem.
1310 But there are also situations where it makes sense for the GPIO subsystem
1311 to communicate directly with the pinctrl subsystem, using the latter as a
1312 back-end. This is when the GPIO driver may call out to the functions
1313 described in the section `Pin control interaction with the GPIO subsystem`_
1314 above. This only involves per-pin multiplexing, and will be completely
1315 hidden behind the gpiod_*() function namespace. In this case, the driver
1316 need not interact with the pin control subsystem at all.
1318 If a pin control driver and a GPIO driver is dealing with the same pins
1319 and the use cases involve multiplexing, you MUST implement the pin controller
1320 as a back-end for the GPIO driver like this, unless your hardware design
1321 is such that the GPIO controller can override the pin controller's
1322 multiplexing state through hardware without the need to interact with the
1326 System pin control hogging
1327 ==========================
1329 Pin control map entries can be hogged by the core when the pin controller
1330 is registered. This means that the core will attempt to call ``pinctrl_get()``,
1331 ``pinctrl_lookup_state()`` and ``pinctrl_select_state()`` on it immediately after
1332 the pin control device has been registered.
1334 This occurs for mapping table entries where the client device name is equal
1335 to the pin controller device name, and the state name is ``PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT``:
1340 .dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1341 .name = PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1342 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1343 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1344 .function = "power_func",
1347 Since it may be common to request the core to hog a few always-applicable
1348 mux settings on the primary pin controller, there is a convenience macro for
1353 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP_HOG_DEFAULT("pinctrl-foo", NULL /* group */,
1356 This gives the exact same result as the above construction.
1362 It is possible to mux a certain function in and out at runtime, say to move
1363 an SPI port from one set of pins to another set of pins. Say for example for
1364 spi0 in the example above, we expose two different groups of pins for the same
1365 function, but with different named in the mapping as described under
1366 "Advanced mapping" above. So that for an SPI device, we have two states named
1367 "pos-A" and "pos-B".
1369 This snippet first initializes a state object for both groups (in foo_probe()),
1370 then muxes the function in the pins defined by group A, and finally muxes it in
1371 on the pins defined by group B:
1375 #include <linux/pinctrl/consumer.h>
1378 struct pinctrl_state *s1, *s2;
1383 p = devm_pinctrl_get(&device);
1387 s1 = pinctrl_lookup_state(p, "pos-A");
1391 s2 = pinctrl_lookup_state(p, "pos-B");
1398 /* Enable on position A */
1399 ret = pinctrl_select_state(p, s1);
1405 /* Enable on position B */
1406 ret = pinctrl_select_state(p, s2);
1413 The above has to be done from process context. The reservation of the pins
1414 will be done when the state is activated, so in effect one specific pin
1415 can be used by different functions at different times on a running system.
1421 These files are created in ``/sys/kernel/debug/pinctrl``:
1423 - ``pinctrl-devices``: prints each pin controller device along with columns to
1424 indicate support for pinmux and pinconf
1426 - ``pinctrl-handles``: prints each configured pin controller handle and the
1427 corresponding pinmux maps
1429 - ``pinctrl-maps``: prints all pinctrl maps
1431 A sub-directory is created inside of ``/sys/kernel/debug/pinctrl`` for each pin
1432 controller device containing these files:
1434 - ``pins``: prints a line for each pin registered on the pin controller. The
1435 pinctrl driver may add additional information such as register contents.
1437 - ``gpio-ranges``: prints ranges that map gpio lines to pins on the controller
1439 - ``pingroups``: prints all pin groups registered on the pin controller
1441 - ``pinconf-pins``: prints pin config settings for each pin
1443 - ``pinconf-groups``: prints pin config settings per pin group
1445 - ``pinmux-functions``: prints each pin function along with the pin groups that
1446 map to the pin function
1448 - ``pinmux-pins``: iterates through all pins and prints mux owner, gpio owner
1449 and if the pin is a hog
1451 - ``pinmux-select``: write to this file to activate a pin function for a group:
1455 echo "<group-name function-name>" > pinmux-select