1 PINCTRL (PIN CONTROL) subsystem
2 This document outlines the pin control subsystem in Linux
4 This subsystem deals with:
6 - Enumerating and naming controllable pins
8 - Multiplexing of pins, pads, fingers (etc) see below for details
10 - Configuration of pins, pads, fingers (etc), such as software-controlled
11 biasing and driving mode specific pins, such as pull-up/down, open drain,
17 Definition of PIN CONTROLLER:
19 - A pin controller is a piece of hardware, usually a set of registers, that
20 can control PINs. It may be able to multiplex, bias, set load capacitance,
21 set drive strength, etc. for individual pins or groups of pins.
25 - PINS are equal to pads, fingers, balls or whatever packaging input or
26 output line you want to control and these are denoted by unsigned integers
27 in the range 0..maxpin. This numberspace is local to each PIN CONTROLLER, so
28 there may be several such number spaces in a system. This pin space may
29 be sparse - i.e. there may be gaps in the space with numbers where no
32 When a PIN CONTROLLER is instantiated, it will register a descriptor to the
33 pin control framework, and this descriptor contains an array of pin descriptors
34 describing the pins handled by this specific pin controller.
36 Here is an example of a PGA (Pin Grid Array) chip seen from underneath:
56 To register a pin controller and name all the pins on this package we can do
59 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinctrl.h>
61 const struct pinctrl_pin_desc foo_pins[] = {
66 PINCTRL_PIN(61, "F1"),
67 PINCTRL_PIN(62, "G1"),
68 PINCTRL_PIN(63, "H1"),
71 static struct pinctrl_desc foo_desc = {
74 .npins = ARRAY_SIZE(foo_pins),
78 int __init foo_probe(void)
82 struct pinctrl_dev *pctl;
84 error = pinctrl_register_and_init(&foo_desc, <PARENT>, NULL, &pctl);
88 return pinctrl_enable(pctl);
91 To enable the pinctrl subsystem and the subgroups for PINMUX and PINCONF and
92 selected drivers, you need to select them from your machine's Kconfig entry,
93 since these are so tightly integrated with the machines they are used on.
94 See for example arch/arm/mach-u300/Kconfig for an example.
96 Pins usually have fancier names than this. You can find these in the datasheet
97 for your chip. Notice that the core pinctrl.h file provides a fancy macro
98 called PINCTRL_PIN() to create the struct entries. As you can see I enumerated
99 the pins from 0 in the upper left corner to 63 in the lower right corner.
100 This enumeration was arbitrarily chosen, in practice you need to think
101 through your numbering system so that it matches the layout of registers
102 and such things in your driver, or the code may become complicated. You must
103 also consider matching of offsets to the GPIO ranges that may be handled by
106 For a padring with 467 pads, as opposed to actual pins, I used an enumeration
107 like this, walking around the edge of the chip, which seems to be industry
108 standard too (all these pads had names, too):
122 Many controllers need to deal with groups of pins, so the pin controller
123 subsystem has a mechanism for enumerating groups of pins and retrieving the
124 actual enumerated pins that are part of a certain group.
126 For example, say that we have a group of pins dealing with an SPI interface
127 on { 0, 8, 16, 24 }, and a group of pins dealing with an I2C interface on pins
130 These two groups are presented to the pin control subsystem by implementing
131 some generic pinctrl_ops like this:
133 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinctrl.h>
137 const unsigned int *pins;
138 const unsigned num_pins;
141 static const unsigned int spi0_pins[] = { 0, 8, 16, 24 };
142 static const unsigned int i2c0_pins[] = { 24, 25 };
144 static const struct foo_group foo_groups[] = {
148 .num_pins = ARRAY_SIZE(spi0_pins),
153 .num_pins = ARRAY_SIZE(i2c0_pins),
158 static int foo_get_groups_count(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev)
160 return ARRAY_SIZE(foo_groups);
163 static const char *foo_get_group_name(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
166 return foo_groups[selector].name;
169 static int foo_get_group_pins(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev, unsigned selector,
170 const unsigned **pins,
173 *pins = (unsigned *) foo_groups[selector].pins;
174 *num_pins = foo_groups[selector].num_pins;
178 static struct pinctrl_ops foo_pctrl_ops = {
179 .get_groups_count = foo_get_groups_count,
180 .get_group_name = foo_get_group_name,
181 .get_group_pins = foo_get_group_pins,
185 static struct pinctrl_desc foo_desc = {
187 .pctlops = &foo_pctrl_ops,
190 The pin control subsystem will call the .get_groups_count() function to
191 determine the total number of legal selectors, then it will call the other functions
192 to retrieve the name and pins of the group. Maintaining the data structure of
193 the groups is up to the driver, this is just a simple example - in practice you
194 may need more entries in your group structure, for example specific register
195 ranges associated with each group and so on.
201 Pins can sometimes be software-configured in various ways, mostly related
202 to their electronic properties when used as inputs or outputs. For example you
203 may be able to make an output pin high impedance, or "tristate" meaning it is
204 effectively disconnected. You may be able to connect an input pin to VDD or GND
205 using a certain resistor value - pull up and pull down - so that the pin has a
206 stable value when nothing is driving the rail it is connected to, or when it's
209 Pin configuration can be programmed by adding configuration entries into the
210 mapping table; see section "Board/machine configuration" below.
212 The format and meaning of the configuration parameter, PLATFORM_X_PULL_UP
213 above, is entirely defined by the pin controller driver.
215 The pin configuration driver implements callbacks for changing pin
216 configuration in the pin controller ops like this:
218 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinctrl.h>
219 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinconf.h>
220 #include "platform_x_pindefs.h"
222 static int foo_pin_config_get(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
224 unsigned long *config)
226 struct my_conftype conf;
228 ... Find setting for pin @ offset ...
230 *config = (unsigned long) conf;
233 static int foo_pin_config_set(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
235 unsigned long config)
237 struct my_conftype *conf = (struct my_conftype *) config;
240 case PLATFORM_X_PULL_UP:
246 static int foo_pin_config_group_get (struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
248 unsigned long *config)
253 static int foo_pin_config_group_set (struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
255 unsigned long config)
260 static struct pinconf_ops foo_pconf_ops = {
261 .pin_config_get = foo_pin_config_get,
262 .pin_config_set = foo_pin_config_set,
263 .pin_config_group_get = foo_pin_config_group_get,
264 .pin_config_group_set = foo_pin_config_group_set,
267 /* Pin config operations are handled by some pin controller */
268 static struct pinctrl_desc foo_desc = {
270 .confops = &foo_pconf_ops,
273 Since some controllers have special logic for handling entire groups of pins
274 they can exploit the special whole-group pin control function. The
275 pin_config_group_set() callback is allowed to return the error code -EAGAIN,
276 for groups it does not want to handle, or if it just wants to do some
277 group-level handling and then fall through to iterate over all pins, in which
278 case each individual pin will be treated by separate pin_config_set() calls as
282 Interaction with the GPIO subsystem
283 ===================================
285 The GPIO drivers may want to perform operations of various types on the same
286 physical pins that are also registered as pin controller pins.
288 First and foremost, the two subsystems can be used as completely orthogonal,
289 see the section named "pin control requests from drivers" and
290 "drivers needing both pin control and GPIOs" below for details. But in some
291 situations a cross-subsystem mapping between pins and GPIOs is needed.
293 Since the pin controller subsystem has its pinspace local to the pin controller
294 we need a mapping so that the pin control subsystem can figure out which pin
295 controller handles control of a certain GPIO pin. Since a single pin controller
296 may be muxing several GPIO ranges (typically SoCs that have one set of pins,
297 but internally several GPIO silicon blocks, each modelled as a struct
298 gpio_chip) any number of GPIO ranges can be added to a pin controller instance
301 struct gpio_chip chip_a;
302 struct gpio_chip chip_b;
304 static struct pinctrl_gpio_range gpio_range_a = {
313 static struct pinctrl_gpio_range gpio_range_b = {
323 struct pinctrl_dev *pctl;
325 pinctrl_add_gpio_range(pctl, &gpio_range_a);
326 pinctrl_add_gpio_range(pctl, &gpio_range_b);
329 So this complex system has one pin controller handling two different
330 GPIO chips. "chip a" has 16 pins and "chip b" has 8 pins. The "chip a" and
331 "chip b" have different .pin_base, which means a start pin number of the
334 The GPIO range of "chip a" starts from the GPIO base of 32 and actual
335 pin range also starts from 32. However "chip b" has different starting
336 offset for the GPIO range and pin range. The GPIO range of "chip b" starts
337 from GPIO number 48, while the pin range of "chip b" starts from 64.
339 We can convert a gpio number to actual pin number using this "pin_base".
340 They are mapped in the global GPIO pin space at:
343 - GPIO range : [32 .. 47]
344 - pin range : [32 .. 47]
346 - GPIO range : [48 .. 55]
347 - pin range : [64 .. 71]
349 The above examples assume the mapping between the GPIOs and pins is
350 linear. If the mapping is sparse or haphazard, an array of arbitrary pin
351 numbers can be encoded in the range like this:
353 static const unsigned range_pins[] = { 14, 1, 22, 17, 10, 8, 6, 2 };
355 static struct pinctrl_gpio_range gpio_range = {
360 .npins = ARRAY_SIZE(range_pins),
364 In this case the pin_base property will be ignored. If the name of a pin
365 group is known, the pins and npins elements of the above structure can be
366 initialised using the function pinctrl_get_group_pins(), e.g. for pin
369 pinctrl_get_group_pins(pctl, "foo", &gpio_range.pins, &gpio_range.npins);
371 When GPIO-specific functions in the pin control subsystem are called, these
372 ranges will be used to look up the appropriate pin controller by inspecting
373 and matching the pin to the pin ranges across all controllers. When a
374 pin controller handling the matching range is found, GPIO-specific functions
375 will be called on that specific pin controller.
377 For all functionalities dealing with pin biasing, pin muxing etc, the pin
378 controller subsystem will look up the corresponding pin number from the passed
379 in gpio number, and use the range's internals to retrieve a pin number. After
380 that, the subsystem passes it on to the pin control driver, so the driver
381 will get a pin number into its handled number range. Further it is also passed
382 the range ID value, so that the pin controller knows which range it should
385 Calling pinctrl_add_gpio_range from pinctrl driver is DEPRECATED. Please see
386 section 2.1 of Documentation/devicetree/bindings/gpio/gpio.txt on how to bind
387 pinctrl and gpio drivers.
393 These calls use the pinmux_* naming prefix. No other calls should use that
400 PINMUX, also known as padmux, ballmux, alternate functions or mission modes
401 is a way for chip vendors producing some kind of electrical packages to use
402 a certain physical pin (ball, pad, finger, etc) for multiple mutually exclusive
403 functions, depending on the application. By "application" in this context
404 we usually mean a way of soldering or wiring the package into an electronic
405 system, even though the framework makes it possible to also change the function
408 Here is an example of a PGA (Pin Grid Array) chip seen from underneath:
412 8 | o | o o o o o o o
414 7 | o | o o o o o o o
416 6 | o | o o o o o o o
418 5 | o | o | o o o o o o
420 4 o o o o o o | o | o
422 3 o o o o o o | o | o
424 2 o o o o o o | o | o
425 +-------+-------+-------+---+---+
426 1 | o o | o o | o o | o | o |
427 +-------+-------+-------+---+---+
429 This is not tetris. The game to think of is chess. Not all PGA/BGA packages
430 are chessboard-like, big ones have "holes" in some arrangement according to
431 different design patterns, but we're using this as a simple example. Of the
432 pins you see some will be taken by things like a few VCC and GND to feed power
433 to the chip, and quite a few will be taken by large ports like an external
434 memory interface. The remaining pins will often be subject to pin multiplexing.
436 The example 8x8 PGA package above will have pin numbers 0 through 63 assigned
437 to its physical pins. It will name the pins { A1, A2, A3 ... H6, H7, H8 } using
438 pinctrl_register_pins() and a suitable data set as shown earlier.
440 In this 8x8 BGA package the pins { A8, A7, A6, A5 } can be used as an SPI port
441 (these are four pins: CLK, RXD, TXD, FRM). In that case, pin B5 can be used as
442 some general-purpose GPIO pin. However, in another setting, pins { A5, B5 } can
443 be used as an I2C port (these are just two pins: SCL, SDA). Needless to say,
444 we cannot use the SPI port and I2C port at the same time. However in the inside
445 of the package the silicon performing the SPI logic can alternatively be routed
446 out on pins { G4, G3, G2, G1 }.
448 On the bottom row at { A1, B1, C1, D1, E1, F1, G1, H1 } we have something
449 special - it's an external MMC bus that can be 2, 4 or 8 bits wide, and it will
450 consume 2, 4 or 8 pins respectively, so either { A1, B1 } are taken or
451 { A1, B1, C1, D1 } or all of them. If we use all 8 bits, we cannot use the SPI
452 port on pins { G4, G3, G2, G1 } of course.
454 This way the silicon blocks present inside the chip can be multiplexed "muxed"
455 out on different pin ranges. Often contemporary SoC (systems on chip) will
456 contain several I2C, SPI, SDIO/MMC, etc silicon blocks that can be routed to
457 different pins by pinmux settings.
459 Since general-purpose I/O pins (GPIO) are typically always in shortage, it is
460 common to be able to use almost any pin as a GPIO pin if it is not currently
461 in use by some other I/O port.
467 The purpose of the pinmux functionality in the pin controller subsystem is to
468 abstract and provide pinmux settings to the devices you choose to instantiate
469 in your machine configuration. It is inspired by the clk, GPIO and regulator
470 subsystems, so devices will request their mux setting, but it's also possible
471 to request a single pin for e.g. GPIO.
475 - FUNCTIONS can be switched in and out by a driver residing with the pin
476 control subsystem in the drivers/pinctrl/* directory of the kernel. The
477 pin control driver knows the possible functions. In the example above you can
478 identify three pinmux functions, one for spi, one for i2c and one for mmc.
480 - FUNCTIONS are assumed to be enumerable from zero in a one-dimensional array.
481 In this case the array could be something like: { spi0, i2c0, mmc0 }
482 for the three available functions.
484 - FUNCTIONS have PIN GROUPS as defined on the generic level - so a certain
485 function is *always* associated with a certain set of pin groups, could
486 be just a single one, but could also be many. In the example above the
487 function i2c is associated with the pins { A5, B5 }, enumerated as
488 { 24, 25 } in the controller pin space.
490 The Function spi is associated with pin groups { A8, A7, A6, A5 }
491 and { G4, G3, G2, G1 }, which are enumerated as { 0, 8, 16, 24 } and
492 { 38, 46, 54, 62 } respectively.
494 Group names must be unique per pin controller, no two groups on the same
495 controller may have the same name.
497 - The combination of a FUNCTION and a PIN GROUP determine a certain function
498 for a certain set of pins. The knowledge of the functions and pin groups
499 and their machine-specific particulars are kept inside the pinmux driver,
500 from the outside only the enumerators are known, and the driver core can
503 - The name of a function with a certain selector (>= 0)
504 - A list of groups associated with a certain function
505 - That a certain group in that list to be activated for a certain function
507 As already described above, pin groups are in turn self-descriptive, so
508 the core will retrieve the actual pin range in a certain group from the
511 - FUNCTIONS and GROUPS on a certain PIN CONTROLLER are MAPPED to a certain
512 device by the board file, device tree or similar machine setup configuration
513 mechanism, similar to how regulators are connected to devices, usually by
514 name. Defining a pin controller, function and group thus uniquely identify
515 the set of pins to be used by a certain device. (If only one possible group
516 of pins is available for the function, no group name need to be supplied -
517 the core will simply select the first and only group available.)
519 In the example case we can define that this particular machine shall
520 use device spi0 with pinmux function fspi0 group gspi0 and i2c0 on function
521 fi2c0 group gi2c0, on the primary pin controller, we get mappings
525 {"map-spi0", spi0, pinctrl0, fspi0, gspi0},
526 {"map-i2c0", i2c0, pinctrl0, fi2c0, gi2c0}
529 Every map must be assigned a state name, pin controller, device and
530 function. The group is not compulsory - if it is omitted the first group
531 presented by the driver as applicable for the function will be selected,
532 which is useful for simple cases.
534 It is possible to map several groups to the same combination of device,
535 pin controller and function. This is for cases where a certain function on
536 a certain pin controller may use different sets of pins in different
539 - PINS for a certain FUNCTION using a certain PIN GROUP on a certain
540 PIN CONTROLLER are provided on a first-come first-serve basis, so if some
541 other device mux setting or GPIO pin request has already taken your physical
542 pin, you will be denied the use of it. To get (activate) a new setting, the
543 old one has to be put (deactivated) first.
545 Sometimes the documentation and hardware registers will be oriented around
546 pads (or "fingers") rather than pins - these are the soldering surfaces on the
547 silicon inside the package, and may or may not match the actual number of
548 pins/balls underneath the capsule. Pick some enumeration that makes sense to
549 you. Define enumerators only for the pins you can control if that makes sense.
553 We assume that the number of possible function maps to pin groups is limited by
554 the hardware. I.e. we assume that there is no system where any function can be
555 mapped to any pin, like in a phone exchange. So the available pin groups for
556 a certain function will be limited to a few choices (say up to eight or so),
557 not hundreds or any amount of choices. This is the characteristic we have found
558 by inspecting available pinmux hardware, and a necessary assumption since we
559 expect pinmux drivers to present *all* possible function vs pin group mappings
566 The pinmux core takes care of preventing conflicts on pins and calling
567 the pin controller driver to execute different settings.
569 It is the responsibility of the pinmux driver to impose further restrictions
570 (say for example infer electronic limitations due to load, etc.) to determine
571 whether or not the requested function can actually be allowed, and in case it
572 is possible to perform the requested mux setting, poke the hardware so that
575 Pinmux drivers are required to supply a few callback functions, some are
576 optional. Usually the set_mux() function is implemented, writing values into
577 some certain registers to activate a certain mux setting for a certain pin.
579 A simple driver for the above example will work by setting bits 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4
580 into some register named MUX to select a certain function with a certain
581 group of pins would work something like this:
583 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinctrl.h>
584 #include <linux/pinctrl/pinmux.h>
588 const unsigned int *pins;
589 const unsigned num_pins;
592 static const unsigned spi0_0_pins[] = { 0, 8, 16, 24 };
593 static const unsigned spi0_1_pins[] = { 38, 46, 54, 62 };
594 static const unsigned i2c0_pins[] = { 24, 25 };
595 static const unsigned mmc0_1_pins[] = { 56, 57 };
596 static const unsigned mmc0_2_pins[] = { 58, 59 };
597 static const unsigned mmc0_3_pins[] = { 60, 61, 62, 63 };
599 static const struct foo_group foo_groups[] = {
601 .name = "spi0_0_grp",
603 .num_pins = ARRAY_SIZE(spi0_0_pins),
606 .name = "spi0_1_grp",
608 .num_pins = ARRAY_SIZE(spi0_1_pins),
613 .num_pins = ARRAY_SIZE(i2c0_pins),
616 .name = "mmc0_1_grp",
618 .num_pins = ARRAY_SIZE(mmc0_1_pins),
621 .name = "mmc0_2_grp",
623 .num_pins = ARRAY_SIZE(mmc0_2_pins),
626 .name = "mmc0_3_grp",
628 .num_pins = ARRAY_SIZE(mmc0_3_pins),
633 static int foo_get_groups_count(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev)
635 return ARRAY_SIZE(foo_groups);
638 static const char *foo_get_group_name(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev,
641 return foo_groups[selector].name;
644 static int foo_get_group_pins(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev, unsigned selector,
645 unsigned ** const pins,
646 unsigned * const num_pins)
648 *pins = (unsigned *) foo_groups[selector].pins;
649 *num_pins = foo_groups[selector].num_pins;
653 static struct pinctrl_ops foo_pctrl_ops = {
654 .get_groups_count = foo_get_groups_count,
655 .get_group_name = foo_get_group_name,
656 .get_group_pins = foo_get_group_pins,
659 struct foo_pmx_func {
661 const char * const *groups;
662 const unsigned num_groups;
665 static const char * const spi0_groups[] = { "spi0_0_grp", "spi0_1_grp" };
666 static const char * const i2c0_groups[] = { "i2c0_grp" };
667 static const char * const mmc0_groups[] = { "mmc0_1_grp", "mmc0_2_grp",
670 static const struct foo_pmx_func foo_functions[] = {
673 .groups = spi0_groups,
674 .num_groups = ARRAY_SIZE(spi0_groups),
678 .groups = i2c0_groups,
679 .num_groups = ARRAY_SIZE(i2c0_groups),
683 .groups = mmc0_groups,
684 .num_groups = ARRAY_SIZE(mmc0_groups),
688 static int foo_get_functions_count(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev)
690 return ARRAY_SIZE(foo_functions);
693 static const char *foo_get_fname(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev, unsigned selector)
695 return foo_functions[selector].name;
698 static int foo_get_groups(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev, unsigned selector,
699 const char * const **groups,
700 unsigned * const num_groups)
702 *groups = foo_functions[selector].groups;
703 *num_groups = foo_functions[selector].num_groups;
707 static int foo_set_mux(struct pinctrl_dev *pctldev, unsigned selector,
710 u8 regbit = (1 << selector + group);
712 writeb((readb(MUX)|regbit), MUX)
716 static struct pinmux_ops foo_pmxops = {
717 .get_functions_count = foo_get_functions_count,
718 .get_function_name = foo_get_fname,
719 .get_function_groups = foo_get_groups,
720 .set_mux = foo_set_mux,
724 /* Pinmux operations are handled by some pin controller */
725 static struct pinctrl_desc foo_desc = {
727 .pctlops = &foo_pctrl_ops,
728 .pmxops = &foo_pmxops,
731 In the example activating muxing 0 and 1 at the same time setting bits
732 0 and 1, uses one pin in common so they would collide.
734 The beauty of the pinmux subsystem is that since it keeps track of all
735 pins and who is using them, it will already have denied an impossible
736 request like that, so the driver does not need to worry about such
737 things - when it gets a selector passed in, the pinmux subsystem makes
738 sure no other device or GPIO assignment is already using the selected
739 pins. Thus bits 0 and 1 in the control register will never be set at the
742 All the above functions are mandatory to implement for a pinmux driver.
745 Pin control interaction with the GPIO subsystem
746 ===============================================
748 Note that the following implies that the use case is to use a certain pin
749 from the Linux kernel using the API in <linux/gpio.h> with gpio_request()
750 and similar functions. There are cases where you may be using something
751 that your datasheet calls "GPIO mode", but actually is just an electrical
752 configuration for a certain device. See the section below named
753 "GPIO mode pitfalls" for more details on this scenario.
755 The public pinmux API contains two functions named pinctrl_request_gpio()
756 and pinctrl_free_gpio(). These two functions shall *ONLY* be called from
757 gpiolib-based drivers as part of their gpio_request() and
758 gpio_free() semantics. Likewise the pinctrl_gpio_direction_[input|output]
759 shall only be called from within respective gpio_direction_[input|output]
760 gpiolib implementation.
762 NOTE that platforms and individual drivers shall *NOT* request GPIO pins to be
763 controlled e.g. muxed in. Instead, implement a proper gpiolib driver and have
764 that driver request proper muxing and other control for its pins.
766 The function list could become long, especially if you can convert every
767 individual pin into a GPIO pin independent of any other pins, and then try
768 the approach to define every pin as a function.
770 In this case, the function array would become 64 entries for each GPIO
771 setting and then the device functions.
773 For this reason there are two functions a pin control driver can implement
774 to enable only GPIO on an individual pin: .gpio_request_enable() and
775 .gpio_disable_free().
777 This function will pass in the affected GPIO range identified by the pin
778 controller core, so you know which GPIO pins are being affected by the request
781 If your driver needs to have an indication from the framework of whether the
782 GPIO pin shall be used for input or output you can implement the
783 .gpio_set_direction() function. As described this shall be called from the
784 gpiolib driver and the affected GPIO range, pin offset and desired direction
785 will be passed along to this function.
787 Alternatively to using these special functions, it is fully allowed to use
788 named functions for each GPIO pin, the pinctrl_request_gpio() will attempt to
789 obtain the function "gpioN" where "N" is the global GPIO pin number if no
790 special GPIO-handler is registered.
796 Due to the naming conventions used by hardware engineers, where "GPIO"
797 is taken to mean different things than what the kernel does, the developer
798 may be confused by a datasheet talking about a pin being possible to set
799 into "GPIO mode". It appears that what hardware engineers mean with
800 "GPIO mode" is not necessarily the use case that is implied in the kernel
801 interface <linux/gpio.h>: a pin that you grab from kernel code and then
802 either listen for input or drive high/low to assert/deassert some
805 Rather hardware engineers think that "GPIO mode" means that you can
806 software-control a few electrical properties of the pin that you would
807 not be able to control if the pin was in some other mode, such as muxed in
810 The GPIO portions of a pin and its relation to a certain pin controller
811 configuration and muxing logic can be constructed in several ways. Here
818 Physical pins --- pad --- pinmux -+- I2C
825 Here some electrical properties of the pin can be configured no matter
826 whether the pin is used for GPIO or not. If you multiplex a GPIO onto a
827 pin, you can also drive it high/low from "GPIO" registers.
828 Alternatively, the pin can be controlled by a certain peripheral, while
829 still applying desired pin config properties. GPIO functionality is thus
830 orthogonal to any other device using the pin.
832 In this arrangement the registers for the GPIO portions of the pin controller,
833 or the registers for the GPIO hardware module are likely to reside in a
834 separate memory range only intended for GPIO driving, and the register
835 range dealing with pin config and pin multiplexing get placed into a
836 different memory range and a separate section of the data sheet.
838 A flag "strict" in struct pinmux_ops is available to check and deny
839 simultaneous access to the same pin from GPIO and pin multiplexing
840 consumers on hardware of this type. The pinctrl driver should set this flag
848 Physical pins --- pad --- pinmux -+- I2C
855 In this arrangement, the GPIO functionality can always be enabled, such that
856 e.g. a GPIO input can be used to "spy" on the SPI/I2C/MMC signal while it is
857 pulsed out. It is likely possible to disrupt the traffic on the pin by doing
858 wrong things on the GPIO block, as it is never really disconnected. It is
859 possible that the GPIO, pin config and pin multiplex registers are placed into
860 the same memory range and the same section of the data sheet, although that
861 need not be the case.
863 In some pin controllers, although the physical pins are designed in the same
864 way as (B), the GPIO function still can't be enabled at the same time as the
865 peripheral functions. So again the "strict" flag should be set, denying
866 simultaneous activation by GPIO and other muxed in devices.
868 From a kernel point of view, however, these are different aspects of the
869 hardware and shall be put into different subsystems:
871 - Registers (or fields within registers) that control electrical
872 properties of the pin such as biasing and drive strength should be
873 exposed through the pinctrl subsystem, as "pin configuration" settings.
875 - Registers (or fields within registers) that control muxing of signals
876 from various other HW blocks (e.g. I2C, MMC, or GPIO) onto pins should
877 be exposed through the pinctrl subsystem, as mux functions.
879 - Registers (or fields within registers) that control GPIO functionality
880 such as setting a GPIO's output value, reading a GPIO's input value, or
881 setting GPIO pin direction should be exposed through the GPIO subsystem,
882 and if they also support interrupt capabilities, through the irqchip
885 Depending on the exact HW register design, some functions exposed by the
886 GPIO subsystem may call into the pinctrl subsystem in order to
887 co-ordinate register settings across HW modules. In particular, this may
888 be needed for HW with separate GPIO and pin controller HW modules, where
889 e.g. GPIO direction is determined by a register in the pin controller HW
890 module rather than the GPIO HW module.
892 Electrical properties of the pin such as biasing and drive strength
893 may be placed at some pin-specific register in all cases or as part
894 of the GPIO register in case (B) especially. This doesn't mean that such
895 properties necessarily pertain to what the Linux kernel calls "GPIO".
897 Example: a pin is usually muxed in to be used as a UART TX line. But during
898 system sleep, we need to put this pin into "GPIO mode" and ground it.
900 If you make a 1-to-1 map to the GPIO subsystem for this pin, you may start
901 to think that you need to come up with something really complex, that the
902 pin shall be used for UART TX and GPIO at the same time, that you will grab
903 a pin control handle and set it to a certain state to enable UART TX to be
904 muxed in, then twist it over to GPIO mode and use gpio_direction_output()
905 to drive it low during sleep, then mux it over to UART TX again when you
906 wake up and maybe even gpio_request/gpio_free as part of this cycle. This
907 all gets very complicated.
909 The solution is to not think that what the datasheet calls "GPIO mode"
910 has to be handled by the <linux/gpio.h> interface. Instead view this as
911 a certain pin config setting. Look in e.g. <linux/pinctrl/pinconf-generic.h>
912 and you find this in the documentation:
914 PIN_CONFIG_OUTPUT: this will configure the pin in output, use argument
915 1 to indicate high level, argument 0 to indicate low level.
917 So it is perfectly possible to push a pin into "GPIO mode" and drive the
918 line low as part of the usual pin control map. So for example your UART
919 driver may look like this:
921 #include <linux/pinctrl/consumer.h>
923 struct pinctrl *pinctrl;
924 struct pinctrl_state *pins_default;
925 struct pinctrl_state *pins_sleep;
927 pins_default = pinctrl_lookup_state(uap->pinctrl, PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT);
928 pins_sleep = pinctrl_lookup_state(uap->pinctrl, PINCTRL_STATE_SLEEP);
931 retval = pinctrl_select_state(pinctrl, pins_default);
933 retval = pinctrl_select_state(pinctrl, pins_sleep);
935 And your machine configuration may look like this:
936 --------------------------------------------------
938 static unsigned long uart_default_mode[] = {
939 PIN_CONF_PACKED(PIN_CONFIG_DRIVE_PUSH_PULL, 0),
942 static unsigned long uart_sleep_mode[] = {
943 PIN_CONF_PACKED(PIN_CONFIG_OUTPUT, 0),
946 static struct pinctrl_map pinmap[] __initdata = {
947 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP("uart", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT, "pinctrl-foo",
949 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_PIN("uart", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT, "pinctrl-foo",
950 "UART_TX_PIN", uart_default_mode),
951 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP("uart", PINCTRL_STATE_SLEEP, "pinctrl-foo",
952 "u0_group", "gpio-mode"),
953 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_PIN("uart", PINCTRL_STATE_SLEEP, "pinctrl-foo",
954 "UART_TX_PIN", uart_sleep_mode),
958 pinctrl_register_mappings(pinmap, ARRAY_SIZE(pinmap));
961 Here the pins we want to control are in the "u0_group" and there is some
962 function called "u0" that can be enabled on this group of pins, and then
963 everything is UART business as usual. But there is also some function
964 named "gpio-mode" that can be mapped onto the same pins to move them into
967 This will give the desired effect without any bogus interaction with the
968 GPIO subsystem. It is just an electrical configuration used by that device
969 when going to sleep, it might imply that the pin is set into something the
970 datasheet calls "GPIO mode", but that is not the point: it is still used
971 by that UART device to control the pins that pertain to that very UART
972 driver, putting them into modes needed by the UART. GPIO in the Linux
973 kernel sense are just some 1-bit line, and is a different use case.
975 How the registers are poked to attain the push or pull, and output low
976 configuration and the muxing of the "u0" or "gpio-mode" group onto these
977 pins is a question for the driver.
979 Some datasheets will be more helpful and refer to the "GPIO mode" as
980 "low power mode" rather than anything to do with GPIO. This often means
981 the same thing electrically speaking, but in this latter case the
982 software engineers will usually quickly identify that this is some
983 specific muxing or configuration rather than anything related to the GPIO
987 Board/machine configuration
988 ==================================
990 Boards and machines define how a certain complete running system is put
991 together, including how GPIOs and devices are muxed, how regulators are
992 constrained and how the clock tree looks. Of course pinmux settings are also
995 A pin controller configuration for a machine looks pretty much like a simple
996 regulator configuration, so for the example array above we want to enable i2c
997 and spi on the second function mapping:
999 #include <linux/pinctrl/machine.h>
1001 static const struct pinctrl_map mapping[] __initconst = {
1003 .dev_name = "foo-spi.0",
1004 .name = PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1005 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1006 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1007 .data.mux.function = "spi0",
1010 .dev_name = "foo-i2c.0",
1011 .name = PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1012 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1013 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1014 .data.mux.function = "i2c0",
1017 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1018 .name = PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1019 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1020 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1021 .data.mux.function = "mmc0",
1025 The dev_name here matches to the unique device name that can be used to look
1026 up the device struct (just like with clockdev or regulators). The function name
1027 must match a function provided by the pinmux driver handling this pin range.
1029 As you can see we may have several pin controllers on the system and thus
1030 we need to specify which one of them contains the functions we wish to map.
1032 You register this pinmux mapping to the pinmux subsystem by simply:
1034 ret = pinctrl_register_mappings(mapping, ARRAY_SIZE(mapping));
1036 Since the above construct is pretty common there is a helper macro to make
1037 it even more compact which assumes you want to use pinctrl-foo and position
1038 0 for mapping, for example:
1040 static struct pinctrl_map mapping[] __initdata = {
1041 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP("foo-i2c.o", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT, "pinctrl-foo", NULL, "i2c0"),
1044 The mapping table may also contain pin configuration entries. It's common for
1045 each pin/group to have a number of configuration entries that affect it, so
1046 the table entries for configuration reference an array of config parameters
1047 and values. An example using the convenience macros is shown below:
1049 static unsigned long i2c_grp_configs[] = {
1054 static unsigned long i2c_pin_configs[] = {
1059 static struct pinctrl_map mapping[] __initdata = {
1060 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT, "pinctrl-foo", "i2c0", "i2c0"),
1061 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_GROUP("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT, "pinctrl-foo", "i2c0", i2c_grp_configs),
1062 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_PIN("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT, "pinctrl-foo", "i2c0scl", i2c_pin_configs),
1063 PIN_MAP_CONFIGS_PIN("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT, "pinctrl-foo", "i2c0sda", i2c_pin_configs),
1066 Finally, some devices expect the mapping table to contain certain specific
1067 named states. When running on hardware that doesn't need any pin controller
1068 configuration, the mapping table must still contain those named states, in
1069 order to explicitly indicate that the states were provided and intended to
1070 be empty. Table entry macro PIN_MAP_DUMMY_STATE serves the purpose of defining
1071 a named state without causing any pin controller to be programmed:
1073 static struct pinctrl_map mapping[] __initdata = {
1074 PIN_MAP_DUMMY_STATE("foo-i2c.0", PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT),
1081 As it is possible to map a function to different groups of pins an optional
1082 .group can be specified like this:
1086 .dev_name = "foo-spi.0",
1087 .name = "spi0-pos-A",
1088 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1089 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1091 .group = "spi0_0_grp",
1094 .dev_name = "foo-spi.0",
1095 .name = "spi0-pos-B",
1096 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1097 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1099 .group = "spi0_1_grp",
1103 This example mapping is used to switch between two positions for spi0 at
1104 runtime, as described further below under the heading "Runtime pinmuxing".
1106 Further it is possible for one named state to affect the muxing of several
1107 groups of pins, say for example in the mmc0 example above, where you can
1108 additively expand the mmc0 bus from 2 to 4 to 8 pins. If we want to use all
1109 three groups for a total of 2+2+4 = 8 pins (for an 8-bit MMC bus as is the
1110 case), we define a mapping like this:
1114 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1116 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1117 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1119 .group = "mmc0_1_grp",
1122 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1124 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1125 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1127 .group = "mmc0_1_grp",
1130 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1132 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1133 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1135 .group = "mmc0_2_grp",
1138 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1140 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1141 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1143 .group = "mmc0_1_grp",
1146 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1148 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1149 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1151 .group = "mmc0_2_grp",
1154 .dev_name = "foo-mmc.0",
1156 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1157 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1159 .group = "mmc0_3_grp",
1163 The result of grabbing this mapping from the device with something like
1164 this (see next paragraph):
1166 p = devm_pinctrl_get(dev);
1167 s = pinctrl_lookup_state(p, "8bit");
1168 ret = pinctrl_select_state(p, s);
1172 p = devm_pinctrl_get_select(dev, "8bit");
1174 Will be that you activate all the three bottom records in the mapping at
1175 once. Since they share the same name, pin controller device, function and
1176 device, and since we allow multiple groups to match to a single device, they
1177 all get selected, and they all get enabled and disable simultaneously by the
1181 Pin control requests from drivers
1182 =================================
1184 When a device driver is about to probe the device core will automatically
1185 attempt to issue pinctrl_get_select_default() on these devices.
1186 This way driver writers do not need to add any of the boilerplate code
1187 of the type found below. However when doing fine-grained state selection
1188 and not using the "default" state, you may have to do some device driver
1189 handling of the pinctrl handles and states.
1191 So if you just want to put the pins for a certain device into the default
1192 state and be done with it, there is nothing you need to do besides
1193 providing the proper mapping table. The device core will take care of
1196 Generally it is discouraged to let individual drivers get and enable pin
1197 control. So if possible, handle the pin control in platform code or some other
1198 place where you have access to all the affected struct device * pointers. In
1199 some cases where a driver needs to e.g. switch between different mux mappings
1200 at runtime this is not possible.
1202 A typical case is if a driver needs to switch bias of pins from normal
1203 operation and going to sleep, moving from the PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT to
1204 PINCTRL_STATE_SLEEP at runtime, re-biasing or even re-muxing pins to save
1205 current in sleep mode.
1207 A driver may request a certain control state to be activated, usually just the
1208 default state like this:
1210 #include <linux/pinctrl/consumer.h>
1214 struct pinctrl_state *s;
1220 /* Allocate a state holder named "foo" etc */
1221 struct foo_state *foo = ...;
1223 foo->p = devm_pinctrl_get(&device);
1224 if (IS_ERR(foo->p)) {
1225 /* FIXME: clean up "foo" here */
1226 return PTR_ERR(foo->p);
1229 foo->s = pinctrl_lookup_state(foo->p, PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT);
1230 if (IS_ERR(foo->s)) {
1231 /* FIXME: clean up "foo" here */
1235 ret = pinctrl_select_state(foo->s);
1237 /* FIXME: clean up "foo" here */
1242 This get/lookup/select/put sequence can just as well be handled by bus drivers
1243 if you don't want each and every driver to handle it and you know the
1244 arrangement on your bus.
1246 The semantics of the pinctrl APIs are:
1248 - pinctrl_get() is called in process context to obtain a handle to all pinctrl
1249 information for a given client device. It will allocate a struct from the
1250 kernel memory to hold the pinmux state. All mapping table parsing or similar
1251 slow operations take place within this API.
1253 - devm_pinctrl_get() is a variant of pinctrl_get() that causes pinctrl_put()
1254 to be called automatically on the retrieved pointer when the associated
1255 device is removed. It is recommended to use this function over plain
1258 - pinctrl_lookup_state() is called in process context to obtain a handle to a
1259 specific state for a client device. This operation may be slow, too.
1261 - pinctrl_select_state() programs pin controller hardware according to the
1262 definition of the state as given by the mapping table. In theory, this is a
1263 fast-path operation, since it only involved blasting some register settings
1264 into hardware. However, note that some pin controllers may have their
1265 registers on a slow/IRQ-based bus, so client devices should not assume they
1266 can call pinctrl_select_state() from non-blocking contexts.
1268 - pinctrl_put() frees all information associated with a pinctrl handle.
1270 - devm_pinctrl_put() is a variant of pinctrl_put() that may be used to
1271 explicitly destroy a pinctrl object returned by devm_pinctrl_get().
1272 However, use of this function will be rare, due to the automatic cleanup
1273 that will occur even without calling it.
1275 pinctrl_get() must be paired with a plain pinctrl_put().
1276 pinctrl_get() may not be paired with devm_pinctrl_put().
1277 devm_pinctrl_get() can optionally be paired with devm_pinctrl_put().
1278 devm_pinctrl_get() may not be paired with plain pinctrl_put().
1280 Usually the pin control core handled the get/put pair and call out to the
1281 device drivers bookkeeping operations, like checking available functions and
1282 the associated pins, whereas select_state pass on to the pin controller
1283 driver which takes care of activating and/or deactivating the mux setting by
1284 quickly poking some registers.
1286 The pins are allocated for your device when you issue the devm_pinctrl_get()
1287 call, after this you should be able to see this in the debugfs listing of all
1290 NOTE: the pinctrl system will return -EPROBE_DEFER if it cannot find the
1291 requested pinctrl handles, for example if the pinctrl driver has not yet
1292 registered. Thus make sure that the error path in your driver gracefully
1293 cleans up and is ready to retry the probing later in the startup process.
1296 Drivers needing both pin control and GPIOs
1297 ==========================================
1299 Again, it is discouraged to let drivers lookup and select pin control states
1300 themselves, but again sometimes this is unavoidable.
1302 So say that your driver is fetching its resources like this:
1304 #include <linux/pinctrl/consumer.h>
1305 #include <linux/gpio.h>
1307 struct pinctrl *pinctrl;
1310 pinctrl = devm_pinctrl_get_select_default(&dev);
1311 gpio = devm_gpio_request(&dev, 14, "foo");
1313 Here we first request a certain pin state and then request GPIO 14 to be
1314 used. If you're using the subsystems orthogonally like this, you should
1315 nominally always get your pinctrl handle and select the desired pinctrl
1316 state BEFORE requesting the GPIO. This is a semantic convention to avoid
1317 situations that can be electrically unpleasant, you will certainly want to
1318 mux in and bias pins in a certain way before the GPIO subsystems starts to
1321 The above can be hidden: using the device core, the pinctrl core may be
1322 setting up the config and muxing for the pins right before the device is
1323 probing, nevertheless orthogonal to the GPIO subsystem.
1325 But there are also situations where it makes sense for the GPIO subsystem
1326 to communicate directly with the pinctrl subsystem, using the latter as a
1327 back-end. This is when the GPIO driver may call out to the functions
1328 described in the section "Pin control interaction with the GPIO subsystem"
1329 above. This only involves per-pin multiplexing, and will be completely
1330 hidden behind the gpio_*() function namespace. In this case, the driver
1331 need not interact with the pin control subsystem at all.
1333 If a pin control driver and a GPIO driver is dealing with the same pins
1334 and the use cases involve multiplexing, you MUST implement the pin controller
1335 as a back-end for the GPIO driver like this, unless your hardware design
1336 is such that the GPIO controller can override the pin controller's
1337 multiplexing state through hardware without the need to interact with the
1341 System pin control hogging
1342 ==========================
1344 Pin control map entries can be hogged by the core when the pin controller
1345 is registered. This means that the core will attempt to call pinctrl_get(),
1346 lookup_state() and select_state() on it immediately after the pin control
1347 device has been registered.
1349 This occurs for mapping table entries where the client device name is equal
1350 to the pin controller device name, and the state name is PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT.
1353 .dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1354 .name = PINCTRL_STATE_DEFAULT,
1355 .type = PIN_MAP_TYPE_MUX_GROUP,
1356 .ctrl_dev_name = "pinctrl-foo",
1357 .function = "power_func",
1360 Since it may be common to request the core to hog a few always-applicable
1361 mux settings on the primary pin controller, there is a convenience macro for
1364 PIN_MAP_MUX_GROUP_HOG_DEFAULT("pinctrl-foo", NULL /* group */, "power_func")
1366 This gives the exact same result as the above construction.
1372 It is possible to mux a certain function in and out at runtime, say to move
1373 an SPI port from one set of pins to another set of pins. Say for example for
1374 spi0 in the example above, we expose two different groups of pins for the same
1375 function, but with different named in the mapping as described under
1376 "Advanced mapping" above. So that for an SPI device, we have two states named
1377 "pos-A" and "pos-B".
1379 This snippet first initializes a state object for both groups (in foo_probe()),
1380 then muxes the function in the pins defined by group A, and finally muxes it in
1381 on the pins defined by group B:
1383 #include <linux/pinctrl/consumer.h>
1386 struct pinctrl_state *s1, *s2;
1391 p = devm_pinctrl_get(&device);
1395 s1 = pinctrl_lookup_state(foo->p, "pos-A");
1399 s2 = pinctrl_lookup_state(foo->p, "pos-B");
1406 /* Enable on position A */
1407 ret = pinctrl_select_state(s1);
1413 /* Enable on position B */
1414 ret = pinctrl_select_state(s2);
1421 The above has to be done from process context. The reservation of the pins
1422 will be done when the state is activated, so in effect one specific pin
1423 can be used by different functions at different times on a running system.