firmware: revamp firmware documentation

Understanding this code is getting out of control without any
notes. Give the firmware_class driver a much needed documentation love,
and while at it convert it to the new sphinx documentation format.

v2: typos and small fixes

Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

1 files changed, 51 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/firmware_cache.rst b/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/firmware_cache.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..2210e5bfb332
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/driver-api/firmware/firmware_cache.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+==============
+Firmware cache
+==============
+
+When Linux resumes from suspend some device drivers require firmware lookups to
+re-initialize devices. During resume there may be a period of time during which
+firmware lookups are not possible, during this short period of time firmware
+requests will fail. Time is of essence though, and delaying drivers to wait for
+the root filesystem for firmware delays user experience with device
+functionality. In order to support these requirements the firmware
+infrastructure implements a firmware cache for device drivers for most API
+calls, automatically behind the scenes.
+
+The firmware cache makes using certain firmware API calls safe during a device
+driver's suspend and resume callback.  Users of these API calls needn't cache
+the firmware by themselves for dealing with firmware loss during system resume.
+
+The firmware cache works by requesting for firmware prior to suspend and
+caching it in memory. Upon resume device drivers using the firmware API will
+have access to the firmware immediately, without having to wait for the root
+filesystem to mount or dealing with possible race issues with lookups as the
+root filesystem mounts.
+
+Some implementation details about the firmware cache setup:
+
+* The firmware cache is setup by adding a devres entry for each device that
+  uses all synchronous call except :c:func:`request_firmware_into_buf`.
+
+* If an asynchronous call is used the firmware cache is only set up for a
+  device if if the second argument (uevent) to request_firmware_nowait() is
+  true. When uevent is true it requests that a kobject uevent be sent to
+  userspace for the firmware request. For details refer to the Fackback
+  mechanism documented below.
+
+* If the firmware cache is determined to be needed as per the above two
+  criteria the firmware cache is setup by adding a devres entry for the
+  device making the firmware request.
+
+* The firmware devres entry is maintained throughout the lifetime of the
+  device. This means that even if you release_firmware() the firmware cache
+  will still be used on resume from suspend.
+
+* The timeout for the fallback mechanism is temporarily reduced to 10 seconds
+  as the firmware cache is set up during suspend, the timeout is set back to
+  the old value you had configured after the cache is set up.
+
+* Upon suspend any pending non-uevent firmware requests are killed to avoid
+  stalling the kernel, this is done with kill_requests_without_uevent(). Kernel
+  calls requiring the non-uevent therefore need to implement their own firmware
+  cache mechanism but must not use the firmware API on suspend.
+