Explanation taken from the comment of ata_slave_link_init().
In libata, a port contains links and a link contains devices. There
is single host link but if a PMP is attached to it, there can be
multiple fan-out links. On SATA, there's usually a single device
connected to a link but PATA and SATA controllers emulating TF based
interface can have two - master and slave.
However, there are a few controllers which don't fit into this
abstraction too well - SATA controllers which emulate TF interface
with both master and slave devices but also have separate SCR
register sets for each device. These controllers need separate links
for physical link handling (e.g. onlineness, link speed) but should
be treated like a traditional M/S controller for everything else
(e.g. command issue, softreset).
slave_link is libata's way of handling this class of controllers
without impacting core layer too much. For anything other than
physical link handling, the default host link is used for both master
and slave. For physical link handling, separate @ap->slave_link is
used. All dirty details are implemented inside libata core layer.
From LLD's POV, the only difference is that prereset, hardreset and
postreset are called once more for the slave link, so the reset
sequence looks like the following.
Note that softreset is called only for the master. Softreset resets
both M/S by definition, so SRST on master should handle both (the
standard method will work just fine).
As slave_link excludes PMP support and only code paths which deal with
the attributes of physical link are affected, all the changes are
localized to libata.h, libata-core.c and libata-eh.c.
* ata_is_host_link() updated so that slave_link is considered as host
link too.
* iterator extended to iterate over the slave_link when using the
underbarred version.
* force param handling updated such that devno 16 is mapped to the
slave link/device.
* ata_link_on/offline() updated to return the combined result from
master and slave link. ata_phys_link_on/offline() are the direct
versions.
* EH autopsy and report are performed separately for master slave
links. Reset is udpated to implement the above described reset
sequence.
Except for reset update, most changes are minor, many of them just
modifying dev->link to ata_dev_phys_link(dev) or using phys online
test instead.
After this update, LLDs can take full advantage of per-dev SCR
registers by simply turning on slave link.
Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@redhat.com>