FreeBSD/Linux Kernel Cross Reference
sys/Documentation/pwm.txt

     Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) interface
     
     This provides an overview about the Linux PWM interface
     
     PWMs are commonly used for controlling LEDs, fans or vibrators in
     cell phones. PWMs with a fixed purpose have no need implementing
     the Linux PWM API (although they could). However, PWMs are often
     found as discrete devices on SoCs which have no fixed purpose. It's
     up to the board designer to connect them to LEDs or fans. To provide
    this kind of flexibility the generic PWM API exists.
    
    Identifying PWMs
    ----------------
    
    Users of the legacy PWM API use unique IDs to refer to PWM devices.
    
    Instead of referring to a PWM device via its unique ID, board setup code
    should instead register a static mapping that can be used to match PWM
    consumers to providers, as given in the following example:
    
            static struct pwm_lookup board_pwm_lookup[] = {
                    PWM_LOOKUP("tegra-pwm", 0, "pwm-backlight", NULL),
            };
    
            static void __init board_init(void)
            {
                    ...
                    pwm_add_table(board_pwm_lookup, ARRAY_SIZE(board_pwm_lookup));
                    ...
            }
    
    Using PWMs
    ----------
    
    Legacy users can request a PWM device using pwm_request() and free it
    after usage with pwm_free().
    
    New users should use the pwm_get() function and pass to it the consumer
    device or a consumer name. pwm_put() is used to free the PWM device. Managed
    variants of these functions, devm_pwm_get() and devm_pwm_put(), also exist.
    
    After being requested a PWM has to be configured using:
    
    int pwm_config(struct pwm_device *pwm, int duty_ns, int period_ns);
    
    To start/stop toggling the PWM output use pwm_enable()/pwm_disable().
    
    Implementing a PWM driver
    -------------------------
    
    Currently there are two ways to implement pwm drivers. Traditionally
    there only has been the barebone API meaning that each driver has
    to implement the pwm_*() functions itself. This means that it's impossible
    to have multiple PWM drivers in the system. For this reason it's mandatory
    for new drivers to use the generic PWM framework.
    
    A new PWM controller/chip can be added using pwmchip_add() and removed
    again with pwmchip_remove(). pwmchip_add() takes a filled in struct
    pwm_chip as argument which provides a description of the PWM chip, the
    number of PWM devices provider by the chip and the chip-specific
    implementation of the supported PWM operations to the framework.
    
    Locking
    -------
    
    The PWM core list manipulations are protected by a mutex, so pwm_request()
    and pwm_free() may not be called from an atomic context. Currently the
    PWM core does not enforce any locking to pwm_enable(), pwm_disable() and
    pwm_config(), so the calling context is currently driver specific. This
    is an issue derived from the former barebone API and should be fixed soon.
    
    Helpers
    -------
    
    Currently a PWM can only be configured with period_ns and duty_ns. For several
    use cases freq_hz and duty_percent might be better. Instead of calculating
    this in your driver please consider adding appropriate helpers to the framework.

Cache object: e43a6042c1436734117f410787c21748