1========================= 2ALSA Compress-Offload API 3========================= 4 5Pierre-Louis.Bossart <pierre-louis.bossart@linux.intel.com> 6 7Vinod Koul <vinod.koul@linux.intel.com> 8 9 10Overview 11======== 12Since its early days, the ALSA API was defined with PCM support or 13constant bitrates payloads such as IEC61937 in mind. Arguments and 14returned values in frames are the norm, making it a challenge to 15extend the existing API to compressed data streams. 16 17In recent years, audio digital signal processors (DSP) were integrated 18in system-on-chip designs, and DSPs are also integrated in audio 19codecs. Processing compressed data on such DSPs results in a dramatic 20reduction of power consumption compared to host-based 21processing. Support for such hardware has not been very good in Linux, 22mostly because of a lack of a generic API available in the mainline 23kernel. 24 25Rather than requiring a compatibility break with an API change of the 26ALSA PCM interface, a new 'Compressed Data' API is introduced to 27provide a control and data-streaming interface for audio DSPs. 28 29The design of this API was inspired by the 2-year experience with the 30Intel Moorestown SOC, with many corrections required to upstream the 31API in the mainline kernel instead of the staging tree and make it 32usable by others. 33 34 35Requirements 36============ 37The main requirements are: 38 39- separation between byte counts and time. Compressed formats may have 40 a header per file, per frame, or no header at all. The payload size 41 may vary from frame-to-frame. As a result, it is not possible to 42 estimate reliably the duration of audio buffers when handling 43 compressed data. Dedicated mechanisms are required to allow for 44 reliable audio-video synchronization, which requires precise 45 reporting of the number of samples rendered at any given time. 46 47- Handling of multiple formats. PCM data only requires a specification 48 of the sampling rate, number of channels and bits per sample. In 49 contrast, compressed data comes in a variety of formats. Audio DSPs 50 may also provide support for a limited number of audio encoders and 51 decoders embedded in firmware, or may support more choices through 52 dynamic download of libraries. 53 54- Focus on main formats. This API provides support for the most 55 popular formats used for audio and video capture and playback. It is 56 likely that as audio compression technology advances, new formats 57 will be added. 58 59- Handling of multiple configurations. Even for a given format like 60 AAC, some implementations may support AAC multichannel but HE-AAC 61 stereo. Likewise WMA10 level M3 may require too much memory and cpu 62 cycles. The new API needs to provide a generic way of listing these 63 formats. 64 65- Rendering/Grabbing only. This API does not provide any means of 66 hardware acceleration, where PCM samples are provided back to 67 user-space for additional processing. This API focuses instead on 68 streaming compressed data to a DSP, with the assumption that the 69 decoded samples are routed to a physical output or logical back-end. 70 71- Complexity hiding. Existing user-space multimedia frameworks all 72 have existing enums/structures for each compressed format. This new 73 API assumes the existence of a platform-specific compatibility layer 74 to expose, translate and make use of the capabilities of the audio 75 DSP, eg. Android HAL or PulseAudio sinks. By construction, regular 76 applications are not supposed to make use of this API. 77 78 79Design 80====== 81The new API shares a number of concepts with the PCM API for flow 82control. Start, pause, resume, drain and stop commands have the same 83semantics no matter what the content is. 84 85The concept of memory ring buffer divided in a set of fragments is 86borrowed from the ALSA PCM API. However, only sizes in bytes can be 87specified. 88 89Seeks/trick modes are assumed to be handled by the host. 90 91The notion of rewinds/forwards is not supported. Data committed to the 92ring buffer cannot be invalidated, except when dropping all buffers. 93 94The Compressed Data API does not make any assumptions on how the data 95is transmitted to the audio DSP. DMA transfers from main memory to an 96embedded audio cluster or to a SPI interface for external DSPs are 97possible. As in the ALSA PCM case, a core set of routines is exposed; 98each driver implementer will have to write support for a set of 99mandatory routines and possibly make use of optional ones. 100 101The main additions are 102 103get_caps 104 This routine returns the list of audio formats supported. Querying the 105 codecs on a capture stream will return encoders, decoders will be 106 listed for playback streams. 107 108get_codec_caps 109 For each codec, this routine returns a list of 110 capabilities. The intent is to make sure all the capabilities 111 correspond to valid settings, and to minimize the risks of 112 configuration failures. For example, for a complex codec such as AAC, 113 the number of channels supported may depend on a specific profile. If 114 the capabilities were exposed with a single descriptor, it may happen 115 that a specific combination of profiles/channels/formats may not be 116 supported. Likewise, embedded DSPs have limited memory and cpu cycles, 117 it is likely that some implementations make the list of capabilities 118 dynamic and dependent on existing workloads. In addition to codec 119 settings, this routine returns the minimum buffer size handled by the 120 implementation. This information can be a function of the DMA buffer 121 sizes, the number of bytes required to synchronize, etc, and can be 122 used by userspace to define how much needs to be written in the ring 123 buffer before playback can start. 124 125set_params 126 This routine sets the configuration chosen for a specific codec. The 127 most important field in the parameters is the codec type; in most 128 cases decoders will ignore other fields, while encoders will strictly 129 comply to the settings 130 131get_params 132 This routines returns the actual settings used by the DSP. Changes to 133 the settings should remain the exception. 134 135get_timestamp 136 The timestamp becomes a multiple field structure. It lists the number 137 of bytes transferred, the number of samples processed and the number 138 of samples rendered/grabbed. All these values can be used to determine 139 the average bitrate, figure out if the ring buffer needs to be 140 refilled or the delay due to decoding/encoding/io on the DSP. 141 142Note that the list of codecs/profiles/modes was derived from the 143OpenMAX AL specification instead of reinventing the wheel. 144Modifications include: 145- Addition of FLAC and IEC formats 146- Merge of encoder/decoder capabilities 147- Profiles/modes listed as bitmasks to make descriptors more compact 148- Addition of set_params for decoders (missing in OpenMAX AL) 149- Addition of AMR/AMR-WB encoding modes (missing in OpenMAX AL) 150- Addition of format information for WMA 151- Addition of encoding options when required (derived from OpenMAX IL) 152- Addition of rateControlSupported (missing in OpenMAX AL) 153 154 155Gapless Playback 156================ 157When playing thru an album, the decoders have the ability to skip the encoder 158delay and padding and directly move from one track content to another. The end 159user can perceive this as gapless playback as we don't have silence while 160switching from one track to another 161 162Also, there might be low-intensity noises due to encoding. Perfect gapless is 163difficult to reach with all types of compressed data, but works fine with most 164music content. The decoder needs to know the encoder delay and encoder padding. 165So we need to pass this to DSP. This metadata is extracted from ID3/MP4 headers 166and are not present by default in the bitstream, hence the need for a new 167interface to pass this information to the DSP. Also DSP and userspace needs to 168switch from one track to another and start using data for second track. 169 170The main additions are: 171 172set_metadata 173 This routine sets the encoder delay and encoder padding. This can be used by 174 decoder to strip the silence. This needs to be set before the data in the track 175 is written. 176 177set_next_track 178 This routine tells DSP that metadata and write operation sent after this would 179 correspond to subsequent track 180 181partial drain 182 This is called when end of file is reached. The userspace can inform DSP that 183 EOF is reached and now DSP can start skipping padding delay. Also next write 184 data would belong to next track 185 186Sequence flow for gapless would be: 187- Open 188- Get caps / codec caps 189- Set params 190- Set metadata of the first track 191- Fill data of the first track 192- Trigger start 193- User-space finished sending all, 194- Indicate next track data by sending set_next_track 195- Set metadata of the next track 196- then call partial_drain to flush most of buffer in DSP 197- Fill data of the next track 198- DSP switches to second track 199 200(note: order for partial_drain and write for next track can be reversed as well) 201 202 203Not supported 204============= 205- Support for VoIP/circuit-switched calls is not the target of this 206 API. Support for dynamic bit-rate changes would require a tight 207 coupling between the DSP and the host stack, limiting power savings. 208 209- Packet-loss concealment is not supported. This would require an 210 additional interface to let the decoder synthesize data when frames 211 are lost during transmission. This may be added in the future. 212 213- Volume control/routing is not handled by this API. Devices exposing a 214 compressed data interface will be considered as regular ALSA devices; 215 volume changes and routing information will be provided with regular 216 ALSA kcontrols. 217 218- Embedded audio effects. Such effects should be enabled in the same 219 manner, no matter if the input was PCM or compressed. 220 221- multichannel IEC encoding. Unclear if this is required. 222 223- Encoding/decoding acceleration is not supported as mentioned 224 above. It is possible to route the output of a decoder to a capture 225 stream, or even implement transcoding capabilities. This routing 226 would be enabled with ALSA kcontrols. 227 228- Audio policy/resource management. This API does not provide any 229 hooks to query the utilization of the audio DSP, nor any preemption 230 mechanisms. 231 232- No notion of underrun/overrun. Since the bytes written are compressed 233 in nature and data written/read doesn't translate directly to 234 rendered output in time, this does not deal with underrun/overrun and 235 maybe dealt in user-library 236 237 238Credits 239======= 240- Mark Brown and Liam Girdwood for discussions on the need for this API 241- Harsha Priya for her work on intel_sst compressed API 242- Rakesh Ughreja for valuable feedback 243- Sing Nallasellan, Sikkandar Madar and Prasanna Samaga for 244 demonstrating and quantifying the benefits of audio offload on a 245 real platform. 246