Re: [RFC] Inter-processor Mailboxes Drivers

On 02/14/2011 04:01 AM, Jamie Iles wrote:

On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 03:19:51PM -0600, Meador Inge wrote:

quoted

     1. Hardware specific bits somewhere under '.../arch/*'.  Drivers
        for the MPIC message registers on Power and OMAP4 mailboxes, for
        example.
     2. A higher level driver under '.../drivers/mailbox/*'.  That the
        pieces in (1) would register with.  This piece would expose the
        main kernel API.
     3. Userspace interfaces for accessing the mailboxes.  A
        '/dev/mailbox1', '/dev/mailbox2', etc... mapping, for example.

How about using virtio for all of this and having the mailbox as a
notification/message passing driver for the virtio backend?  There are
already virtio console and network drivers that could be useful for the
userspace part of it.  drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c might be a good
starting point if you thought there was some mileage in this approach.

To be honest, I am not that familiar with 'virtio', but I will take a look.  Thanks for the pointer.  Maybe Hollis can speak to this idea more.

Jamie

-- 
Meador Inge     | meador_inge AT mentor.com
Mentor Embedded | http://www.mentor.com/embedded-software