Re: POSTing of video cards (WAS: Solo Xgl..)

[Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>]

On Tue, 2005-02-22 at 01:05 -0500, Jon Smirl wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Feb 2005 16:13:36 +1100, Benjamin Herrenschmidt
> <benh@kernel.crashing.org> wrote:
> > What we can/should provide, is a ncie helper to do the job once the
> > driver decides to have a go at it. I think userspace is the right
> > solution, similar to the firmware loader helpers, as I wrote earlier.
> > There are a few issues related on trying to run these before / is
> > mounted or during the sleep process, but those are things I plan to work
> > on & fix sooner or later. (Which is also why it has to be an
> > asynchronous API, so that the helper can call back "later" when the
> > helper has been found).
> 
> Can a userspace solution solve the problem of cards that need to be
> posted when they are coming out of suspend?

Yes, though they'll come up a bit later than the rest of the world if
the driver can't resume them itself (which is what should happen
normally, running the BIOS on resume is a hack).

Also, as I wrote earlier, what we care about now is the API in the form
of a helper. It fits well to have that helper just do something similar
to the firmware loader, running the stuff in userspace, but that isn't
mandatory, we could change later to be in-kernel, partially, or even
have a CONFIG option wether to have the emulator in kernel or not :)

The driver doesn't have to care if we provide a suitable API. And
userspace helper is a good enough implementation to start with.

Ben.