Adding support for ARINC429 into the Linux kernel

[Guenter Roeck <linux@roeck-us.net>]

Hi all,

I have been asked to explore options for adding ARINC 429 support [1]
into the Linux kernel, primarily to support devices from Holt Integrated
Circuits [2] (the request is unrelated to the chip manufacturer).

ARINC429 is a protocol which is widely used in commercial airplanes. 

There are various chips supporting this protocol available, as well as
out-of-tree Linux support. The drivers I have looked at implement it
either as character device or misc device and typically pass raw receive
data to userspace.

I can see a number of options for going forward:
1) Implement as character device (or possibly misc device) and pass
   raw data to/from user space
   1a) Just implement a driver for the specific chips
   2b) Implement some kind of generic infrastructure
2) Implement as network driver with a new address family, similar to,
   say, AF_CAN.

Any thoughts / suggestions which approach would be better and, most of all,
which approach might have a better chance of being accepted upstream ?

Thanks,
Guenter

--
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARINC_429
[2] http://www.holtic.com/category/352-arinc-429.aspx