Re: [lm-sensors] Using hwmon in-kernel

[Hans de Goede <j.w.r.degoede@hhs.nl>]

Jean Delvare wrote:
> Hi Matthew,
> 
> On Sun, 19 Oct 2008 19:02:57 +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
>> On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 06:20:00PM +0200, Jean Delvare wrote:
>>
>>> If you instead refer to a board-specific offset that should be applied
>>> to compensate for the distance between the thermal sensor and the
>>> graphics core, or for a non-standard thermal diode, the lm90 driver
>>> exposes attribute temp2_offset so user-space can set and read the
>>> temperature offset.
>> Right. My kernel driver is in the privileged position of knowing 
>> precisely what offset should be applied to the lm90 readings, so doing 
>> this in-kernel would be advantageous :)
> 
> There's nothing preventing you from accessing the LM99's registers
> directly and retrieve the temperature that way. Alternatively, we could
> add an internal interface to access some of the hwmon device features.

I think that we really should be thinking about adding an internal interface, I 
think other parts of the kernel poking at IC registers where the IC is managed 
by another driver is a *bad* idea.

With that said, I have no experience in this field and no idea where to start.

>>> Why do you want to retrieve the temperature value from the kernel?
>>> Please explain your use case.
>> I'm implementing power management for GPUs. These typically have several 
>> different performance constraints, but one of them is chip temperature. 
>> The maximum supported temperature is generally exported via tables in 
>> the graphics card BIOS, so it's necesssary for the kernel driver to be 
>> aware of the current temperature in order to limit the available 
>> performance modes to ensure the GPU stays within its thermal envelope.
> 
> OK, I see. Then indeed it makes sense to deviate from the traditional
> hwmon model. You could prevent auto-detection of the hwmon device (by
> dropping I2C_CLASS_HWMON from i2c_adapter.class) and instantiate the
> lm99 device manually instead (using i2c_new_device()). This gives you
> two things: a handle on the created device (so that you can access the
> chip registers directly if needed, and its private data too) and the
> possibility to pass platform data to the driver for specific
> initialization purposes. The lm90 driver doesn't implement the later
> yet, but we have another driver doing that (lm87) so it could be added
> if needed.
> 

+1

Regards,

Hans

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