From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "John Stoffel" Subject: Re: Implementing NVMHCI... Date: Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:31:14 -0400 Message-ID: <18913.3106.750732.50314@stoffel.org> References: <49E0D47B.9070205@garzik.org> <20090411203246.513a0892@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> <49E0F581.6010901@garzik.org> <18913.1720.994638.274611@stoffel.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <18913.1720.994638.274611@stoffel.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org To: John Stoffel Cc: Jeff Garzik , Alan Cox , Linux IDE mailing list , LKML , Jens Axboe , Arjan van de Ven , Linus Torvalds List-Id: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org >>>>> "John" == John Stoffel writes: >>>>> "Jeff" == Jeff Garzik writes: Jeff> Alan Cox wrote: >>>> With a brand new command set, might as well avoid SCSI completely >>>> IMO, and create a brand new block device. >>> >>> Providing we allow for the (inevitable ;)) joys of NVHCI over SAS etc 8) Jeff> Perhaps... from what I can tell, this is a direct, asynchronous Jeff> NVM interface. It appears to lack any concept of bus or bus Jeff> enumeration. No worries about link up/down, storage device Jeff> hotplug, etc. (you still have PCI hotplug case, of course) John> Didn't we just spend years merging the old IDE PATA block devices into John> the libata/scsi block device setup to get a more unified userspace and John> to share common code? John> I'm a total ignoramous here, but it would seem that it would be nice John> to keep the /dev/sd# stuff around for this, esp since it is supported John> through/with/around AHCI and libata stuff. John> Honestly, I don't care as long as userspace isn't too affected and I John> can just format it using ext3. :] Which I realize would be silly John> since it's probably nothing like regular disk access, but more like John> the NVRAM used on Netapps for caching writes to disk so they can be John> acknowledged quicker to the clients. Or like the old PrestoServe John> NVRAM modules on DECsystems and Alphas. And actually spending some thought on this, I'm thinking that this will be like the MTD block device and such... seperate specialized block devices, but still usable. So maybe I'll just shutup now. :] John