RE: [PATCH] DMA: Correct invalid assumptions in the Kconfig text

Nelson, Shannon
2007-10-24T15:11:35Z

>From: Haavard Skinnemoen [mailto:hskinnemoen@atmel.com]
>Subject: [PATCH] DMA: Correct invalid assumptions in the Kconfig text
>
>This patch corrects what I hope are invalid assumptions about the DMA
>engine layer: Not only Intel(R) hardware can do DMA, and DMA can be
>used for other things than memcpy and RAID offloading.
>
>At the same time, make the DMA Engine menu visible again on AVR32. I'm
>currently working on a driver for a DMA controller that can do
>mem-to-mem transfers (which is supported by the framework) as well as
>device-to-mem and mem-to-device transfers (not currently supported.)
>
>Signed-off-by: Haavard Skinnemoen <hskinnemoen@atmel.com>
>---
>Don't get me wrong; I think Intel deserves lots of respect for
>creating this framework. But this is also why I got a bit disappointed
>when I discovered that it seems to be less generic than I initially
>hoped.
>
>DMA controllers, which may support plain memcpy acceleration in
>addition to more traditional "slave DMA", are very common in SoC
>devices, and I think Linux needs a common framework for it. The
>existing DMA Engine framework seems to come pretty close already, but
>I think it needs more input from the embedded crowd before it can be
>completely usable on a large number of embedded systems.
>
>I'm not going to suggest any changes to the actual framework for
>2.6.24, but I think the _intention_ of the framework needs to be
>clarified.
>
>Haavard
>
> drivers/dma/Kconfig | 10 ++++++----
> 1 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>
>diff --git a/drivers/dma/Kconfig b/drivers/dma/Kconfig
>index 9c91b0f..62a9fe5 100644
>--- a/drivers/dma/Kconfig
>+++ b/drivers/dma/Kconfig
>@@ -3,11 +3,13 @@
> #
>
> menuconfig DMADEVICES
>- bool "DMA Offload Engine support"
>- depends on (PCI && X86) || ARCH_IOP32X || ARCH_IOP33X
>|| ARCH_IOP13XX
>+ bool "DMA Engine support"
>+ depends on (PCI && X86) || ARCH_IOP32X || ARCH_IOP33X
>|| ARCH_IOP13XX || AVR32
> help
>- Intel(R) offload engines enable offloading memory
>copies in the
>- network stack and RAID operations in the MD driver.
>+ DMA engines can do asynchronous data transfers without
>+ involving the host CPU. This can be used to offload memory
>+ copies in the network stack and RAID operations in the MD
>+ driver.
>
> if DMADEVICES
>
>--
>1.5.3.4
>

Acked-by: Shannon Nelson <shannon.nelson@intel.com>