Re: [PATCH 0/6] misc: add amd side-band functionality

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Thu, Jul 04, 2024 at 11:16:18AM +0000, Akshay Gupta wrote:
> AMD's APML interface provides system management functionality accessed by
> the BMC. Sbrmi driver under hwmon subsystem, which is probed as an i2c
> driver and reports power using APML specified protocol.

What is "APML"?  What is "BMC"?

> However, APML interface defines few other protocols to support
> full system management functionality out-of-band.

What is out-of-band here?

> This patchset is an attempt to add all APML core functionality in one place
> and provide hwmon and user interface
> 1. Move the i2c client probe and sbrmi core functionality from drivers/hwmon
>    to drivers/misc/
> 2. Add a platform device, which probes the hwmon/sbrmi and continues to
>    report power using the symbol exported by the misc/sbrmi-core.

Are you sure this is a platform device?  It better not be a pci one...

> 3. Convert i2c to regmap which provides multiple benefits
>    over direct smbus APIs.

What are those?

> 4. Register a misc device which provides 
>     a. An ioctl interface through node /dev/sbrmiX

Why?

>     b. Open-sourced and widely used https://github.com/amd/esmi_oob_library
>        will continue to provide user-space programmable API.

Will this use the new ioctl api?  If it's not present, what will it use
instead?

thanks,

greg k-h