From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262375AbUBXSQt (ORCPT ); Tue, 24 Feb 2004 13:16:49 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262384AbUBXSQs (ORCPT ); Tue, 24 Feb 2004 13:16:48 -0500 Received: from parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk ([195.92.249.252]:61378 "EHLO www.linux.org.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262375AbUBXSQN (ORCPT ); Tue, 24 Feb 2004 13:16:13 -0500 Message-ID: <403B94D2.8040507@pobox.com> Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 13:15:46 -0500 From: Jeff Garzik User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030703 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Henrik Gustafsson CC: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Promise SATA driver References: <200402241110.07526.andrew@walrond.org> <20040224154446.GA28720@ee.oulu.fi> <403B73E3.80100@pobox.com> <200402241630.36105.andrew@walrond.org> <403B8028.1060700@pobox.com> <403B8587.3030009@pobox.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Henrik Gustafsson wrote: > I happen to have such a card in a computer here. Right now it's not used > for anything in particular (waiting for things to stabilising a bit) so > I can test out patches without worrying about any data on it, so feel > free to suggest things to try. > > Is there any active development done on it? Well, the basic SX4 SATA driver is pretty much done. There is one bugfix I need to merge for PCI-X, but that's it. Unfortunately, it is a bit slower than average since every request must bounce through RAM first, with no queueing. Using the on-board DIMM as a write-through cache would boost performance significantly. > My current working conditions (and lack of specs for the card) prevents me > from doing much work on it myself atm, but is there perhaps another way of > following the development on that part a bit more closely? > > I have done my (small, but still... :) ) share of driver development and > low-level coding (company I work for makes me write code for their embedded > devices and sometimes drivers for the PC-interfaces) so I might just be > able to pitch in with an idea or two. Well, the specs are under NDA but are available from Promise. However... if you want to tackle creating the write-through cache, that shouldn't require any specs at all. If you are knowledgeable enough to create generic write-through cache code for an ATA drive, that's sufficient :) Jeff