Re: [GIT *] Allow request_firmware() to be satisfied from in-kernel, use it in more drivers.

David Woodhouse
2008-07-15T02:54:59Z

On Mon, 2008-07-14 at 18:50 -0700, David Miller wrote:
> From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
> Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:33:58 -0700 (PDT)
>
> > The only reliable way to handle it is to load the firmware before the
> > suspend happens - preferably by simply never unloading it in the first
> > place.
>
> That's what we were told was the huge benefit of moving some
> of these drivers over to this request_firmware() stuff, it would
> save memory.

There _are_ RAM benefits for a number of drivers, even when you load the
firmware just once at initialisation time and keep it resident all the
time the device is active (and no, I won't slap myself for saying it).

The tg3 driver is a prime example -- it contains three separate firmware
images for different revisions of the card, but you'll almost never
actually need all three. Mostly you'll only need _one_ of them.

--
dwmw2