Re: PCI Express support for 2.4 kernel

Vladimir Kondratiev
2003-12-17T18:17:15Z

Dan,

all your statements are correct. Indeed, all PCI devices works without
extra knowledge about PCI-E.
I have nothing to add.
Vladimir.

Dan Hopper wrote:

>Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org> remarked:
>
>
>>On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>>
>>
>>>For the record: PCI Express is _not_ PCI-X.
>>>
>>>
>>Ok, but "PCI Express" is too damn long to write, so we'll have to have
>>_some_ sane name for it without typing for half an hour.
>>
>>
>
>FWIW, "PCI-E" is in common use in these parts.
>
>Also, wrt the config space backward compatibility issue, it is my
>understanding that the PCI-E root complex and PCI-E devices can be
>enumerated and used successfully with no software changes, within
>the constraints of PCI. The BIOS or OS should be able to enumerate
>devices, probe BARs and assign resources, perform basic error
>handling, etc. without any PCI-E-specific changes.
>
>The hardware is required to be able to initialize PCI-E links, set
>things up to sane states, and so forth without software assistance
>in order to make this magic happen. It would be interesting to hear
>from Vladimir as to whether or not this is happening with his PCI-E
>test system.
>
>Having said all that, it's obviously preferable to end up with
>native OS and BIOS support for the PCI-E extended configuration
>space, extra error reporting mechanisms, etc. Native PCI-E devices
>hanging off the bus somewhere might not work (or, at least, work
>well) with an OS that doesn't grok the PCI-E extensions.
>
>Dan
>
>