From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Guenter Roeck Subject: Adding support for ARINC429 into the Linux kernel Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:29:55 -0700 Message-ID: <20130619202954.GA5594@roeck-us.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: "David S. Miller" , Greg Kroah-Hartman , Arnd Bergmann To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org Hi all, I have been asked to explore options for adding ARINC 429 support [1] into the Linux kernel, primarily to support devices from Holt Integrated Circuits [2] (the request is unrelated to the chip manufacturer). ARINC429 is a protocol which is widely used in commercial airplanes. There are various chips supporting this protocol available, as well as out-of-tree Linux support. The drivers I have looked at implement it either as character device or misc device and typically pass raw receive data to userspace. I can see a number of options for going forward: 1) Implement as character device (or possibly misc device) and pass raw data to/from user space 1a) Just implement a driver for the specific chips 2b) Implement some kind of generic infrastructure 2) Implement as network driver with a new address family, similar to, say, AF_CAN. Any thoughts / suggestions which approach would be better and, most of all, which approach might have a better chance of being accepted upstream ? Thanks, Guenter -- [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARINC_429 [2] http://www.holtic.com/category/352-arinc-429.aspx