Messages in this thread | | | Subject | RapidIO subsystem and modularity | From | Jean Delvare <> | Date | Wed, 22 May 2013 14:40:30 +0200 |
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Hi Matt, Alexandre, Andrew,
At the moment all pieces of the RapidIO subsystem are defined as bool and thus cannot be built as modules. This is a problem for distribution kernels, which are left with only two choices: disable RapidIO altogether (too bad if any user actually needed it), or enable it all (and waste memory and initialization time for every user without the hardware - most users as I understand it.)
I don't even know what RapidIO is good for. I read about it on the web but I have to admit I still have no clear idea, what systems use this technology.
This leads me to two questions:
1* Is there a fundamental reason why (at least the device-specific parts of) RapidIO can't be modularized?
FWIW I tried making the device drivers (tsi721) modular and it builds and links OK, but I suppose one would have implement a proper remove function, otherwise module unloading will break.
I also tried making the switch drivers (tsi57x etc.) modular, all build just fine without any change, but there seems to be some initialization magic which may not work when the code is built as modules.
2* What systems are expected to use RapidIO? It is enabled in the i386, x86_64, ppc and ppc64 generic openSUSE kernel configurations. If someone tells me that some or all of these generic kernels would never be used on systems which need RapidIO support, I would be happy to disable RapidIO support from these kernels, to make them smaller and decrease boot times.
Thanks for any insight, -- Jean Delvare Suse L3
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