[Sound-open-firmware] [PATCH v6 0/4] Add a vhost RPMsg API

[Vincent Whitchurch]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 11:47:20AM +0200, Guennadi Liakhovetski wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 18, 2020 at 09:47:45AM +0200, Arnaud POULIQUEN wrote:
> > IMO, as this API is defined in the Linux documentation [5] we should respect it, to ensure
> > one generic implementation. The RPMsg sample client[4] uses this user API, so seems to me
> > a good candidate to verify this. 
> > 
> > That's said, shall we multiple the RPMsg implementations in Linux with several APIs,
> > With the risk to make the RPMsg clients devices dependent on these implementations?
> > That could lead to complex code or duplications...
> 
> So, no, in my understanding there aren't two competing alternative APIs, you'd never have 
> to choose between them. If you're writing a driver for Linux to communicate with remote 
> processors or to run on VMs, you use the existing API. If you're writing a driver for 
> Linux to communicate with those VMs, you use the vhost API and whatever help is available 
> for RPMsg processing.
> 
> However, I can in principle imagine a single driver, written to work on both sides. 
> Something like the rpmsg_char.c or maybe some networking driver. Is that what you're 
> referring to? I can see that as a fun exercise, but are there any real uses for that? 

I hinted at a real use case for this in the previous mail thread[0].
I'm exploring using rpmsg-char to allow communication between two chips,
both running Linux.  rpmsg-char can be used pretty much as-is for both
sides of the userspace-to-userspace communication and (the userspace
side of the) userspace-to-kernel communication between the two chips.

> You could do the same with VirtIO, however, it has been decided to go with two 
> distinct APIs: virtio for guests and vhost for the host, noone bothered to create a 
> single API for both and nobody seems to miss one. Why would we want one with RPMsg?

I think I answered this question in the previous mail thread as well[1]:
| virtio has distinct driver and device roles so the completely different
| APIs on each side are understandable.  But I don't see that distinction
| in the rpmsg API which is why it seems like a good idea to me to make it
| work from both sides of the link and allow the reuse of drivers like
| rpmsg-char, instead of imposing virtio's distinction on rpmsg.

[0] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-virtualization/msg43799.html
[1] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-virtualization/msg43802.html