On 09-06-21, 12:10, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
On Wed, Jun 09, 2021 at 09:44:08AM -0500, Pierre-Louis Bossart wrote:
The consensus for the auxiliary_device model was hard to reach, and the agreement was to align on a minimal model. If you disagree with the directions, you will have to convince Nvidia/Mellanox and Intel networking folks who contributed the solution to do something different.
The purpose of the aux devices was primarily to bind a *software* interface between two parts of the kernel.
Then I dont think this example is valid... This example has a PCI device, which represents a DSP, HDA controller, DMICs, Soundwire links... So at least here it is hardware.
If there is a strong defined HW boundary and no software interface then the mfd subsytem may be a better choice.
More I think that might be better choice for this example, but then MFD is a 'platform device' and Greg already nacked that
For a software layer I expect to see some 'handle' and then a set of APIs to work within that. It is OK if that 'handle' refers to some HW resources that the API needs to work, the purpose of this is to control HW after all.
You might help Vinod by explaining what the SW API is here.
Jason