[alsa-devel] Hardware audio decoder driver design

[Nikita V. Youshchenko]

Hello.

Soon I will work on a linux kernel driver for a custom audio decoder device 
that is being developed by a company I work for. If not going into 
details, that devices reads A52-encoded stream from system memory, and 
writes raw pcm stream to system memory.

Simplest thing to do is - implement a character device, where user-space 
will write encoded stream, and from where user-space will read decoded 
stream.
(driver for similar hardware, located at 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vs10xx/, does that).

However, perhaps a better architecture (e.g. in-kernel intergation with an 
audio sink) is possible?

I'm looking for any related information - e.g. ideas on what interface to 
implement, examples of drivers for similar devices, etc.

Thanks on any hints.

Nikita Youshchenko,
embedded linux developer.