linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 2/2] New driver: Xillybus generic interface for FPGA (programmable logic)

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Date:	Fri, 30 Nov 2012 09:36:44 -0800
From:	Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
To:	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>
Cc:	Eli Billauer <eli.billauer@...il.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Philip Balister <philip@...ister.org>,
	Pavel Machek <pavel@...x.de>, John Linn <john.linn@...inx.com>,
	Michal Simek <michal.simek@...inx.com>,
	"Ira W. Snyder" <iws@...o.caltech.edu>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2/2] New driver: Xillybus generic interface for FPGA
 (programmable logic)

On Fri, Nov 30, 2012 at 05:28:47PM +0000, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Wednesday 28 November 2012, Eli Billauer wrote:
> > 
> > Xillybus is a general-purpose framework for communication between programmable
> > logic (FPGA) and a host. It provides a simple connection between hardware FIFOs
> > in the FPGA and their respective device files on the host. The user space
> > programming model is like piping data from or to the FPGA.
> > 
> > The underlying transport between the host and FPGA is either PCIe or AXI
> > (AMBA bus by ARM).
> > 
> > The Xillybus logic (IP core) is configurable in the number of pipes it presents
> > and their nature. The driver autodetects these pipes, making it essentially
> > forward-compatible to future configurations. The benefit of having this driver
> > enabled in the kernel is that hardware vendors may release a new card, knowing
> > that it will work out of the box on any future Linux machine, with the specific
> > configuration defined for the FPGA part.
> > 
> > This driver has been available for download for over a year, and has been
> > actively used on a wide variety of kernels versions and configurations.
> 
> I have a much higher-level comment on this driver: There seem to be a number
> of parties that are interested in having reprogrammable logic available in
> Linux and that will want to merge their drivers. I'm aware of these other
> people that must have some interest (and one person I can't mention here
> because of NDA):
> 
> Philip Balister  <philip@...ister.org> (OpenSDR)
> Dinh Nguyen <dinguyen@...era.com> (ARM SOCFPGA maintainer)
> Pavel Machek <pavel@...x.de> (SOCFPGA contributor)
> John Linn <john.linn@...inx.com> (Zynq maintainer)
> Michal Simek <michal.simek@...inx.com> (Zynq maintainer)
> Ira W. Snyder <iws@...o.caltech.edu> (Carma driver author)

Yes, I know of at least one more device other than the ones listed above
that wants this type of functionality as well, so defining it in a
standard user/kernel api manner would be very good to do.

thanks,

greg k-h
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