Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [RFC] modularization of i386 setup_arch and mem_init in 2.4.18 | From | (Eric W. Biederman) | Date | 10 Mar 2002 00:42:15 -0700 |
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Dave Jones <davej@suse.de> writes:
> On Fri, Mar 08, 2002 at 01:08:18PM -0800, Patricia Gaughen wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > I'm currently working on a discontigmem patch for IBM NUMAQ (an ia32 > > NUMA box) and want to reuse the standard i386 code as much as > > possible. To achieve this, I've modularized setup_arch() and > > mem_init(). This modularization is what the patch that I've included > > in this email contains. > > As a sidenote (sort of related topic) : > An idea being kicked around a little right now is x86 subarch > support for 2.5. With so many of the niche x86 spin-offs appearing > lately, all fighting for their own piece of various files in > arch/i386/kernel/, it may be time to do the same as the ARM folks did, > and have..
I will tenatively vote in favor of this kind of action. There are a couple of directions to consider. This is a two dimensional problem.
Dimension 1. Different basic hardware architectures. (pc,numaq,visws,voyager) Dimension 2. Different firmware implementations. (pcbios,linuxbios,openfirmware,acpi?)
And beyond that it is fairly important to be able to build a generic kernel. That works on everything. You might have to specify a command line parameter to tell it which arch it is really running on but it should work.
From working with the alpha I can say that it is just nasty when you must have per motherboard information in your kernel. Generally life is much more pleasant if a small handful of things like irq routing information is provided by the firmware so you only have to code for a specific hardware device, and not a specific motherboard.
And even if we get to the point of putting in motherboard specific code I would suggest it just provide the information like irq routing, and which superio chips are present and allow a more generic layer to handle their setup.
Anyway on the multiplexing the firmware score I have just done the heavy lifting needed so we can put the firmware switching logic all in C code.
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