I'm now getting around to drafting the agenda for the embedded microconference. From looking at the proposals and some of the recent mailing list discussions, there are some topics that bubble up to the surface for me: 1) Device model usage - Support for runtime PM has been a hot topic, but the way the device model is populated and used on embedded platforms also has impact on correct initialization ordering, and how to instantiate 'system' devices composed of multiple discrete devices across the system. ie. connecting a codec and a DAI in ASoC. 2) Device Tree, HWMOD, static pdata, SFI, and other methods for teaching the kernel about the machine. 3) Common infrastructure beyond the kernel. Android has fastboot and other tools. Many folks use u-boot for development, but something custom (smaller) for deployment. Are there any other tools/techniques from Android/MeeGo/Linaro/WebOS/etc. that would be useful to a wider audience. Tim Bird has offered to lead this discussion. 4) Asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) intercommunication. Cores are cheap, hardware is built with lots of them but how do they communicate? This is an issues for DSPs and for embedded virtualization. Syslink has been proposed. Freescale PowerPC has multicore chips that can be carved up for AMP. Patches have been circulated to repurpose virtio for interprocessor communication. ... 1 & 2 are somewhat interrelated as they are both aspects of embedded requirements on the device model. I'm not sure, but I may end up merging these two topics to a degree. My impression is that the same problems are being wrestled with in different problem domains. I'd like to schedule 3 or 4 people to give a brief (10-15min) overview of how they need devices registered, and how it fits in with the driver model, followed by discussion. Hopefully it will identify areas where common solution can/should be implemented. Or in other words; take our own blinders off for a bit and see how other people are solving the same problems. :-) Here is my draft list: Kevin: How HWMOD is used to describe interconnections between internal SoC devices. Mark or Liam: ASoC - How what needs to be done to collect disparate devices (codecs, audio controllers, etc) into a single SoC device. Jeremy: Populating the device model with device tree external data (why and how) (I'm also open to other suggestions) Mark and Liam, I know you haven't made a proposal to do this, but if you'd be willing I think it would be valuable. ... The AMP IPC topic is interesting to me, but I'd like to get some feedback before I commit to it. I would schedule it the same way that the device model discussion is organized; 3-4 overviews 10-15 minutes each followed by discussion. Right now I've got a proposal from the TI folks to talk about Syslink. Freescalers, what say you? Could I convince one of you to talk about AMP IPC on your powerpc multicore SoCs? Multicore on Xilinx FPGAs would also be interesting, but I'm not up to date on if anybody is actively working on that. Are there any other AMP IPC mechanisms that should be discussed? ... Tim, Jeremy and Kevin; I've accepted your micro-conference topics. As the conference gets closer I'll write up a draft of the actual agenda and your proposals can be massaged appropriately to reflect exactly what issues will be discussed. Thoughts? g. -- Grant Likely, B.Sc., P.Eng. Secret Lab Technologies Ltd. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-embedded" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
