Re: Device Driver Framework (attached thesis proposal)

[William Grim]

Thank you very much for your thoughts Tom.  I'll review my proposal with your new input and see if I have answers to your thoughts in there or if I need to add them.  About the bus drivers, that is actually one area I'm not well versed in when it comes to this proposal.  Therefore, I'll spend more time learning about why deva did that and check designs from Linux, etc to see how I might implement those well.  Mainly, about the bus drivers, I guess I'm mainly confused as to if PCI, AGP, etc are in separate logcal address spaces; if that is the case, then I can see how having dedicated bus drivers can help.  However, if everything is reachable via a single address space, then I am unsure why you need an AGP (or other) bus driver when the driver itself could just access addresses directly (assuming it has the proper capabilities).

On 1/20/06, Tom Bachmann <address@hidden> wrote:

William Grim wrote:
> Hello, group.
>
> I've been wanting to create a device driver framework for Hurd-L4 for
> quite some time.  I understand Hurd-L4 is considering Coyotos, but that
> should not greatly affect the DDF code from my perspective.
>
> To keep from being too wordy here, since I already have enough words in
> a thesis proposal for you to read, I won't talk much more.  However, I
> was wondering if anyone would be kind enough to review my proposal (that
> is very near the final edition of the proposal) and see if they notice
> something I missed or think it's a good idea?
>

Some basic thoughts:
- session free protocols would be nice
- reply IPC must not block
- indirect talk to drivers through the ddm should be avoided
- as I understand it, bus drivers are part of the ddm? This doesn't
  sound well-founded and actually breaks with the microkernel design,
  IMHO

> I admit that my proposal still has some inconsistencies in it and is
> not completely finished, but I hope it will be enough to get the point
> across to the readers in the meantime.
>
> Thanks in advance; I've spent the last several months working on it
> alongside my other work and course work.
>
> --
> William M. Grim
> Computer Science Master's Student, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
> Unix Network Administrator, SIUE, CS. Dept.
>
--
-ness-


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-- 
William M. Grim
Computer Science Master's Student, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Unix Network Administrator, SIUE, CS. Dept.