Edward Shu wrote:
> Garrett D'Amore :
>> 3. Independence from firmware initialization. Device drivers should
>> not
>> depend on firmware to initialize devices. While certain portions of
>> the device may be initialized by OS or BIOS (assignment of PCI
>> addresses to BARs for example), device drivers should not rely on
>> firmware to perform any device specific initialization.
>>
>>
>>
> In fact, it is really unfortunately that some of our device
> drivers must depend on the firmware initialization, like
> graphics, disk drivers because we can not get help from vendors.
> Even, some firmware must be downloaded into
> system memory.
Yes, its really unfortunate. However, some developers have relied on
this initialization even when they didn't have to. A certain famous
storage adapter had this problem, and ultimately led to the creation of
the Fcode project. (One of the things that such drivers have a problem
with is hotplug, because in hotplug there is no firmware
initialization. It also creates a serious problem for S3 resume.)
-- Garrett
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>
>
