Software
Kernel space: Using the firmware loader for static data
Small Linux-based devices often need to load firmware before a filesystem is available. A new kernel feature would replace driver-specific code with a general API for getting all needed firmware up and running.
Some device drivers need firmware to load into the hardware at initialization time. The kernel firmware loader interface exists to support that functionality, but it requires help from user space which may not be available in all environments. David Woodhouse has proposed a patch that would eliminate that requirement so that more drivers can use the firmware loader rather than craft their own solution.
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Embedded devices will be one of the main users of this ability. Many of those do not have a user space filesystem available at boot time - via initrd or initramfs - but they still need to access firmware images to download to peripherals. The new request_firmware() implementation would allow those devices to link the firmware into the kernel while still using the kernel firmware infrastructure.
Woodhouse has an excellent summary of what he is trying to do in the patch posting:
Some drivers have their own hacks to bypass the kernel's firmware loader and build their firmware into the kernel; this renders those unnecessary.Other drivers don't use the firmware loader at all, because they always want the firmware to be available. This allows them to start using the firmware loader.
A third set of drivers already use the firmware loader, but can't be used without help from userspace, which sometimes requires an initrd. This allows them to work in a static kernel.
A driver that has static firmware data, declares it using:
DECLARE_BUILTIN_FIRMWARE("firmware_name", blob);
The firmware_name is used as a key to find the specific firmware when request_firmware() is called. blob is a pointer to the actual code. The declaration adds the firmware to the end of an array holding struct builtin_fw elements, which look like this:
struct builtin_fw {
char *name;
void *data;
unsigned long size;
};
When a call is made to request_firmware(), the new code linearly searches the array for a matching key before calling out to user space. This allows any statically created firmware blobs to take precedence over those in the filesystem. Whichever is found is returned.
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