Book Image

Linux Device Driver Development - Second Edition

By : John Madieu
Book Image

Linux Device Driver Development - Second Edition

By: John Madieu

Overview of this book

Linux is by far the most-used kernel on embedded systems. Thanks to its subsystems, the Linux kernel supports almost all of the application fields in the industrial world. This updated second edition of Linux Device Driver Development is a comprehensive introduction to the Linux kernel world and the different subsystems that it is made of, and will be useful for embedded developers from any discipline. You'll learn how to configure, tailor, and build the Linux kernel. Filled with real-world examples, the book covers each of the most-used subsystems in the embedded domains such as GPIO, direct memory access, interrupt management, and I2C/SPI device drivers. This book will show you how Linux abstracts each device from a hardware point of view and how a device is bound to its driver(s). You’ll also see how interrupts are propagated in the system as the book covers the interrupt processing mechanisms in-depth and describes every kernel structure and API involved. This new edition also addresses how not to write device drivers using user space libraries for GPIO clients, I2C, and SPI drivers. By the end of this Linux book, you’ll be able to write device drivers for most of the embedded devices out there.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
1
Section 1 -Linux Kernel Development Basics
6
Section 2 - Linux Kernel Platform Abstraction and Device Drivers
12
Section 3 - Making the Most out of Your Hardware
18
Section 4 - Misc Kernel Subsystems for the Embedded World

Chapter 16: Getting the Most Out of the Pin Controller and GPIO Subsystems

System-on-chips (SoCs) are becoming more and more complex and feature-rich. These features are mostly exposed through electrical lines originating from the SoC and are called pins. Most of these pins are routed to or multiplexed with several functional blocks (for instance, UART, SPI, RGMI, General-Purpose Input Output (GPIO), and so on), and the underlying device responsible for configuring these pins and switching between operating modes (switching between functional blocks) is called the pin controller.

One mode in which such pins can be configured is GPIO. Then comes the Linux GPIO subsystem, which enables drivers to read signals on GPIO configured pins as high or low and to drive the signal high/low on GPIO configured pins. On the other hand, the pin control (abbreviated pinctrl) subsystem enables multiplexing of some pin/pin groups for different functions, and the capability to configure the electrical...