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

Working with the DMA engine's API

The DMA engine is a generic kernel framework used to develop DMA controller drivers and leverage this controller from the consumer side. Through this framework, the DMA controller driver exposes a set of channels that can be used by client devices. This framework then makes it possible for client drivers (also called slaves) to request and use DMA channels from the controller to issue DMA transfers.

The following diagram is the layering, showing how this framework is integrated with the Linux kernel:

Figure 11.2 – DMA engine framework

Here we will simply walk through that (slave) API, which is applicable for slave DMA usage only. The mandatory header here is as follows:

#include <linux/dmaengine.h>

The slave DMA usage is straightforward, and consists of the following steps:

  1. Informing the kernel about the device's DMA addressing capabilities.
  2. Requesting a DMA channel.
  3. If successful...