Hi,
Theodore A. Roth <> [20080619 11:36:17 -0700]:
>
> On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 10:37 AM, Alexander Clouter <>
> wrote:
> >
> >> Is there hope of getting TS sd module working with a mainline kernel?
> >>
> > Well I was thinking about this. If I *really* grovel to TS, NDA myself
> > till I suffocate they might be open to the idea that I use all that
> > userland API stuff that is now in 2.6. So the 'secret' stuff is in
> > userspace where it should be whilst the rest of us can continue to use a
> > regular kernel. Of course the advantage being that once it's cooked, the
> > private secret userland stuff should never need even recompiling;
> > statically link the thing against uclibc and produce one for EABI and one
> > for OABI.
>
> It would be nice if there was an alternative bitstream for the FPGA which
> hides all the proprietary stuff in the FPGA while exposing a documented,
> open interface for the kernel driver to use. If that interface was SDHC,
> that would be great since the kernel already supports that.
>
I completely agree however my personal gut feeling is that this will never
happen. I remember in some previous mailings someone from TS explained that
the reason they are not being too 'helpful' regarding the SD interface is
that they cunningly produced a DMA enabled FPGA driven SD interface in
something like 300 LUT's (or whatever you FPGA folk like to say)...either way
it was an order of magnitude *less* than their nearest rival and worth a lot
of <insert-your-unit-of-currency-here>'s. It had nothing to do with any
'security' or drm malarkey that comes with the SD standard.
>From my comfortable armchair and zero understanding of the business world[1]
if TS did give us the raw pin access to the SD are and someone did produce a
kernel driver for it...why would anyone be any longer interested in an FPGA
driven version of an SD interface. Maybe less overhead would be considered a
reasonable benefit however that did not stop such evils as soft winmodems and
the like appearing :-/
Bah, to be honest I have no idea, what I do feel is that if someone wants to
close source some hardware interface and have their main platform being Linux
they should be using that userland driver (stable) API thingy. This is a
great stance however I think TS just missed that feature as it appeared in
kernel 2.6.22 or something...probably why this did not happen :)
TS deserve all the cash they can get for their FPGA design, I think that's
going to be the thing though that ties them to not letting us get access to
the raw SD card and whatnot.
Cheers
Alex
[1] my boss fortunately shields me from such nasties so I can just continue
being the ignorant-of-real-life(tm) geek that I am :)
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