DeviceModel

The PA-RISC Device Model

The PA-RISC hardware is arranged in a specific way [TODO MORE HERE].

The PA-RISC firmware presents the hardware in a (as much as possible) coherent way to the operating system, providing platform specific information about each device. Thusly, given how the Linux 2.6 Device Model works [TODO MORE - URL?], there has been interest in defining a parisc_device device type structure:

struct parisc_device {
        unsigned long   hpa;            /* Hard Physical Address */
        struct parisc_device_id id;
        struct parisc_driver *driver;   /* Driver for this device */
        char            name[80];       /* The hardware description */
        int             irq;
        int             aux_irq;        /* Some devices have a second IRQ */

        char            hw_path;        /* The module number on this bus */
        unsigned int    num_addrs;      /* some devices have additional address ranges. */
        unsigned long   *addr;          /* which will be stored here */

#ifdef __LP64__
        /* parms for pdc_pat_cell_module() call */
        unsigned long   pcell_loc;      /* Physical Cell location */
        unsigned long   mod_index;      /* PAT specific - Misc Module info */

        /* generic info returned from pdc_pat_cell_module() */
        unsigned long   mod_info;       /* PAT specific - Misc Module info */
        unsigned long   pmod_loc;       /* physical Module location */
        unsigned long   mod_info;       /* PAT specific - Misc Module info */
        unsigned long   pmod_loc;       /* physical Module location */
#endif
        u64             dma_mask;       /* DMA mask for I/O */
        struct device   dev;
};
 

Most of the fields are self-explanatory, yet, here is some additional info:

hpa

This is the physical hardware address of the device, which is used by many PA-RISC internal drivers to access the hardware, in particular through firwmare calls.

hw_path

This field is very PA-RISC specific and very helpful as well. Each device in the PA-RISC terminology can be defined by its hardware path, which is a succession of hw_path numbers providing a path to follow when descending the PA-RISC devices arborescence in order to reach any given device. In fact, each device has a position associated to it on its given bus, which consitutes its hw_path. Bus bridges have positions on their parent bus as well, and it's thus possible to reconstruct the full path from the root of the device tree (usually a main bus, or the device itself if it doesn't have a parent bus) to the device by using these numbers. Such a path is usually represented like this: 0/4/15/2. See PdcStableStorage for an example use of hardware paths.

[TODO Detail 64bit only fields]

dev

Most obviously, the parisc_device encapsulates a regular struct device pointer, which makes it possible to reconstruct the device tree using regular device routines.

How PA-RISC Devices Are Discovered

The firmware detects devices on the system, yet, it does not necessarily inform us about all existing devices, so we have to probe for them on our own. This has the significant drawback of potentially detecting "fake" devices, that is devices which are not physically connected (eg. extra serial or PS2 ports).