[Arm-netbook] [fedora-arm] ARM summit at Plumbers 2011

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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Date: Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 5:55 PM
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From: Russell King - ARM Linux <linux at arm.linux.org.uk>
To: Bill Gatliff <bgat at billgatliff.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2011 17:35:02 +0100
Subject: Re: [fedora-arm] ARM summit at Plumbers 2011
On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 11:11:41AM -0500, Bill Gatliff wrote:
> As such refactoring consolidated larger and larger chunks of kernel
> code, new designs would gravitate towards those consolidated
> implementations because they would be the dominant references.

Don't bet on it.  That's not how it works (unfortunately.)

Just look at the many serial port inventions dreamt up by SoC designers -
everyone is different from each other.  Now consider: why didn't they use
a well established standard 16550A or later design?

Also consider why ARM Ltd designed the PL010 and PL011 primecells which
are different from the 16550A.

This "need to be different" is so heavily embedded in the mindset of the
hardware people that I doubt "providing consolidated implementations"
will make the blind bit of difference.  I doubt that hardware people
coming up with these abominations even care one bit about what's in
the kernel.