Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v3 1/6] hw/misc/dyn_sysbus_binding: helpers for sysbus device dynamic binding

[Alexander Graf]

On 10.09.14 11:43, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> Il 10/09/2014 11:31, Alexander Graf ha scritto:
>>>> Yeah, please do the registration in sysbus.c, not in virt.c.  There is
>>>> no reason to make the platform_bus_init_notify+DynSysbusNotifier
>>>> interface public.  The code in sysbus.c can fill in the fields.
>> Sysbus != Platform bus. Sysbus is an in-QEMU representation of a
>> pseudo-bus that we put all devices onto that we consider unsorted.
>>
>> Platform bus is a machine representation of an actual bus that devices
>> are attached to. These devices usually are sysbus devices.
> 
> Is there any difference between the two?
> 
> Take a machine that has two chips, a SoC that does everything except
> USB, and a USB controller chip.
> 
> Strictly speaking the USB controller chip would be on a "platform bus",
> but we would likely put it on sysbus.
> 
> Why should it matter whether the devices are static or dynamic, for the
> sake of calling something the "system" or the "platform" bus?  I would
> say that QEMU calls "sysbus" the platform bus.
> 
> Some devices (e.g. the local APIC in x86, or the in-core timers and GIC
> in ARM) should probably not be in sysbus at all, and should attach
> directly to the CPU address space.  But that is a quirk in the modeling
> of those devices, it shouldn't mean that sysbus is not a "platform" bus.

On e500 for example, we have a predefined CCSR region. That is a machine
defined "platform bus". The offsets inside that region are strictly
defined by the spec.

Now take the serial ports. We have space for 2 serial ports inside of
that CCSR region. We can spawn these 2 ports in the machine file based
on -serial, but if you want to spawn them with -device, how do you tell
the machine whether they should go into the "big bucket platform bus" or
the "CCSR platform bus"?

In fact, thinking about this a bit more, maybe we should just have an
actual bus structure. Then we could have the legacy "big bucket" sysbus
bus that nobody may ever dynamically put devices into. For CCSR we could
create another bucket that the machine file can control where each
device goes and can also detect if a device doesn't fit. And then we
just declare the virt "platform bus" sysbus the default bus for cmdline
-device sysbusdevice and everything resolves automatically.


Alex