Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1759212AbYHCReY (ORCPT ); Sun, 3 Aug 2008 13:34:24 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756914AbYHCReQ (ORCPT ); Sun, 3 Aug 2008 13:34:16 -0400 Received: from 1wt.eu ([62.212.114.60]:2386 "EHLO 1wt.eu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1756889AbYHCReP (ORCPT ); Sun, 3 Aug 2008 13:34:15 -0400 Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 19:32:54 +0200 From: Willy Tarreau To: Alan Cox Cc: James Bottomley , ksummit-2008-discuss@lists.linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel , linux-ide Subject: Re: Kernel Summit request for Discussion of future of ATA (libata) and IDE Message-ID: <20080803173254.GI615@1wt.eu> References: <1217779055.4179.10.camel@localhost.localdomain> <20080803173941.314edf33@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080803173941.314edf33@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1500 Lines: 32 On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 05:39:41PM +0100, Alan Cox wrote: > Actually what a material number of embedded systems need is a single > dumb-as-a-rock CF only PIO driver which doesn't suck in large chunks of > midlayer code. I'm just not sure that trend will continue as CF is giving > way to other smaller media. I bet we'll see CF for a long time, because it is the only cheap removable media to support IDE emulation and be bootable from an unmodified PC BIOS. SD is cheaper and will soon provide larger capacities, but it still requires a separate controller and is not bootable with standard BIOSes. Anyway, in my experience, libata supports CF on embedded controllers pretty well. So maybe we should start marking IDE drivers deprecated to encourage people to try libata instead and report breakage if any. The real issue on embedded systems is that the devices names change. On the one hand, it increases portability across models, because you don't have to care anymore about hda/hdc/hdd, your CF is always on sda (major reason why I'm considering a switch BTW). However, for systems which were used to always see system disk on hdX and data on sd* (USB, SATA or SCSI), it might take more time to switch due to automatic numbering. Regards, Willy -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/