Re: On the freeness of a BLOB-containing driver
Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> writes:
> Bruce Perens wrote:
>>
>>A good hardware design would put this code in FLASH on the board.
>
> Depends on what you mean by a "good hardware design". For example, a
> lot of the USB dongles becoming common would be significantly bigger
> and/or more expensive if they had to have sufficient space on-board
> for a complete firmware implementation. As cost and size can be
> _everything_ on these devices, downloading firmware each time they are
> started/connected can actually be a good design choice.
Is a bit of flash or rom that much bigger than ram? Isn't most of the
space in the dongle air or filling material?
Cost I can see, size I find a bit hard to believe.
>>If you don't have a good hardware design, BLOBs belong in files, not
>>the driver. The 2.6 kernel boots up with at least initramfs
>>accessable to it, and later initrd, if it needs a BLOB it should load
>>it from there.
>
> Agreed on this bit.
>
> --
> Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK. steve@einval.com
> You raise the blade, you make the change... You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane...
MfG
Goswin
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