Re: [PATCH 2/4] x86/amd_nb: add support for newer PCI topologies

[Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>]

On Mon, Nov 05, 2018 at 03:45:37PM -0600, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> amd_nb.c prevents us from achieving that goal.  These patches don't
> add new functionality; they merely describe minor topographical
> differences in new hardware.  We usually try to do that in a more
> generic way, e.g., via an ACPI method, so the new platform can update
> the ACPI method and use an old, already-qualified, already-shipped
> kernel.
> 
> I'm not strenuously objecting to these because this isn't a *huge*
> deal, but I suspect it is a source of friction for distros that don't
> want to update and requalify their software for every new platform.

Err, how is this any different from adding distro support for a new CPU
family?

This is basically the same thing. When distros add support for new
hardware, they have to backport patches for upstream. These PCI devices
which are part of the CPU are part of that hardware enablement.

So there's no way around doing that enablement. I don't think you can do
"old distro, new hardware" stuff without *some* hw enablement.

-- 
Regards/Gruss,
    Boris.

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