1. 22 3月, 2011 1 次提交
    • L
      [media] media: Entities, pads and links · 53e269c1
      Laurent Pinchart 提交于
      As video hardware pipelines become increasingly complex and
      configurable, the current hardware description through v4l2 subdevices
      reaches its limits. In addition to enumerating and configuring
      subdevices, video camera drivers need a way to discover and modify at
      runtime how those subdevices are connected. This is done through new
      elements called entities, pads and links.
      
      An entity is a basic media hardware building block. It can correspond to
      a large variety of logical blocks such as physical hardware devices
      (CMOS sensor for instance), logical hardware devices (a building block
      in a System-on-Chip image processing pipeline), DMA channels or physical
      connectors.
      
      A pad is a connection endpoint through which an entity can interact with
      other entities. Data (not restricted to video) produced by an entity
      flows from the entity's output to one or more entity inputs. Pads should
      not be confused with physical pins at chip boundaries.
      
      A link is a point-to-point oriented connection between two pads, either
      on the same entity or on different entities. Data flows from a source
      pad to a sink pad.
      
      Links are stored in the source entity. To make backwards graph walk
      faster, a copy of all links is also stored in the sink entity. The copy
      is known as a backlink and is only used to help graph traversal.
      
      The entity API is made of three functions:
      
      - media_entity_init() initializes an entity. The caller must provide an
      array of pads as well as an estimated number of links. The links array
      is allocated dynamically and will be reallocated if it grows beyond the
      initial estimate.
      
      - media_entity_cleanup() frees resources allocated for an entity. It
      must be called during the cleanup phase after unregistering the entity
      and before freeing it.
      
      - media_entity_create_link() creates a link between two entities. An
      entry in the link array of each entity is allocated and stores pointers
      to source and sink pads.
      
      When a media device is unregistered, all its entities are unregistered
      automatically.
      
      The code is based on Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> initial work.
      Signed-off-by: NLaurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@ideasonboard.com>
      Signed-off-by: NSakari Ailus <sakari.ailus@iki.fi>
      Acked-by: NHans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl>
      Signed-off-by: NMauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@redhat.com>
      53e269c1