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<chapter id="hardware">

  <?dbhtml filename="hardware.html"?>

  <para>Since HelenOS is a microkernel, a framework for supporting userspace

  device drivers has been implemented. A typical userspace task acting as a

  device driver might need to: </para>

  <itemizedlist>

    <listitem>

      <para>receive notifications about interrupts sent by its device,</para>

    </listitem>

    <listitem>

      <para>access physical memory address space,</para>

    </listitem>

    <listitem>

      <para>access I/O space and</para>

    </listitem>

    <listitem>

      <para>control preemption.</para>

    </listitem>

  </itemizedlist>

  <section>

    <title>Interrupt notifications</title>

    <para>Userspace tasks that are in hold of the

    <constant>CAP_IRQ_REG</constant> capability can register themselves via

    the <code>ipc_register_irq()</code> to be notified about occurrences of a

    given interrupt. The registration call takes two arguments. The first

    argument is the IRQ number and the second is the pointer to special

    pseudocode that instructs the kernel interrupt handler how to process the

    IRQ. Currently the pseudocode language supports reading and writing

    physical memory, reading from and writing to I/O space and actions related

    to running HelenOS in virtual environments.</para>

    <para>When the interrupt comes after its handler has been registered by a

    userspace task, the kernel interrupt handler interprets the pseudocode

    program and sends an IPC notification to the respective task. The

    userspace task can get certain information about the interrupt (e.g. what

    key was pressed) by issuing memory or I/O space reads in the pseudocode

    program. The read values are wrapped into the IPC notification sent to the

    task. The write operations are also very essential because some interrupts

    are level-sensitive and need to be processed in the kernel interrupt

    routine. In many situations, the interrupt is considered serviced only

    when the interrupt handler performs certain reads or writes of memory or

    I/O space.</para>

  </section>

  <section>

    <title>Accessing memory and I/O space</title>

    <para>When a task has the <constant>CAP_MEM_MANAGER</constant> capability,

    it can use the <constant>SYS_MAP_PHYSMEM</constant> to map regions of

    physical memory to its address space. When successful, the syscall creates

    an address space area for the physical memory region. The address space

    area can be further shared by other tasks. Similarily, when a task has the

    <constant>CAP_IOSPACE_MANAGER</constant> capability, it is entitled to

    request access to the I/O space by using the

    <constant>SYS_IOSPACE_ENABLE</constant>. However, this syscall is relevant

    only on architectures that have separate I/O space (e.g. amd64 and

  </section>

  <section>

    <title>Disabling preemption</title>

    <para>It might be desirable for a device driver to temporarily disable

    preemption. Tasks that can do this are required to have the

    CAP_PREEMPT_CONTROL capability. Preemption could be theoretically disabled

    by disabling interrupts on the current processor, but disabling preemption

    is more lightweight as interrupt processing remains enabled.</para>

  </section>