VME Services

The VME Services product provides configuration tools, a kernel-level driver, and user- and kernel-level VME bus access functions to install, administer, and access VME bus functionality for application-level programs and application-level and kernel-level drivers. Generally, the vme2 kernel driver supports programming of the VME bus adapter to the VME bus on behalf of the caller, arranging for bus transfers; mapping memory between the HP-UX host and VME bus address space (and vice versa); interrupt handling; reading and writing of EEPROM VME data; and so on.

For 10.20, VME Services has been updated to provide additional function calls for asynchronous DMA purposes relating to queues, status, and interrupts; for mapping pages and buffers to the VME bus, and remapping memory; and for protecting access to the data and functions involved.

These new functions are side effects of increasing VME functionality to include a generally invisible enhancement to support HP-UX-to-HP-UX backplane communications via a new socket IPC domain AF_VME_LINK.

Performance

Performance impact is isolated to hardware systems that include VME support. The performance of VME systems at 10.20 will be equal to or better than the performance at 10.10 for similar functions.

Supportability

Current firmware booting and CPU-number-to-LAN-address-mapping are supported without change. UDP bootp requests over the backplane are also supported.

Only some socket calls are supported at 10.20. See the HP-UX 10.20 VME Services Guide manual for details.

Installability

VME Services are automatically installed onto a system, but can be manually added to the kernel as in previous releases.

Binary Compatibility

VME drivers that work at HP-UX 10.10 will not need to be recompiled or rebuilt.

Configuration files will have to be revised for drivers or other applications that use pre-10.20 BPN.

Standards

VME Services implements latest approved IEEE 1015-1987 standard as supported by the different hardware levels on which VME Services runs.