10 Years of the Industrial I/O Kernel Subsystem - Jonathan Cameron, Huawei
Channel: The Linux Foundation
Date: 2018-10-25

10 Years of the Industrial I/O Kernel Subsystem - Jonathan Cameron, Huawei

This talk, by the original author and continuing maintainer of the Linux kernel IIO subystem looks at the path to where we are today, mistakes made, lessons learned and potential future directions.

A brief introduction will get the audience up to speed with IIO, in particular defining what IIO isn't! This will be use case driven; both common and the obscure / interesting.

This is not a tutorial, but rather a call to arms to drive things forward. It will include examples, but focus on the wider generalities rather than a deep dive. Diversions include taking a subsystem through staging; difficulty of defining userspace ABI; userspace drivers vs kernel drivers; mentor-ship both received and passed on; and the importance of community building and attracting new contributors!

No detailed knowledge of the kernel is necessary, just an interest in improving Linux support of sensors. 

About Jonathan Cameron
Jonathan is the maintainer of the Linux Industrial I/O subsystem. He took the 'scratching an itch' path to this role, of asking how to do what he wanted in existing frameworks and getting the response: "you can't really, so propose something new". IIO was born. It turned out that other people had similar requirements and now we have well over 200 drivers across a diverse range of devices.

After spending many years messing around with sensors and cameras in academia and then a spell working within the really pretty world of X-ray imaging, he has finally come back to the kernel world and now works on a range of topics at the Huawei Research Centre in Cambridge, UK. Particular recent focus has been on the CCIX coherent fabric specs and software support.

Jonathan has previously spoken in various academic conferences and regularly presents internally, but this is first talk at Linux conference.