Re: Smartmedia/xd card support - request for comments

[Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>]

On Thu, 17 Apr 2008, Alex Dubov wrote:
> --- Ben Dooks <ben@fluff.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 01:50:33AM -0700, Alex Dubov wrote:
> > > I've implemented, with generous help from JMicron, a native support for Smartmedia/xD picture
> > card
> > > media. Currently, only JMicron backend is available, but TI expressed some interest in this
> > too,
> > > so TI Flashmedia backend may soon follow.
> > > 
> > > Smartmedia cards are quite akin to the dumb flash chips, but they have their quirks that put
> > them
> > > aside as a separate media type.
> > 
> > They're NAND chips, just with a standard ECC/block replacement
> > stratergy... why isn't this under drivers/mtd ?
> > 
> 
> They have nothing to do with JFFS or UBI (it's an interchange
> format).  They require FTL. 

MTD is independent of JFFS2 and UBI. It's the hardware abtraction
layer on which you build an FTL.

> On the other hand, "SmartMedia reader"
> is a rather definite kind of animal that exists on its own.

No it is not. SmardMedia is a bare NAND chip, which is already covered
by MTD. There are already other FTLs on top of MTD and the SmartMedia
format just can be added to those.

Thanks,
	tglx