The Linux driver implementer’s API guide

The kernel offers a wide variety of interfaces to support the development of device drivers. This document is an only somewhat organized collection of some of those interfaces — it will hopefully get better over time! The available subsections can be seen below.

Table of contents

• Driver Basics
  • Driver Entry and Exit points
  • Atomic and pointer manipulation
  • Delaying, scheduling, and timer routines
  • Wait queues and Wake events
  • High-resolution timers
  • Workqueues and Kevents
  • Internal Functions
  • Kernel objects manipulation
  • Kernel utility functions
  • Device Resource Management
• Device drivers infrastructure
  • The Basic Device Driver-Model Structures
  • Device Drivers Base
  • Buffer Sharing and Synchronization
  • Device Drivers DMA Management
  • Device Drivers Power Management
  • Device Drivers ACPI Support
  • Device drivers PnP support
  • Userspace IO devices
• Message-based devices
  • Fusion message devices
• Sound Devices
• Frame Buffer Library
  • Frame Buffer Memory
  • Frame Buffer Colormap
  • Frame Buffer Video Mode Database
  • Frame Buffer Macintosh Video Mode Database
  • Frame Buffer Fonts
• Input Subsystem
  • Input core
  • Multitouch Library
  • Polled input devices
  • Matrix keyboards/keypads
  • Sparse keymap support
• Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI)
• I²C and SMBus Subsystem
• High Speed Synchronous Serial Interface (HSI)
  • Introduction
  • HSI Subsystem in Linux
  • hsi-char Device
  • The kernel HSI API
• Parallel Port Devices
• 16x50 UART Driver
• Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM)