PCI Express Port Bus Driver Support for Linux

PCI Express is a high performance general purpose I/O Interconnect defined for a wide variety of computing and communication platforms. It implements PCI Express Ports, PCI-PCI Bridges, to provide point-to-point interconnects. PCI Express categorizes PCI Express Ports into three types: the Root Ports, the Upstream Switch Ports, and the Downstream Switch Ports. Each PCI Express Port can provide up to four distinct services: native hot-plug, power management event, advanced error reporting, and virtual channel. PCI Express Port Bus Driver, as being proposed and developed, therefore shall serve managing all services and distributing them to their corresponding service drivers. This paper, which uses i386 Linux implementation as a reference model, is targeted toward kernel developers and architects interested in the details of enabling service drivers for PCI Express Ports. This paper provides insight into the scope of implementing PCI Express Port Bus Driver and specific service drivers like Advanced Error Handling Root service driver and PCI Express Native Hot-plug Root service driver.