[RFC PATCH 12/23] kernel/watchdog: Introduce a struct for NMI watchdog operations

[Nicholas Piggin]

On Tue, 12 Jun 2018 17:57:32 -0700
Ricardo Neri <ricardo.neri-calderon at linux.intel.com> wrote:

> Instead of exposing individual functions for the operations of the NMI
> watchdog, define a common interface that can be used across multiple
> implementations.
> 
> The struct nmi_watchdog_ops is defined for such operations. These initial
> definitions include the enable, disable, start, stop, and cleanup
> operations.
> 
> Only a single NMI watchdog can be used in the system. The operations of
> this NMI watchdog are accessed via the new variable nmi_wd_ops. This
> variable is set to point the operations of the first NMI watchdog that
> initializes successfully. Even though at this moment, the only available
> NMI watchdog is the perf-based hardlockup detector. More implementations
> can be added in the future.

Cool, this looks pretty nice at a quick glance. sparc and powerpc at
least have their own NMI watchdogs, it would be good to have those
converted as well.

Is hpet a cross platform thing, or just x86? We should avoid
proliferation of files under kernel/ I think, so with these watchdog
driver structs then maybe implementations could go in drivers/ or
arch/

Thanks,
Nick