Dear Jason,
In message 20130221232821.GA2823@obsidianresearch.com you wrote:
own seems to be rather static and stable, and unlike software there is no way I can change it (soldering irons don't count).
There is other hardware available (for example FPGA based) where this does not apply.
Agreed.. We do that here as well, the DT is also used to describe the functionality inside FPGA(s). We do things like declare a GPIO controller inside the FPGA, then stack the bitbang MDIO/I2C on top of that, then declare a bunch of devices on those busses. DT makes this extremely straightforward.
However, it is critical that the DT, kernel and FPGA are matched together - we always arrange things so that the DTB, kernel and FPGA config are bundled together and update atomically during firmware upgrade.
Agreed.
Xilinx's Zynq is a great example of this kind of stuff, FWIW. IIRC
Indeed - Xilinx's Zynq, Altera's SoC FPGA, and others.
Such highly flexible hardware configurations require a new level of software support that by far exceeds the classic static setups of more "PC-like" systems where the only change you would expect is adding or removing some PCI cards or the like.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk