Chapter 1. Introduction
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# Chapter 1. Introduction

This document describes the interfaces available for device drivers that drive s390 based channel attached I/O devices. This includes interfaces for interaction with the hardware and interfaces for interacting with the common driver core. Those interfaces are provided by the s390 common I/O layer.

The document assumes a familarity with the technical terms associated with the s390 channel I/O architecture. For a description of this architecture, please refer to the "z/Architecture: Principles of Operation", IBM publication no. SA22-7832.

While most I/O devices on a s390 system are typically driven through the channel I/O mechanism described here, there are various other methods (like the diag interface). These are out of the scope of this document.

Some additional information can also be found in the kernel source under Documentation/s390/driver-model.txt.

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