THE IPA EMBEDDED MICROCONTROLLER(9)

👑 The IPA embedded microcontroller(9) 👑

okay bestie, welcome to the Kernel API Manual page for this little chip friend 💖

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So the IPA has a whole embedded microcontroller inside it — literally a tiny main-character chip — and it’s able to do some extra handling/offloading of network activity 🦋 The current code makes essentially no use of the microcontroller, but it still requires some initialization. It also needs to be notified in the event the AP crashes 😭

The microcontroller can generate two interrupts to the AP. One interrupt is used to indicate that a response to a request from the AP is available — very demure, very responsive 💅 The other is used to notify the AP of the occurrence of an event. In addition, the AP can interrupt the microcontroller by writing a register 🔥

A 128 byte block of structured memory within the IPA SRAM is used together with these interrupts to implement the communication interface between the AP and the IPA microcontroller. Each side writes data to the shared area before interrupting its peer, and that peer will read the written data in response to the interrupt. Some information found in the shared area is currently unused 👀 All remaining space in the shared area is reserved, and must not be read or written by the AP 🚫 no cap, do not touch it.

🌸 SEE ALSO 🌸

• Kernel file ./drivers/net/ipa/ipa_uc.c
• struct ipa_uc_mem_area(9)

Cute little sign-off bestie: source/version is ./drivers/net/ipa, dated October 2026 🎀💜