Open Source Summit + Embedded Linux Conference North America 2026

Modern heterogeneous SoCs often integrate multiple remote processors (rprocs) that control peripherals for safety purposes, alongside a general-purpose processor running a HLOS like Linux. In automotive systems, these peripherals still need to be shared with Linux for complex use cases like Ethernet traffic sharing, coordinating multiple display pipelines. The Remote Processor Messaging (RPMsg) framework in Linux enables this model by providing an efficient IPC mechanism, allowing devices owned by rprocs to be exposed to Linux as standard devices through virtual kernel drivers built on top of RPMsg. With the growing adoption of this approach, interfaces like rpmsg-gpio, rpmsg-i2c, rpmsg-net are becoming increasingly common.

Using the upstreamed rpmsg-tty driver as an example, this talk presents:
1. The key design principles for building virtual drivers with RPMsg, covering topics like channel & endpoint management(static vs dynamic), synchronization.
2. A comparative study of RPMsg-based solutions with its VirtIO alternative, highlighting trade-offs in latency, resources and use case suitability.
3. Challenges, upstreaming lessons, common pitfalls and scope for future improvement.