IRQ controllers and timers are the two types of device the kernel
requires before being able to use the device driver model.
ACPI so far lacks a proper probing infrastructure similar to the one
we have with DT, where we're able to declare IRQ chips and
clocksources inside the driver code, and let the core code pick it up
and call us back on a match. This leads to all kind of really ugly
hacks all over the arm64 code and even in the ACPI layer.
It turns out that providing such a probing infrastructure is rather
easy, and provides a much deserved cleanup in both the arch code, the
GIC driver, and the architected timer driver.
I'm sure there is some more code to be deleted, and one can only
wonder why this wasn't done before the arm64 code was initially merged
(the diffstat says it all...).
Patches are against v4.2, and a branch is available at
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/maz/arm-platforms.git acpi/device-probing