The normal way for &struct buffer_heads to be passed to a device driver is for them to be collected into requests on a request queue, and then to allow the device driver to select requests off that queue when it is ready. This works well for many block devices. However some block devices (typically virtual devices such as md or lvm) do not benefit from the processing on the request queue, and are served best by having the requests passed directly to them. This can be achieved by providing a function to blk_queue_make_request.