Re: [PATCH net-next 0/2] net: phy: sfp: Add single-byte SMBus SFP access

["Russell King (Oracle)" <linux@armlinux.org.uk>]

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 07:07:41PM +0100, Bjørn Mork wrote:
> "Russell King (Oracle)" <linux@armlinux.org.uk> writes:
> 
> >> I believe you are reading more into the spec than what's actually there.
> >
> > So I'm making up the quote above from SFF-8472.  Okay, if that's where
> > this discussion is going, I'm done here.
> 
> No, not at all.  That was not what I meant.  Please accept my apologies.
> This came out wrong. You are absolutely correct about reading the 16bit
> diagnostic registers you quoted. I would never doubt that. I have an
> extreme respect for you and your knowledge of these standards and the
> practical hardware implications.
> 
> It was the conclusion that this fact prevents SMBus hosts I wanted to
> question.  I still don't see that.  Some SMBus hosts might be able do 2
> byte reads.  And if they can't, then I believe they can safely ignore
> these registers without being out of spec.  Like the proposed solution.

It doesn't prevent SMBus hosts, but it does prevent SMBus hosts from
being able to be used *reliably* with the diagnostics "EEPROM" to read
the values in a coherent manner.

It also prevents being able to identify the Nokia 3FE46541AA module,
because the module's I2C locks the bus when a single-byte read of
offset 0x51 in the "identity" EEPROM at 0xA0/0x50.

We do already have single-byte mode in the SFP driver, which is
necessary to work around the broken I2C interface on RTL8672 and
RTL9601C which emulate that EEPROM.

There's a lot of "brokenness" out there, and what I've learnt from
dealing with SFPs over the last 10+ years is to be cautious about
*everything*. One thing that can be guaranteed is that a module will
be broken in unexpected ways, and using a different behaviour for
working modules will turn out to break.

The Nokia 3FE46541AA is a brilliant example of a module that
emulates all accesses and fails with single-byte reads, thus making
it incompatible with a SMBus that can only read single bytes.

-- 
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