Re: [PATCH RFC] Providing a helper for PCS inband negotiation

From: Vladimir Oltean <olteanv@gmail.com>
To: "Russell King (Oracle)" <linux@armlinux.org.uk>
Cc: Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>,
	AngeloGioacchino Del Regno
	<angelogioacchino.delregno@collabora.com>,
	Daniel Machon <daniel.machon@microchip.com>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>, Felix Fietkau <nbd@nbd.name>,
	Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>,
	Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@gmail.com>,
	Horatiu Vultur <horatiu.vultur@microchip.com>,
	Ioana Ciornei <ioana.ciornei@nxp.com>,
	Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>, John Crispin <john@phrozen.org>,
	Jose Abreu <Jose.Abreu@synopsys.com>,
	Lars Povlsen <lars.povlsen@microchip.com>,
	Lorenzo Bianconi <lorenzo@kernel.org>,
	Marcin Wojtas <mw@semihalf.com>,
	Mark Lee <Mark-MC.Lee@mediatek.com>,
	Matthias Brugger <matthias.bgg@gmail.com>,
	Maxime Chevallier <maxime.chevallier@bootlin.com>,
	Paolo Abeni <pabeni@redhat.com>,
	Sean Wang <sean.wang@mediatek.com>,
	Steen Hegelund <Steen.Hegelund@microchip.com>,
	Taras Chornyi <taras.chornyi@plvision.eu>,
	Thomas Petazzoni <thomas.petazzoni@bootlin.com>,
	UNGLinuxDriver@microchip.com,
	linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
	linux-mediatek@lists.infradead.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC] Providing a helper for PCS inband negotiation
Date: Tue, 16 May 2023 01:08:33 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20230515220833.up43pd76zne2suy2@skbuf> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <ZGKn8c2W1SI2CPq4@shell.armlinux.org.uk>

On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 10:45:21PM +0100, Russell King (Oracle) wrote:
> Clause 73.1:
> 
> So, my reading of these statements is that the _user_ should be
> able to control via ethtool whether Clause 73 negotiation is
> performed on a 10GBASE-KR (or any other backplane link that
> uses clause 73 negotiation.) Having extracted that from 802.3,
> I now believe it should be treated the same as 1000BASE-X, and
> the Autoneg bit in ethtool should determine whether Clause 73
> negotiation is used for 10GBASE-KR (and any other Clause 73
> using protocol.)

Having said that copper backplane link modes should be treated "the
same" as fiber link modes w.r.t. ethtool -s autoneg, it should also be
said that there are significant differences between clause 37 and 73
autoneg too.

Clause 73 negotiates the actual use of 10GBase-KR as a SERDES protocol
through the copper backplane in favor of other "Base-K*" alternative
link modes, so it's not quite proper to say that 10GBase-KR is a clause
73 using protocol.

To me, the goals of clause 73 autoneg are much more similar to those of
the twisted pair autoneg process - clause 28, which similarly selects
between different media side protocols in the PHY, using a priority
resolution function. For those, we use phylib and the phy_device
structure. What are the merits of using phylink_pcs for copper backplanes
and not phylib?

_______________________________________________
linux-arm-kernel mailing list
linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org
http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-arm-kernel