Re: [net-next PATCH v1 0/2] stmmac: dwmac-meson8b: configurable RGMII TX delay

[Martin Blumenstingl <martin.blumenstingl@googlemail.com>]

On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 7:55 PM, Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com> wrote:
> Le 24/11/2016 à 09:05, Martin Blumenstingl a écrit :
>> On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 4:56 PM, Jerome Brunet <jbrunet@baylibre.com> wrote:
>>> On Thu, 2016-11-24 at 15:34 +0100, Martin Blumenstingl wrote:
>>>> Currently the dwmac-meson8b stmmac glue driver uses a hardcoded 1/4
>>>> cycle TX clock delay. This seems to work fine for many boards (for
>>>> example Odroid-C2 or Amlogic's reference boards) but there are some
>>>> others where TX traffic is simply broken.
>>>> There are probably multiple reasons why it's working on some boards
>>>> while it's broken on others:
>>>> - some of Amlogic's reference boards are using a Micrel PHY
>>>> - hardware circuit design
>>>> - maybe more...
>>>>
>>>> This raises a question though:
>>>> Which device is supposed to enable the TX delay when both MAC and PHY
>>>> support it? And should we implement it for each PHY / MAC separately
>>>> or should we think about a more generic solution (currently it's not
>>>> possible to disable the TX delay generated by the RTL8211F PHY via
>>>> devicetree when using phy-mode "rgmii")?
>>>
>>> Actually you can skip the part which activate the Tx-delay on the phy
>>> by setting "phy-mode = "rgmii-id" instead of "rgmii"
>>>
>>> phy->interface will no longer be PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII
>>> but PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII_ID.
>> unfortunately this is not true for RTL8211F (I did my previous tests
>> with the same expectation in mind)!
>> the code seems to suggest that TX-delay is disabled whenever mode !=
>> PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII.
>> BUT: on my device RTL8211F_TX_DELAY is set even before
>> "phy_write(phydev, 0x11, reg);"!
>
> (Adding Sebastian (and Mans, and Andrew) since he raised the same
> question a while ago. I think I now understand a bit better what
> Sebastian was after a couple of weeks ago)
>
>>
>> Based on what I found it seems that rgmii-id, rgmii-txid and
>> rgmii-rxid are supposed to be handled by the PHY.
>
> Correct, the meaning of PHY_INTERFACE_MODE should be from the
> perspective of the PHY device:
>
> - PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII_TXID means that the PHY is responsible for
> adding a delay when the MAC transmits (TX MAC -> PHY (delay) -> wire)
> - PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII_RXID means that the PHY is responsible for
> adding a delay when the MAC receives (RX MAC <- (delay) PHY) <- wire)
and PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII_ID is basically _TXID and _RXID combined
(meaning that the PHY is responsible for the TX and RX delays)

>> That would mean that we have two problems here:
>> 1) drivers/net/phy/realtek.c:rtl8211f_config_init should check for
>> PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII_ID or PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII_TXID and
>> enable the TX-delay in that case - otherwise explicitly disable it
>
> Agreed.
(on a side-not: it seems that the RTL8211F's TX-delay setting is
either untouched by a hardware reset via GPIO or enabled automatically
during hardware reset via GPIO)

>> 2) dwmac-meson8b.c should only use the configured TX-delay for
>> PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII
>> @Florian: could you please share your thoughts on this (who handles
>> the TX delay in which case)?
>
> This also seems reasonable to do, provided that the PHY is also properly
> configured not to add delays in both directions, and therefore assumes
> that the MAC does it.
on Amlogic Meson systems (at least on the ARM64 ones) all customer
devices with Gbit ethernet are using the RTL8211F PHY. The only
exception are some development/reference boards from Amlogic
themselves, which seem to be using a Micrel RGMII PHY.

> We have a fairly large problem with how RGMII delays are done in PHYLIB
> and Ethernet MAC drivers (or just in general), where we can't really
> intersect properly what a PHY is supporting (in terms of internal
> delays), and what the MAC supports either. One possible approach could
> be to update PHY drivers a list of PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_* that they
> support (ideally, even with normalized nanosecond delay values), and
> then intersect that with the requested phy_interface_t during
> phy_{attach,connect} time, and feed this back to the MAC with a special
> error code/callback, so we could gracefully try to choose another
> PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_* value that the MAC supports....
>
> A larger problem is that a number of drivers have been deployed, and
> Device Trees, possibly with the meaning of "phy-mode" and
> "phy-connection-type" being from the MAC perspective, and not the PHY
> perspective *sigh*, good luck auditing those.
>
> So from there, here is possibly what we could do
>
> - submit a series of patches that update the PHYLIB documentation (there
> are other things missing here) and make it clear from which entity (PHY
> or MAC) does the delay apply to, document the "intersection" problem here
sounds like a good idea, maybe we should move this to a separate thread (I guess
this is the part which is especially interesting for Sebastian, Mans
and Andrew)?

> - have you document the configured behavior for dwmac-meson8b that we
> just discussed here in v2 of this patch series
I would add something like "...using the phy-modes rgmii-id or
rgmii-txid means that the TX-delay will be added by the PHY, thus no
TX-delay should be configured for the MAC/dwmac-meson8b glue" (I'll
improve this, I just want a quick confirmation that I get your idea
right)

Thanks for the quick and helpful answer Florian!


Regards,
Martin