Re: [PATCH v14 00/15] phy: Add support for Lynx 10G SerDes

[Sean Anderson <sean.anderson@seco.com>]

On 6/12/23 12:33, Vladimir Oltean wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 10:35:21AM -0400, Sean Anderson wrote:
>> > And if SERDES protocol switching was not physically possible, would this
>> > patch set still have value?

More to the point, did you make any progress in this area?

>> Yes. To e.g. set up SGMII25 or to fix the clocking situation.
> 
> Let me analyze the reasons one by one.
> 
> The clocking situation only exists due to a hope that protocol changing
> would be possible. If you were sure it wasn't possible, your board would
> have had refclks set up for protocol 3333 via the supported PLL mapping 2222.
> In essence, I consider this almost a non-argument, as it fixes a
> self-inflicted problem.

2222 also does not work, as outlined above.

The clocking is incompatible, and must be fixed by software.

The only thing self-inflicted is NXP's conflicting design.

> Have you actually tested changing individual lanes from SGMII to SGMII 2.5?
> I know it works on LS1028A, but I don't know if that's also true on LS1046A.
> Your comments do say "LYNX_PROTO_SGMII25, /* Not tested */".

Not yet. 

This driver would also be a good place to add the KR link training with
NXP tried to upstream a few years ago.

> Assuming a start from SERDES protocol 3333 with PLL mapping 2222,
> this protocol change implies powering on PLL 1 (reset state machine
> wants it to be disabled) and moving those lanes from PLL 2 to PLL 1.
> 
> At first sight you might appear to have a point related to the fact that
> PLL register writes are necessary, and thus this whole shebang is necessary.
> But this can all be done using PBI commands, with the added benefit that
> U-Boot can also use those SERDES networking ports, and not just Linux.
> You can use the RCW+PBL specific to your board to inform the SoC that
> your platform's refclk 1 is 156 MHz (something which the reset state
> machine seems unable to learn, with protocol 0x3333). You don't have to
> put that in the device tree. You don't have to push code to any open
> source project to expose your platform specific details. Then, just like
> in the case of the Lynx 28G driver on LX2160, the SERDES driver could
> just treat the PLL configuration as read-only, which would greatly
> simplify things and eliminate the need for a clk driver.
> 
> Here is an illustrative example (sorry, I don't have a board with the
> right refclk on that PLL, to verify all the way):
> 
> ... snip ...

(which of course complicates the process of building the PBIs...)

> In short, I believe the reasons you have cited do not justify the
> complexity of the solution that you propose.

The work is done, and it is certainly more flexible than what you
propose. E.g. imagine a clock which needs to be configured before it has
the correct frequency. Such a thing is difficult to do in a PBI solution,
but is trivial in Linux.

--Sean