Re: Are we going too fast?

Gérard Roudier
2001-08-13T16:57:07Z

On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Justin Guyett wrote:

> On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Gérard Roudier wrote:
>
> > You may want to elaborate on the ncr53c8xx problems (I maintain this
> > driver). More generally, you must not ignore the thousands of bugs in the
> > hardware you are using, but software developpers haven't access to all
> > errata descriptions since hardware vendors donnot like to make this
> > information freely available.
>
> I've got a quick unrelated question.
>
> Why not change the name (or at least the description) of sym53c8xx to
> include the 53c1010 chips, which this driver seems to work on (and on a
> SMP box, no less)?

I have an SMP box and a C1010 chip. I like the 'way' this hardware
combination 'seems' to work for me. :-)

About the driver name, I have changed it to just 'sym' for the port to
FreeBSD. Software modules are usually named using a short name under this
O/S. At the time I did the port, LSI had bought SYMBIOS, but they seemed
to want to keep with SYMBIOS name for the 53C8XX PCI-SCSI family.

Then they (LSI) invented the 53C1010, called it LSI53C1010 and designed it
in a way that made possible to use a single driver for the SYM53C8xx
series (NCR+SYMBIOS) and this one.

The current LSI53C10xx family consists in 2 different architectures that
require 2 different software drivers:

- [PCI host interface + SCSI Ultra-160 interface + SCSI scripts
processor] that are supported by the sym53c8xx driver, the
derivated 'sym' under FreeBSD and the latest SYM-2 (derived from sym)
that wants to be portable.

- [PCI/X host interface + SCSI Ultra-320 interface + ARM based IO
processor] that requires a new driver. I heared that LSILOGIC want to
provide a driver for Linux. Note that the LSI FC controllers and those
ones should possibly share the same software drivers.

Then, what better name for the sym53c8xx driver?

- sym has been obsoleted by lsi.
- sym53c8,10xx is confusing, given the 10xx family weirdness (see above).
- lsi is too vague a name, given the numerous chips supplied by LSI.
- siop (SCSI IO PROCESSOR) is already used and looks to me more vague
than all other names that have ever been used for an HBA driver.:)

In my taste, sym53c8xx is still quite good name for the following reasons:

1) It is the SYMBIOS company that made the greatest development for the
53C8XX family, in my opinion.
2) The 53C10xx chips that can be driven by the sym* drivers use a 53C1010
core, even if then may be named 53C1000, etc..., for marketing reasons.
3) All future 53C10xx HBAs will probably be based on PCI/X + U320 + ARM
and so will not be supported by sym* (same for SIOP, btw).

Now, we could change everything that wants to describe this driver.
Here is my current one (from sym-2 that also supports NCR53C8xx chips):

* Device driver for the SYMBIOS/LSILOGIC 53C8XX and 53C1010 family
* of PCI-SCSI IO processors.

Just my 0.02 euro. :)

Gérard.