From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Stephen Hemminger Subject: Re: [PATCH][BNX2X] round three Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:58:29 -0700 Message-ID: <20071015145829.1acabefb@freepuppy.rosehill> References: <20071012.150341.41635825.davem@davemloft.net> <1192462049.29746.158.camel@eliezer> <20071015.123850.26516814.davem@davemloft.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: eliezert@broadcom.com, andi@firstfloor.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org, jeff@garzik.org, mchan@broadcom.com To: David Miller Return-path: Received: from smtp2.linux-foundation.org ([207.189.120.14]:43873 "EHLO smtp2.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932091AbXJOV6s (ORCPT ); Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:58:48 -0400 In-Reply-To: <20071015.123850.26516814.davem@davemloft.net> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 12:38:50 -0700 (PDT) David Miller wrote: > From: "Eliezer Tamir" > Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2007 17:27:29 +0200 > > > Unfortunately, the firmware code is different for LE and BE machines. > > We had issues with the BE firmware that appear to be resolved. > > Hopefully, the next version will have both. > > If this means we get two copies of the firmware, this should be > rethought. The space cost of the firmware (both in terms of source > code size and object code size) is already enormous. > > I would definitely prefer if there were only little-endian firmware, > and the driver uses "cpu_to_le32()" and friends to access chip shared > data structures. > > Most cpus have endian swapping loads and stores, accessible via > cpu_to_le32p() and similar interfaces, so the cost on big-endian of > doing things this way is very close to zero. > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html What about using loadable firmware rather than building it into the driver? -- Stephen Hemminger