Re: [PATCH net-next RFC V1 5/5] net: mdio: Add a driver for InES time stamping IP core.

Andrew Lunn
2018-03-22T00:43:54Z

On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 03:47:02PM -0700, Richard Cochran wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 21, 2018 at 11:16:52PM +0100, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> > The MAC drivers are clients of this device. They then use a phandle
> > and specifier:
> >
> > eth0: ethernet-controller@72000 {
> > compatible = "marvell,kirkwood-eth";
> > #address-cells = <1>;
> > #size-cells = <0>;
> > reg = <0x72000 0x4000>;
> >
> > timerstamper = <&timestamper 2>
> > }
> >
> > The 2 indicates this MAC is using port 2.
> >
> > The MAC driver can then do the standard device tree things to follow
> > the phandle to get access to the device and use the API it exports.
>
> But that would require hacking every last MAC driver.
>
> I happy to improve the modeling, but the solution should be generic
> and work for every MAC driver.

Something else to think about. There are a number of MAC drivers which
don't use phylib. All the intel drivers for example. They have their
own MDIO and PHY code. And recently there have been a number of MAC
drivers for hardware capable of > 1GBps which do all the PHY control
in firmware.

A phydev is optional, the MAC is mandatory.

Andrew