Re: [net-next PATCH 0/6] Add support for 25G, 50G, and 100G to fbnic

[Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org>]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 08:29:07PM +0200, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> > > > when the fbnic was proposed for merge, the overall agreement was that
> > > > this driver is ok as long as no-core changes will be required for this
> > > > driver to work and now, year later, such changes are proposed here.
> > > 
> > > I would say these are natural extensions to support additional speeds
> > > in the 'core'. We always said fbnic would be pushing the edges of the
> > > linux core support for SFP, because all other vendors in this space
> > > reinvent the wheel and hide it away in firmware. fbnic is different
> > > and Linux is actually driving the hardware.
> 
> > How exactly they can hide speed declarations in the FW and still support it?
>  
> You obviously did not spend time to look at the code and understand
> what it is doing. This is used to map the EEPROM contents of the SFP
> to how the PCS etc should be configured. So far, this has only been
> used for speeds up to 10Gbps. This code is mostly used by SoCs, and at
> the moment most SoCs inbuilt interfaces top out at 10G. fbnic is
> pushing this core code to higher speeds.
> 
> You can easily hide speed declarations in firmware and still support
> it because we are not talking about the ethtool API here. This is a
> lower level. A FW driven device will have its own code for parsing the
> SFP EEPROM and configuring the PCS etc, without needing anything from
> Linux.

Excellent, like you said, no one needs this code except fbnic, which is
exactly as was agreed - no core in/out API changes special for fbnic.

> 
> > In addition, it is unclear what the last sentence means. FBNIC has FW like
> > any other device.
> 
> From what i have seen, it has a small amount of firmware. 

Initial claim was no-FW, now we are talking about "small amount".
There is no fbnic devices in the market, FW is not open-source to
justify the last claim.

> However, Linux is actually controlling most of the hardware.

Even this claim contradicts their own press releases:
https://www.marvell.com/company/newsroom/marvell-delivers-custom-ethernet-network-interface-controller-solution-at-ocp.html

"Complete firmware control with access to all hardware internals enabling the ability
to deliver innovative customized capabilities and reduce mean time to resolve potential
issues."

Thanks