From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jeff Garzik Subject: Phy layer notes (was Re: [RFR] gianfar ethernet driver) Date: Fri, 09 Jul 2004 12:47:08 -0400 Sender: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com Message-ID: <40EECC0C.9040304@pobox.com> References: <8F52CF1D-C916-11D8-BB6A-000393DBC2E8@freescale.com> <40E98FB8.4070900@pobox.com> <1089375760.28614.1365.camel@hades.cambridge.redhat.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: David Woodhouse , Kumar Gala , jamal Return-path: To: Netdev In-Reply-To: <1089375760.28614.1365.camel@hades.cambridge.redhat.com> Errors-to: netdev-bounce@oss.sgi.com List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org David Woodhouse wrote: > Hmmm. > > eth0: Running with NAPI disabled > eth0: 64/64 RX/TX BD ring size > eth1: Gianfar Ethernet Controller Version 1.0, 05:e6:9e:c0:05:e6 > eth1: Running with NAPI disabled > eth1: 64/64 RX/TX BD ring size > eth0: PHY id 2060e1 is not supported! > eth0: No PHY found > IP-Config: Failed to open eth0 > IP-Config: Device `eth0' not found > > The PHY is a BCM5421S. Does it really have to give up completely? Isn't > there a subset of common MII support it could use? > > Is it expected that every NIC driver will include its own version of > support for the PHYs which have actually been seen paired with that NIC, > or is there some more generic support planned? David W and I discussed some of this on IRC. 1) most gige phys can be treated with generic GMII code. unfortunately experience shows that phy init can often involve phy-specific magic sequences. 2) we do need a generic phy layer, and I'm looking for volunteers who want to prototype a nice, small, compact one. BenH has a nice template in sungem_phy.c. 3) drivers/net/mii.c and include/linux/mii.h need GMII code and constants. Feel free to add. 4) generic TBI code would be nice, too. (TBI is a standard gige fibre interface) 5) sometimes a MAC+phy pairing is unique enough that you need MAC-specific support for a particular phy. For example, one might wind up with two phy drivers, one a generic Broadcom GMII phy driver (for use by any NIC driver), and one a tg3-specific Broadcom GMII phy driver.