Subject: Re: [PATCH] MII bus API for PHY devices
From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt <benh@kernel.crashing.org>
To: Andy Fleming <afleming@freescale.com>
Cc: netdev@oss.sgi.com, Linux Kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       jason.mcmullan@timesys.com, Andy Fleming <AFLEMING@motorola.com>
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Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2004 09:43:04 +1100
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On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 15:18 -0600, Andy Fleming wrote:

> So when you say instantiated, would you consider calling an "attach" 
> function with the phy_id and bus_id of the desired PHY instantiation?  
> I'm fine with that.  The PHY would need to be able to send 
> notifications to the enet controller (currently done through a 
> callback).  I'm interested in ideas on how the notifier could be used 
> (I have a distaste for callbacks).

Look at the notifier lists in include/linux/notifier.h

> Autopoll features sound pretty neat.  I think the system should support 
> that.

But that becomes MAC-dependant again... That means you'd need 1) a way
for the MAC driver to ask the PHY driver what register it wants
autopolled, and a function in the PHY driver for the MAC to call when it
detects a change. Also, autopoll is broken in some MACs...

>   PHY interrupts are supported (they work quite well on my 85xx 
> system), as is timer-based polling.  Do you really think that there are 
> special cases which can't be handled using a library similar to the 
> sungem_phy one?

Nope. I think timer based polling with a sungem-like fallback mecanism
to forced speeds would be nice.

Ben.


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