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Subject: Re: [PATCH 17/18] net: iosm: readme file
From:   Dan Williams <dcbw@redhat.com>
To:     Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>, Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>
Cc:     =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Bj=F8rn?= Mork <bjorn@mork.no>,
        M Chetan Kumar <m.chetan.kumar@intel.com>,
        netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org,
        johannes@sipsolutions.net, krishna.c.sudi@intel.com
Date:   Wed, 20 Jan 2021 19:34:48 -0600
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On Wed, 2021-01-20 at 15:32 -0800, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 20:34:51 +0100 Andrew Lunn wrote:
> > On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 06:26:54PM +0100, Bjørn Mork wrote:
> > > I was young and stupid. Now I'm not that young anymore ;-)  
> > 
> > We all make mistakes, when we don't have the knowledge there are
> > other
> > ways. That is partially what code review is about.
> > 
> > > Never ever imagined that this would be replicated in another
> > > driver,
> > > though.  That doesn't really make much sense.  We have learned by
> > > now,
> > > haven't we?  This subject has been discussed a few times in the
> > > past,
> > > and Johannes summary is my understanding as well:
> > > "I don't think anyone likes that"  
> > 
> > So there seems to be agreement there. But what is not clear, is
> > anybody willing to do the work to fix this, and is there enough
> > ROI.
> > 
> > Do we expect more devices like this? Will 6G, 7G modems look very
> > different? 
> 
> Didn't Intel sell its 5G stuff off to Apple?

Yes, but they kept the ability to continue with 3G/4G hardware and
other stuff.

> > Be real network devices and not need any of this odd stuff?
> > Or will they be just be incrementally better but mostly the same?
> > 
> > I went into the review thinking it was an Ethernet driver, and kept
> > having WTF moments. Now i know it is not an Ethernet driver, i can
> > say
> > it is not my domain, i don't know the field well enough to say if
> > all
> > these hacks are acceptable or not.
> > 
> > It probably needs David and Jakub to set the direction to be
> > followed.
> 
> AFAIU all those cellar modems are relatively slow and FW-heavy, so
> the
> ideal solution IMO is not even a common kernel interface but actually
> a common device interface, like NVMe (or virtio for lack of better
> examples).

That was supposed to be MBIM, but unfortunately those involved didn't
iterate and MBIM got stuck. I don't think we'll see a standard as long
as some vendors are dominant and see no need for it.

Dan