Re: [PATCH] MII bus API for PHY devices

From: Benjamin Herrenschmidt
Date: Fri Nov 19 2004 - 18:00:04 EST


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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