On 03/26/14 03:21, Jiri Pirko wrote:

Creating bonding of the switch ports does not fit into the picture at
all. These port netdevices are just a representation of a port. Not
actual netdevice where the data goes through.

Please consider the case I gave already to this thread:

         switch chip
    ------------------------
     |  |  |  |  |  |   |               CPU
    p1 p2 ...pn px py  MNGMNT       -----------
                 |  |   |              pcie
                 |  |   |         ---------------
                 |  |   |          |  NIC0 NIC1
                 |  |   ---pcie-----   |   |
                 |  ------someMII-------   |
                 ---------someMII-----------

         NIC0 and NIC1 are ordinary NICs like 8139too for example with no
         notion they are connected to a switch. They as completely
         independent on the mngmnt iface.

 > There, actual data is coming through NIC0 and NIC1 which is
 > completely separated
 > from the p1...pn,px.px port representations.
 >
 > And if you understand it this way, it makes perfect sense to have a
 > master device
 > for these port representations.
 >

I think you may be looking at some specific board design which has those
two NICs; there are typically many variations of such boards and they
have to be each dealt with slightly differently by whoever is porting. 
Important detail is:
we  already know how to deal with NICs - remove them from the diagram
and then the discussion is about the switch chip. I am assuming
the MNGMT interface is where the control is going to be. i.e
I can send table updates there, control the different port
charasterstics etc.
So Neil's option #1 is to have a driver controlling that interface
(->priv).
There's probably some DMA engine's for the datapath for one or more
of the ports this driver exposes...
Replace PCIE with DSA, a simulation chip, whatever the gazillion
crazy interfaces the openwrt guys have to deal with and we have
ourselves a consistent interface.

Btw note this model fits into existing DSA as well I believe. The actual DSA
devices whould act as NIC0, NIC1 and what would be added is the switch
representation (couple of more netdevices to represent actual HW ports and
their master)

Refer to my comments above.


cheers,
jamal