Re: [PATCH v3] net: phy: add Maxlinear GPY115/21x/24x driver

On Mon, Jun 7, 2021 at 6:37 AM Liang Xu [off-list ref] wrote:
[...]

quoted

quoted

It creates difficulty for the test coverage to put together.

That also does not really matter. If somebody has both, does the work
to merge the drivers and overall we have less code and more features,
the patch will be accepted.


         Andrew

The datasheet of GPY2xx are only available under NDA currently, since we
have

to protect our IP for the new devices.

I don't understand how knowledge about some registers can lead to IP
being stolen by other vendors

I do not know much about XWAY feature set, but I guess the difference should

be 2.5G support, C45 register set, PTP offload, MACsec offload, etc.

I think [0] lists the functional differences - GPY115 and newer seem
to differ from older PHYs in:
- xMII interface
- MACSEC
- IEEE-1588 v2 (PTP)
- Syn-E (not sure what this is)
- Thermal Sensor

Problem of merging the both drivers would be the verification of the old
devices

for which I do not have a test environment. I can't deliver code without
testing,

According to the GPY111 and GPY112 product pages the status is
"Active" ("PARTS & PURCHASING" tab).
quote from the same tab:
"Active - the part is released for sale, standard product."

I believe that these are rebranded Lantiq PHYs:
GPY111 and GPY112 are using PHYID register values which are compatible
with the intel-xway driver.
So I think you can use these PHYs for testing

Also people from the OpenWrt community (for example: me, possible also
Aleksander and Hauke) can help testing on existing hardware

[...]

We will check for options and need approval from company, but this will
not be

possible short term within this merge window.

I hope that it is possible with GPY111 and/or GPY112 as mentioned above

For now, can I upstream this new driver first, and merge the old driver
into new one later?

My answer to this question depends on the actual differences between
the "old" and "new" PHYs.
For example: if WoL and LED configuration are (mostly) identical then
personally I vote for having one driver from the beginning


Best regards,
Martin


[0] https://www.maxlinear.com/products/connectivity/wired/ethernet/ethernet-transceivers-phy
[1] https://www.maxlinear.com/product/connectivity/wired/ethernet/ethernet-transceivers-phy/gpy111