Re: [PATCH 0/4] bcma: support SHIM-attached big-endian SoC backplanes (BCM6362)

From: Arend van Spriel

Date: Mon Jul 06 2026 - 08:23:30 EST


On 29/05/2026 02:05, Alessio Ferri wrote:
Some BMIPS xDSL SoCs (BCM6362) integrate a Broadcom 802.11 backplane that is reachable
through bcma but differs from the BCM47xx SoCs host_soc was written for:
the AXI backplane is big-endian on a big-endian CPU, and the cores bcma must gate
(ChipCommon, the 802.11 core, the SHIM core) expose no per-core DMP wrappers — clock
and reset live in a small SoC-level SHIM Control register instead.

Rather than describe these quirks as DT properties on the bcma node, the SoC-specific
configuration is delivered to host_soc via platform_data from a parent bridge driver. The
bcma DT node stays a plain "brcm,bus-axi" and all the 6362-specific knowledge lives in the
bridge driver. The standard brcm,bus-axi path is unchanged.

The series is:
1/4 bcma: support driver specific quirks from soc pdata
2/4 bcma: allow SHIM-style mini-EROM wrapper-less cores in scan
3/4 dt-bindings: bus: add brcm,bcm6362-wlan
4/4 bus: add BCM6362 on-chip WLAN SHIM bridge driver

Patches 1-2 touch drivers/bcma (wireless tree); patch 3 is a new drivers/bus driver; patch 4 is
the binding. The patches are sent together to keep the whole context intact.

The original Broadcom driver materialized a fake PCI device, i don't think that would be allowed
in the kernel.

Tested on a D-Link DSL-3580L (BCM6362, d11 corerev 22, N-PHY):
- SHIM brings the backplane up,
- bcma enumerates ChipCommon + the 802.11 core,
- b43 binds.

b43 patches are necessary for the last point, but those has
already been sent in linux-wireless.

Hi Alessio,

This patch series ended up on my patchwork plate for the linux-wireless project. However, there is not much wifi specifics going on in these patches that I can comment on. So this probably needs the attention of Rafał and Florian who are already listed. Added linux-mips mailing list here. Hopefully it showed up on the review list in other subsystems.

Regarding this hardware I suspect the rest of the SoC used the Broadcom UBUS interconnect so the SHIM bridge would actually be a UBUS-AXI bridge of sorts which hooks up the WLAN cores.

Regards,
Arend

Assisted-by: Claude:claude-4.8-opus
Signed-off-by: Alessio Ferri <alessio.ferri@xxxxxxxxxxx>

---
Alessio Ferri (4):
bcma: support driver specific quirks from soc pdata
bcma: allow SHIM-style mini-EROM wrapper-less cores in scan
dt-bindings: bus: add brcm,bcm6362-wlan
bus: add BCM6362 on-chip WLAN SHIM bridge driver