[RFC] Question regarding api between xpon mac and laser driver/BOSA

[Benjamin Larsson]

Hi, on Econet SoCs the data plane looks like this:

eth <-> xpon mac <-> xpon phy <-> LDDLA/BOSA

The implementation of this is part is clear.


The management plane for xpon talks to the mac and laser driver, the 
layer for this communication is over i2c and looks like this:

omci <-> xpon mac <-> LDDLA/BOSA


Here the LDDLA/BOSA can be replaced with a sfp-module if the optical 
part have a SFP slot instead of a BOSA. This means the xpon mac needs to 
implement SFF-8472 handling which is fine.

The problem/question arises when using a BOSA. The LDDLAs from Econet 
are not SFF-8472 compliant enough. Something needs to handle a translation.

The current code exposes an emulated i2c-bus with SFF-8472 compatible 
data so it looks like a sfp-module, that makes the interface with xpon 
mac uniform while adding complexity to the LDDLA-drivers.

The question is what part should have the complexity? The xpon mac, the 
LDDLA driver or something else?

MvH
Benjamin Larsson