Re: [PATCH net-next v5 4/4] phy: aquantia: Determine rate adaptation support from registers

[Tim Harvey]

On Fri, Jan 6, 2023 at 3:21 PM Sean Anderson <sean.anderson@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On 1/6/23 18:03, Vladimir Oltean wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 05, 2023 at 05:46:48PM +0000, Russell King (Oracle) wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jan 05, 2023 at 07:34:45PM +0200, Vladimir Oltean wrote:
> >> > So we lose the advertisement of 5G and 2.5G, even if the firmware is
> >> > provisioned for them via 10GBASE-R rate adaptation, right? Because when
> >> > asked "What kind of rate matching is supported for 10GBASE-R?", the
> >> > Aquantia driver will respond "None".
> >>
> >> The code doesn't have the ability to do any better right now - since
> >> we don't know what sets of interface modes _could_ be used by the PHY
> >> and whether each interface mode may result in rate adaption.
> >>
> >> To achieve that would mean reworking yet again all the phylink
> >> validation from scratch, and probably reworking phylib and most of
> >> the PHY drivers too so that they provide a lot more information
> >> about their host interface behaviour.
> >>
> >> I don't think there is an easy way to have a "perfect" solution
> >> immediately - it's going to take a while to evolve - and probably
> >> painfully evolve due to the slowness involved in updating all the
> >> drivers that make use of phylink in some way.
> >
> > Serious question. What do we gain in practical terms with this patch set
> > applied? With certain firmware provisioning, some unsupported link modes
> > won't be advertised anymore. But also, with other firmware, some supported
> > link modes won't be advertised anymore.
>
> Well, before the rate adaptation series, none of this would be
> advertised. I would rather add advertisement only for what we can
> actually support. We can always come back later and add additional
> support.
>
> > IIUC, Tim Harvey's firmware ultimately had incorrect provisioning, it's
> > not like the existing code prevents his use case from working.

Correct - the firmware I was provided was mis-configured.

Tim

>
> The existing code isn't great as-is, since all the user sees is that we
> e.g. negotiated for 1G, but the link never came up.
>
> --Sean