Re: [v3 2/2] dsa: mv88e6xxx: make serdes SGMII/Fiber output amplitude configurable

[Vladimir Oltean <olteanv@gmail.com>]

On Wed, Dec 08, 2021 at 05:21:04PM +0100, Marek Behún wrote:
> Hello Vladimir,
> > > > but the mv88e6xxx driver also drives switches that allow changing serdes
> > > > modes. There does not need be dedicated TX amplitude register for each serdes
> > > > mode, the point is that we may want to declare different amplitudes for
> > > > different modes.
> > > >
> > > > So the question is: if we go with your binding proposal for the whole mv88e6xxx
> > > > driver, and in the future someone will want to declare different amplitudes for
> > > > different modes on another model, would he need to deprecate your binding or
> > > > would it be easy to extend?
> > > >
> > >
> > > ok I see. So if I follow your proposal in my case it would be something like:
> > > serdes-sgmii-tx-amplitude-millivolt to start with ?
> > >
> > > I can do that. Andrew what do you think?
> >
> > Or maybe two properties:
> >   serdes-tx-amplitude-millivolt = <700 1000 1100>;
> >   serdes-tx-amplitude-modes = "sgmii", "2500base-x", "10gbase-r";
> > ?
> >
> > If
> >   serdes-tx-amplitude-modes
> > is omitted, then
> >   serdes-tx-amplitude-millivolt
> > should only contain one value, and this is used for all serdes modes.
> >
> > This would be compatible with your change. You only need to define the
> > bidning for now, your code can stay the same - you don't need to add
> > support for multiple values or for the second property now, it can be
> > done later when needed. But the binding should be defined to support
> > those different modes.
>
> Vladimir, can you send your thoughts about this proposal? We are trying
> to propose binding for defining serdes TX amplitude.

I don't have any specific concern here. It sounds reasonable for
different data rates to require different transmitter configurations.
Having separate "serdes-tx-amplitude-millivolt" and "serdes-tx-amplitude-modes"
properties sounds okay, although I think a prefix with "-names" at the
end is more canonical ("pinctrl-names", "clock-names", "reg-names" etc),
so maybe "serdes-tx-amplitude-millivolt-names"?
Maybe we could name the first element "default", and just the others
would be named after a phy-mode. This way, if a specific TX amplitude is
found in the device tree for the currently operating PHY mode, it can be
used, otherwise the default (first) amplitude can be used.