Re: [PATCH net-next 00/11] mlxsw: extend line card model by devices and info

From: Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>
To: Jiri Pirko <jiri@resnulli.us>
Cc: Ido Schimmel <idosch@idosch.org>,
	Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>,
	Ido Schimmel <idosch@nvidia.com>,
	netdev@vger.kernel.org, davem@davemloft.net, pabeni@redhat.com,
	jiri@nvidia.com, petrm@nvidia.com, dsahern@gmail.com,
	mlxsw@nvidia.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next 00/11] mlxsw: extend line card model by devices and info
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2022 14:27:54 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YmflStBQCrzP8E6t@lunn.ch> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <YmeViVZ1XhCBCFLN@nanopsycho>

> It is not a separate devlink device, not removetely. A devlink device is
> attached to some bus on the host, it contains entities like netdevices,
> etc.
> 
> Line card devices, on contrary, are accessible over ASIC FW interface,
> they reside on line cards. ASIC FW is using build-in SDK to communicate
> with them. There is really nothing to expose, except for the face they
> are there, with some FW version and later on (follow-up patchset) to be
> able to flash FW on them.

But isn't this just an implementation detail?

Say the flash was directly accessible to the host? It is just another
mtd devices? The gearbox is just another bunch of MMIO registers. You
can access the SFP socket via a host i2c bus, etc. More of a SoC like
implementation, which the enterprise routers are like.

This is a completely different set of implementation details, but i
still have the same basic building blocks. Should it look the same,
and the implementation details are hidden, or do you want to expose
your implementation details?

	Andrew