On Tue, Feb 09, 2021 at 20:31, Mickey Rachamim <mick...@marvell.com> wrote: > Hi Andrew, Jakub, Tobias, > > On Tuesday, February 9, 2021 7:35 PM Jakub Kicinski wrote: >> Sounds like we have 3 people who don't like FW-heavy designs dominating the >> kernel - this conversation can only go one way. >> Marvell, Plvision anything to share? AFAIU the values of Linux kernel are >> open source, healthy community, empowering users. With the SDK on the >> embedded CPU your driver does not seem to tick any of these boxes. > > I'll try to share Marvell's insight and plans regarding our Prestera drivers; > > We do understand the importance and the vision behind the open-source > community - while being committed to quality, functionality and the > developers/end-users. > > We started working on the Prestera driver in Q2 2019. it took us more than a > year to get the first approved driver into 5.10, and we just started. > Right at the beginning - we implemented PP function into the Kernel driver > like the SDMA operation (This is the RX/TX DMA engine). > Yet, the FW itself - is an SW package that supports many Marvell Prestera > Switching families of devices - this is a significant SW package that will > take many working years to adapt to the Kernel environment. > We do plan to port more and more PP functions as Kernel drivers along the way.
This is very encouraging to hear. I understand that it is a massive undertaking. > We also are working with the community to extend Kernel functionality with a > new feature beneficial to all Kernel users (e.g. Devlink changes) and we will > continue to do it. > By extending the Prestera driver to in-kernel implementation with more PP > features - we will simplify the FW logic and enables cost-effective solutions > to the market/developers. Until that day arrives, are there any chances of Marvell opening up CPSS in the same way DSDT was re-licensed some years back? Being able to clone github.com/Marvell-switching/prestera-firmware (or whatever) and build the firmware from source would go a long way to alleviate my fears at least. In such a world, I at least have a chance of debugging any issue all the way to the bottom of the stack. It would also make it possible for the community to help out with the porting effort. > Regards, > Mickey.
