Re: [PATCH] phy: nxp-c45: add driver for tja1103

[Radu Nicolae Pirea (NXP OSS)]

On Mon, 2021-04-12 at 14:57 +0200, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 12, 2021 at 01:02:07PM +0300, Radu Nicolae Pirea (NXP
> OSS) wrote:
> > On Fri, 2021-04-09 at 21:36 +0200, Andrew Lunn wrote:
> > > On Fri, Apr 09, 2021 at 09:41:06PM +0300, Radu Pirea (NXP OSS)
> > > wrote:
> > > > Add driver for tja1103 driver and for future NXP C45 PHYs.
> > > 
> > > So apart from c45 vs c22, how does this differ to nxp-tja11xx.c?
> > > Do we really want two different drivers for the same hardware? 
> > > Can we combine them somehow?
> > It looks like the PHYs are the same hardware, but that's not
> > entirely
> > true. Just the naming is the same. TJA1103 is using a different IP
> > and
> > is having timestamping support(I will add it later).
> 
> Is the IP very different? You often see different generations of a
> PHY
> supported by the same driver, if the generations are similar.
Yes. It's very different. I know what you mean, but that's not the
case. That's why we decided to write a new driver from scratch.
> 
> Does it support C22 or it is purely a C45 device?
It is purely a C45 device.
> 
> > TJA is also not an Ethernet PHY series, but a general prefix for
> > media
> > interfaces including also CAN, LIN, etc.
> > > 
> > > > +config NXP_C45_PHY
> > > > +       tristate "NXP C45 PHYs"
> > > 
> > > This is also very vague. So in the future it will support PHYs
> > > other
> > > than the TJA series?
> > Yes, in the future this driver will support other PHYs too.
> 
> Based on the same IP? 
> Or different IP? Are we talking about 2 more
> PHYs, so like the nxp-tja11xx.c will support 3 PHYs. And then the
> tja1106 will come along and need a new driver?
> What will you call
> that?
>  I just don't like 'NXP C45 PHYs", it gives no clue as to what it
> actually supports, and it gives you problems when you need to add yet
> another driver.
Even if the PHY will be based on the same IP or not, if it is a C45
PHY, it will be supported by this driver. We are not talking about 2 or
3 PHYs. This driver will support all future C45 PHYs. That's why we
named it "NXP C45".
> 
> At minimum, there needs to be a patch to add tja1102 to the help for
> the nxp-tja11xx.c driver. And this driver needs to list tja1103.
I will make the changes then.
Thank you.
> 
>     Andrew