[OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCH 2/4 v1] net: dsa: Add bindings for Realtek SMI DSAs

[Linus Walleij]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 10:45 PM Rob Herring <robh at kernel.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 11:45:54AM +0200, Linus Walleij wrote:

> > +The SMI "Simple Management Interface" is a two-wire protocol using
>
> At least for some other Realtek chips, the documentation I find says the
> S stands for Serial. And Wikipedia says SMI is the same thing as MDIO.

The only datasheet we have mentions both:
http://realtek.info/pdf/rtl8366_8369_datasheet_1-1.pdf
calling it serial management interface when talking to an EEPROM
calling it systems management interface when talking to a
PHY.

(BTW that datsheet has no relation to this driver, that is for
ASICs 8366 and 8369 which of course have nothing to do with
RTL8366RB "revision B" that we are running here, which adds
even more to the confusion.)

Sadly it would not surprise me if Realtek doesn't even know
which one it is themselves, given the state of the code and
documentation that came out of the company.

I just have to pick something. I can rename it the
"S Management Interface" if you prefer, OpenWRT called it
Systems Management Interface.

> Just want to make sure we don't define GPIOs directly when there should
> be a layer of abstraction like mdio-gpio.

OK let's look at it we read a single register with each protocol:

1. MDIO: drivers/net/phy/mdio-bitbang.c
  send_bit is setting data and cycling clock 1-0 (falling edge)
  begins transactions by sending 32 1:s (well 33 for safe measure)
  then sends a start bit 01
  then sends the opcode 10 (read)
  then sends the PHY address (5 bits)
  then sends the register address (5 bits)
  turn around (switch MDIO to input)
  read 16 bit register value
  read stop bit

2. SMI:
   sends the sequence "101" to start transactions. (No initial ones)
   writes a whole byte which is the "command" read is 0xa9
   on RTL8366RB and apparently something else on other chips
   writes low byte of 16bit address
   writes high byte of 16bit address
   turn around (switch MDIO to input)
   reads the low byte of the 16bit data
   reads the high byte of the 16bit data
   sends the stop sequence 01
   then an extra clock pulse

As you can see those are pretty different. PHY always being
addressed in MDIO (the switch chips has PHYs but this
protocol is not defined exclusively for that) and both phy and
reg being 5 bits addressing at most 10 address bits is the most
obvious deviation then 8 bits for command instead of 2 etc.

It's just very different.

Yours,
Linus Walleij

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