[ipxe-devel] [Mohon Peak] Add support for internal SGMII controller

[Patrick Agrain]

Hi Michael,

Sorry for that long delay, but I was working on other topics in the 
meantime.
Now, I wish to come back to that thread.

Parsing the intel.c - intel.h code, I have the feeling IMHO that this 
code is not able to manage external PHYs, which, actually is not a 
problem, because the managed controllers also have an internal PHY.

Let me know if I'm wrong...

The chip that I tried to include in the IPXE source tree (8086-1F41) is 
based on the Intel i354.
 From an Intel point of view, this chip can be managed with the Intel 
igb driver.
The difference with all controllers managed in the IPXE intel.c driver 
is that the 8086-1F41 _requires_ an external PHY, because it is embedded 
in the Rangeley Atom processor.

Therefore I'm facing a problem. What to do ?
- Either trying to merge the external PHY control from Intel igb driver 
to the IPXE source tree ?
- Or merge the Intel igb driver into the IPXE source tree (what I 
already proposed) ? But in that case, most of the controllers in the 
intel.c driver would be duplicated in the Intel igb driver.
- Or ... ?

What do you think ? Any hint would be welcome.
Regards,
Patrick Agrain

Le 21/04/2015 16:52, Michael Brown a écrit :
> On 12/03/15 13:04, Patrick Agrain wrote:
>> igb.tar is a tar file of the source code (it's only located in one
>> single directory).
>> ipxe.tar is a tar file of the patch to be applied to the ipxe source 
>> tree.
>> As I don't know what should be delivered (and how), I preferred provide
>> both.
>
> Thanks.  The existing "intel" driver already supports igb NICs. Would 
> you be able to find a less intrusive patch which just adds the 
> relevant support to the "intel" driver?
>
> Michael