On 02/18/2013 11:53:14 PM, Kishon Vijay Abraham I wrote:
The PHY framework provides a set of APIs for the PHY drivers to
create/destroy a PHY and APIs for the PHY users to obtain a reference
to the
PHY with or without using phandle. To obtain a reference to the PHY
without
using phandle, the platform specfic intialization code (say from
board file)
should have already called phy_bind with the binding information. The
binding
information consists of phy's device name, phy user device name and
an index.
The index is used when the same phy user binds to mulitple phys.
Given that this has a separately selectable config option, I'm guessing
that it's useful all by itself even in the absence of a driver using
this phy? (Or it gives user visibility to the phy buried in an E1000 or
SATA drive or some such?)
+1. Introduction
+
+*PHY* is the abbreviation for physical layer. It is used to connect
a device
+to the physical medium e.g., the USB controller has a PHY to provide
functions
+such as serialization, de-serialization, encoding, decoding and is
responsible
+for obtaining the required data transmission rate. Note that some USB
+controller has PHY functionality embedded into it and others use an
external
+PHY. Other peripherals that uses a PHY include Wireless LAN,
Ethernet,
+SATA etc.
I've usually heard the word "transciever" used to describe these.
+The intention of creating this framework is to bring the phy drivers
spread
+all over the Linux kernel to drivers/phy to increase code re-use and
to
+increase code maintainability.
+
+This framework will be of use only to devices that uses external PHY
(PHY
+functionality is not embedded within the controller).
+
+2. Creating the PHY
+
+The PHY driver should create the PHY in order for other peripheral
controllers
+to make use of it. The PHY framework provides 2 APIs to create the
PHY.
Given that a PHY is a chip (random example
http://ark.intel.com/products/47620/Intel-82579LM-Gigabit-Ethernet-PHY),
you seem to be saying that software should manifest a piece of hardware
out of thin air through sheer willpower. I'm pretty sure I've
misunderstood this phrasing.
+struct phy *phy_create(struct device *dev, struct phy_descriptor
*desc);
+struct phy *devm_phy_create(struct device *dev, struct
phy_descriptor *desc);
+
+The PHY drivers can use one of the above 2 APIs to create the PHY by
passing
Um, the driver should _bind_ to the phy, maybe? Allocate? Initialize?
+6. Destroying the PHY
I've run drivers like that. I try not to, though.
+7. Current Status
+
+Currently only USB in OMAP is made to use this framework. However
using the
+USB PHY library cannot be completely removed because it is
intertwined with
+OTG. Once we move OTG out of PHY completely, using the old PHY
library can be
+completely removed. SATA in OMAP will also more likely use this new
framework
+and we should have a patch for it soon.
Does this paragraph belong in the documentation? (Git commit, sure, but
I've seen a lot of stale paragraphs like these hang around a
surprisingly long time.)
Rob--
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