[net-next PATCH v1 0/2] stmmac: dwmac-meson8b: configurable RGMII TX delay

[Jerome Brunet]

On Thu, 2016-11-24 at 18:05 +0100, Martin Blumenstingl wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 4:56 PM, Jerome Brunet <jbrunet at baylibre.com>
> wrote:
> > 
> > On Thu, 2016-11-24 at 15:34 +0100, Martin Blumenstingl wrote:
> > > 
> > > Currently the dwmac-meson8b stmmac glue driver uses a hardcoded
> > > 1/4
> > > cycle TX clock delay. This seems to work fine for many boards
> > > (for
> > > example Odroid-C2 or Amlogic's reference boards) but there are
> > > some
> > > others where TX traffic is simply broken.
> > > There are probably multiple reasons why it's working on some
> > > boards
> > > while it's broken on others:
> > > - some of Amlogic's reference boards are using a Micrel PHY
> > > - hardware circuit design
> > > - maybe more...
> > > 
> > > This raises a question though:
> > > Which device is supposed to enable the TX delay when both MAC and
> > > PHY
> > > support it? And should we implement it for each PHY / MAC
> > > separately
> > > or should we think about a more generic solution (currently it's
> > > not
> > > possible to disable the TX delay generated by the RTL8211F PHY
> > > via
> > > devicetree when using phy-mode "rgmii")?
> > 
> > Actually you can skip the part which activate the Tx-delay on the
> > phy
> > by setting "phy-mode = "rgmii-id" instead of "rgmii"
> > 
> > phy->interface will no longer be PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII
> > but PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII_ID.
> unfortunately this is not true for RTL8211F (I did my previous tests
> with the same expectation in mind)!
> the code seems to suggest that TX-delay is disabled whenever mode !=
> PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII.
> BUT: on my device RTL8211F_TX_DELAY is set even before
> "phy_write(phydev, 0x11, reg);"!

Thx a lot for pointing this out. I wrongly assumed that is was off by
default. It turns out it is ON on the OdroidC2 as well.

So I re-did all my test:
On the OdroidC2, as long as eee is not disabled (using ethtool or
through my patch) I can't get iperf to work properly. Disabling EEE,
the link works for the following configurations:

PHY TX Delay bit set : MAC delay 0ns, 2ns.
PHY TX Delay bit cleared : MAC delay 2ns, 4ns.

This seems to confirm that the PHY adds a 2ns delay when the bit is
set.

I could not test on my MXQPRO2.1 ... the PHY is no longer found during
the boot. Something died overnight :( 

> 
> Based on what I found it seems that rgmii-id, rgmii-txid and
> rgmii-rxid are supposed to be handled by the PHY.
> That would mean that we have two problems here:
> 1) drivers/net/phy/realtek.c:rtl8211f_config_init should check for
> PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII_ID or PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII_TXID and
> enable the TX-delay in that case - otherwise explicitly disable it
> 2) dwmac-meson8b.c should only use the configured TX-delay for
> PHY_INTERFACE_MODE_RGMII
> @Florian: could you please share your thoughts on this (who handles
> the TX delay in which case)?
> 
> 
> Regards,
> Martin