Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 01:01:21AM CET, and...@lunn.ch wrote: >On Wed, Jan 20, 2021 at 03:41:58PM -0800, Jakub Kicinski wrote: >> On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 14:56:46 +0100 Andrew Lunn wrote: >> > > No, the FW does not know. The ASIC is not physically able to get the >> > > linecard type. Yes, it is odd, I agree. The linecard type is known to >> > > the driver which operates on i2c. This driver takes care of power >> > > management of the linecard, among other tasks. >> > >> > So what does activated actually mean for your hardware? It seems to >> > mean something like: Some random card has been plugged in, we have no >> > idea what, but it has power, and we have enabled the MACs as >> > provisioned, which if you are lucky might match the hardware? >> > >> > The foundations of this feature seems dubious. >> >> But Jiri also says "The linecard type is known to the driver which >> operates on i2c." which sounds like there is some i2c driver (in user >> space?) which talks to the card and _does_ have the info? Maybe I'm >> misreading it. What's the i2c driver? > >Hi Jakub > >A complete guess, but i think it will be the BMC, not the ASIC. There >have been patches from Mellanox in the past for a BMC, i think sent to >arm-soc, for the ASPEED devices often used as BMCs. And the BMC is >often the device doing power management. So what might be missing is >an interface between the driver and the BMC. But that then makes the >driver system specific. A OEM who buys ASICs and makes their own board >could have their own BMC running there own BMC firmware. > >All speculation...
Basically all correct. The thing is mlxsw and the i2c driver cannot talk to each other: 1) It would be ugly 2) They may likely be on a different host > > Andrew
