netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next v3 2/2] net: maxlinear: Add support for MxL LGM SoC

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Message-ID: <e4423dd3-79f0-4c5a-a14e-cb62cc6dce18@lunn.ch>
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2025 14:20:05 +0200
From: Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>
To: Jack Ping Chng <jchng@...linear.com>
Cc: "netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>,
	"devicetree@...r.kernel.org" <devicetree@...r.kernel.org>,
	"davem@...emloft.net" <davem@...emloft.net>,
	"andrew+netdev@...n.ch" <andrew+netdev@...n.ch>,
	"edumazet@...gle.com" <edumazet@...gle.com>,
	"kuba@...nel.org" <kuba@...nel.org>,
	"pabeni@...hat.com" <pabeni@...hat.com>,
	"robh@...nel.org" <robh@...nel.org>,
	"krzk+dt@...nel.org" <krzk+dt@...nel.org>,
	"conor+dt@...nel.org" <conor+dt@...nel.org>,
	Yi xin Zhu <yzhu@...linear.com>,
	Suresh Nagaraj <sureshnagaraj@...linear.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next v3 2/2] net: maxlinear: Add support for MxL LGM
 SoC

> To clarify, this driver does not implement any switch functionality.

So you have all this nice hardware to accelerate L2, L3, etc, but you
are not going to use it? Linux will always ignore it and do it all in
software?

Somehow, i don't think this is true. At some point, you will want to
make use of that hardware. And Linux has very specific ways to do
that. You need to be looking forward to the time you start to use this
hardware, because if you get it wrong now, you will end up throwing
this driver away and starting again. I've seen it happen.

> Its purpose is limited to controlling individual MACs, without support
> for bridging, VLANs, or other switch-related features.
> All packet forwarding and routing will be handled entirely by the Linux
> networking stack.
> Also, we have separate Tx/Rx channels mapped to the interfaces we are
> registering. We also have a separate packet processor engine for
> bridging and routing based on the sessions.

So this sounds like a pure switchdev driver, although DSA could still
be used. So, look forward, spend some time looking at other drivers
which implement the swichdev API, look at the mediatek drivers which
do acceleration of NAT, and make sure your architecture is correct.

	Andrew