[U-Boot-Users] IXP425 ethernet & NPE microcode

[Stefan Roese]

On Thursday 10 May 2007, Øyvind Repvik wrote:
> > And furthermore, it would be very desireable to drop the current NPE
> > U-Boot ethernet driver implementation based on the original Intel code
> > with the complex and ugly Intel access library completely, and
> > re-implement the driver based on the new Linux IXP4xx NPE ethernet
> > drivers. There are currently 2 completely new drivers without the Intel
> > access library which will result in lower memory footprint and much less
> > and cleaner code.
>
> That would be Christian Hohnstaedt <chohnstaedt at innominate.com>'s driver
> which is (afaik) in mainstream by now, and 
> Krzysztof Halasa <khc at pm.waw.pl>'s driver, which is newer. There's a
> discussion about these drivers on linux-arm-kernel.

Yes, but IIRC the one from Christian never made it into mainstream. And the 
new one from Krzysztof seems to get quite good reactions.

> Getting either of those drivers fixed up and pushed to u-boot would be
> great.

Yes, both would be way better than the current implementation. Hopefully one 
of those drivers will make in into mainline and this should be the one to 
pick then.

> Of course, one will still need to put the microcode somewhere else 
> due to licencing, but that's a minor matter.

Yes, just a minor issue from the code point of view, but a big issue from the 
licensing point of view.

Best regards,
Stefan

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