On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 05:33:44PM -0400, Vivien Didelot wrote: > Hi, > > Here's a proposal for a new design of DSA. It is meant to discuss the > actual state and future implementation of the D (for distributed) in > DSA, which consists of supporting several interconnected switch chips, > exposed to the user as one big switch unit. > > There's still a lot of work to finish in DSA before running into > cross-chip operations, but it'll help to start thinking about it now.
Hi Vivien One thing we should keep in mind. Very few switch chips actually support D in DSA. In fact, at the moment, i don't know of any other than Marvell. The Broadcom SF2 does not. The Microchip LAN935X don't. The Micrel KS8995 does not. Do any of the switches supported by OpenWRT via swconfig? We should try to limit adding complexity to the DSA core and the API to the drivers which the majority of drivers will never need. I would make use of the layering we already have. For the Marvell devices, add a cross chip layer between the Marvell drivers and the DSA core. And even then, we might want to keep this layer optional for Marvell devices. There are only a few niche boards with multiple switch chips. There are many more WiFi access points and cable modems, etc, with just a single switch. Andrew
