Re: Merging SSB and HND/AI support

[Jonas Gorski <jonas.gorski@gmail.com>]

On 17 January 2011 11:56, Michael Büsch <mb@bu3sch.de> wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-01-17 at 11:46 +0100, Jonas Gorski wrote:
>> a) Merge the HND/AI code into the current SSB code, or
>>
>> b) add the missing code for SoCs to brcm80211 and replace the SSB code with 
>> it.
>
> Why can't we keep those two platforms separated?
> Is there really a lot of shared code between SSB and HND/AI?

Yes, as far as I understand the AI bus behaves mostly like a SSB bus
except for places like enabling/disabling cores. E.g. the AI bus also
has a common core, which has a bit for telling whether its a SSB or AI
bus, and has the mostly the same registers as the SSB common cores (so
most driver_chipcommon_* stuff also applies for the AI bus).

> It's true that there's currently a lot of device functionality built
> into ssb. Like pci bridge, mips core, extif, etc...
> If you take all that code out, you're probably not left with anything.

That's because most shared code isn't in brcm80211, but only found in
the SDKs for the SoCs.

> So why do we need to replace or merge SSB in the first place? Can't
> it co-exist with HND/AI?

It probably can, but then the SSB code must be at least made AI aware
so it doesn't try to attach itself if it finds one. Also I don't know
if it is a good idea to let arch-specific code depend on code in
staging.

Jonas