600-page documentation about the BCM5718 Family: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:broadcom.com+5718+programmer%27s+reference+gu...
Quote: "This document covers the BCM5718 family of NetXtreme / NetLink Ethernet controllers. This family of controllers includes the following devices: • BCM5717 • BCM5718 • BCM5719 • BCM5720 The document focuses on the registers, control blocks, and software interfaces necessary for host software programming."
Look like fantastic documentation. Is there no such thing as the EFF starting a fundraiser/crowdfunding campaign, then hiring appropriate firmware engineers and coming with with an open-source fw? In a perfect world yes.
On Mon, Sep 11, 2017 at 12:30 PM, Timothy Pearson < tpearson@raptorengineering.com> wrote:
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On 09/08/2017 10:38 PM, Taiidan@gmx.com wrote:
Also want to add why broadcom? I heard they didn't have a good attitude to open source and as a large company I imagine they have a lot of institutional inertia preventing that from changing? - why not one of the smaller NIC makers such as atheros, mellanox, solarflare etc?
Cost was the main driver for this design. Our focus was on getting the product to market at a reasonable price point, and Broadcom's NetXtreme series already has excellent Linux driver support, meaning that we didn't need to invest additional resources into driver development. Depending on what the uptake of Talos II is (and therefore how much "nice to have" development we can justify vs. simply keeping a functional, RYF-certifiable product on the market) we may consider changes to the NIC supplier in the future.
As to why not Intel, in addition to the obvious issues in relation to sourcing a critical system component from a direct competitor, we have experienced issues with Intel GbE NICs in the past under Linux related to the on-chip firmware locking up and requiring a host reboot. The NetXtreme devices appear to be quite stable, and their internal operation has already been partially documented, meaning development of a true open firmware port is at least possible. The same cannot be said for the other players in this space.
Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/
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