Summary

Developing a driver for the Zarlink Ethernet Switch(ZL50408)

Functonalities required:

1. read/write switch configuration registers

2. send /receive control command frames - for statistics collection, MAC address learning, aging etc.

3. send/ receive Ethernet data frames

Hardware Interface:

16 bit CPU interface connected to the local bus of Host Processor

Design

* Operations 1 & 2 exported using a char interfaces. say /dev/zlctrl.

Userspace applications can make use of ioctls for configuration register access and

read/write system calls to send/receive control frames.

* Operation 3 exported using network driver interface. say eth1

References

http://agata.pd.infn.it/LLP_Carrier/New_ATCA_Carrier_web/Appnotes_And_Reference_Designs/Zarlink_Application_Notes/ZLAN_026_AppNote_Jun06.pdf

-- LinuCherian - 18 Jan 2009