Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC net-next] net: stmmac: provide flag to disable EEE

From: Ovidiu Panait <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2026 20:54:52 +0200

Hi Russell,

On 11/24/25 1:27 PM, Russell King (Oracle) wrote:
> Some platforms have problems when EEE is enabled, and thus need a way
> to disable stmmac EEE support. Add a flag before the other LPI related
> flags which tells stmmac to avoid populating the phylink LPI
> capabilities, which causes phylink to call phy_disable_eee() for any
> PHY that is attached to the affected phylink instance.
> 
> iMX8MP is an example - the lpi_intr_o signal is wired to an OR gate
> along with the main dwmac interrupts. Since lpi_intr_o is synchronous
> to the receive clock domain, and takes four clock cycles to clear, this
> leads to interrupt storms as the interrupt remains asserted for some
> time after the LPI control and status register is read.
> 
> This problem becomes worse when the receive clock from the PHY stops
> when the receive path enters LPI state - which means that lpi_intr_o
> can not deassert until the clock restarts. Since the LPI state of the
> receive path depends on the link partner, this is out of our control.
> We could disable RX clock stop at the PHY, but that doesn't get around
> the slow-to-deassert lpi_intr_o mentioned in the above paragraph.
> 
> Previously, iMX8MP worked around this by disabling gigabit EEE, but
> this is insufficient - the problem is also visible at 100M speeds,
> where the receive clock is slower.
> 
> There is extensive discussion and investigation in the thread linked
> below, the result of which is summarised in this commit message.
> 

We are seeing the same lpi_intr_o interrupt storm on the Renesas RZ/V2H
EVK (dwmac-renesas-gbeth.c). On this platform, lpi_intr_o is routed as a
separate, dedicated interrupt line to the CPU rather than being OR'd
with the main DWMAC interrupt as on iMX8MP. This corresponds to the
"eth_lpi" interrupt in the stmmac bindings:
"""
- description: The interrupt that occurs when Rx exits the LPI state
const: eth_lpi
"""

Looking through the other glue drivers/device-trees, it looks to me that
every platform that defines a separate "eth_lpi" irq might have the
interrupt storm problem.

To fix this issue on these platforms, rather than disabling EEE
altogether, would it be possible to just not request the eth_lpi
interrupt and let EEE continue to work? Perhaps a new flag could let
each platform decide.

If not, maybe this patch could be merged to add the flag that disables
EEE and I will just send a patch to disable EEE on our platforms as well.

Thanks,
Ovidiu

> Reported-by: Laurent Pinchart <[email-masked]>
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/[email-masked]
> Signed-off-by: Russell King (Oracle) <[email-masked]>
> ---
> For Laurent to add to a patch series appropriately adding
> STMMAC_FLAG_EEE_DISABLE to dwmac-imx.c
> 
>  drivers/net/ethernet/stmicro/stmmac/stmmac_main.c | 7 ++++++-
>  include/linux/stmmac.h                            | 9 +++++----
>  2 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/drivers/net/ethernet/stmicro/stmmac/stmmac_main.c b/drivers/net/ethernet/stmicro/stmmac/stmmac_main.c
> index 6cacedb2c9b3..ca0eee58a8a8 100644
> --- a/drivers/net/ethernet/stmicro/stmmac/stmmac_main.c
> +++ b/drivers/net/ethernet/stmicro/stmmac/stmmac_main.c
> @@ -1324,7 +1324,12 @@ static int stmmac_phylink_setup(struct stmmac_priv *priv)
>  				 config->supported_interfaces,
>  				 pcs->supported_interfaces);
>  
> -	if (priv->dma_cap.eee) {
> +	/* Some platforms, e.g. iMX8MP, wire lpi_intr_o to the same interrupt
> +	 * used for stmmac's main interrupts, which leads to interrupt storms.
> +	 * STMMAC_FLAG_EEE_DISABLE allows EEE to be disabled on such platforms.
> +	 */
> +	if (priv->dma_cap.eee &&
> +	    !(priv->plat->flags & STMMAC_FLAG_EEE_DISABLE)) {
>  		/* Assume all supported interfaces also support LPI */
>  		memcpy(config->lpi_interfaces, config->supported_interfaces,
>  		       sizeof(config->lpi_interfaces));
> diff --git a/include/linux/stmmac.h b/include/linux/stmmac.h
> index f1054b9c2d8a..5ed49d5363ee 100644
> --- a/include/linux/stmmac.h
> +++ b/include/linux/stmmac.h
> @@ -187,10 +187,11 @@ enum dwmac_core_type {
>  #define STMMAC_FLAG_MULTI_MSI_EN		BIT(7)
>  #define STMMAC_FLAG_EXT_SNAPSHOT_EN		BIT(8)
>  #define STMMAC_FLAG_INT_SNAPSHOT_EN		BIT(9)
> -#define STMMAC_FLAG_RX_CLK_RUNS_IN_LPI		BIT(10)
> -#define STMMAC_FLAG_EN_TX_LPI_CLOCKGATING	BIT(11)
> -#define STMMAC_FLAG_EN_TX_LPI_CLK_PHY_CAP	BIT(12)
> -#define STMMAC_FLAG_HWTSTAMP_CORRECT_LATENCY	BIT(13)
> +#define STMMAC_FLAG_EEE_DISABLE			BIT(10)
> +#define STMMAC_FLAG_RX_CLK_RUNS_IN_LPI		BIT(11)
> +#define STMMAC_FLAG_EN_TX_LPI_CLOCKGATING	BIT(12)
> +#define STMMAC_FLAG_EN_TX_LPI_CLK_PHY_CAP	BIT(13)
> +#define STMMAC_FLAG_HWTSTAMP_CORRECT_LATENCY	BIT(14)
>  
>  struct mac_device_info;
>