Re: Module support for Broadcom ethernet

[James Kosin <jkosin beta intcomgrp com>]

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Geoffrey Leach wrote:

| I notice that the module that supports the Broadcom 5700 chip is
| tg3.ko, rather than bcm/bcm5700.ko, which is what you get when you
| build from the standard kernel sources (i.e., not rpm source).
|
| Anyone know the reason for this?
|
The reason is that the driver is a generic tg3 chip driver.  Most
Ethernet and other drivers use known chip-sets to drive the hardware.
If you look carefully inside, you may see a chip on the board that
lists TG3 on the chip.

The reason for not having it be bcm5700.ko is you would end up with a
lot of modules with bcm5700.ko, bcm5702.ko, bcm5800.ko, etc.  That may
be identical in every way.  With a module named tg3.ko you can use the
same driver for many products that use the TG3 chip-set.

James Kosin

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