Microsemi's "Switchtec" line of PCI switch devices is already well
supported by the kernel with standard PCI switch drivers. However, the
Switchtec device advertises a special management endpoint with a separate
PCI function address and class code. This endpoint enables some additional
functionality which includes:
* Packet and Byte Counters
* Switch Firmware Upgrades
* Event and Error logs
* Querying port link status
* Custom user firmware commands
Add a switchtec kernel module which provides PCI driver that exposes a char
device. The char device provides userspace access to this interface
through read, write and (optionally) poll calls.
A userspace tool and library which utilizes this interface is available
at [1]. This tool takes inspiration (and borrows some code) from
nvme-cli [2]. The tool is largely complete at this time but additional
features may be added in the future.