Re: Specifing rate control algorithm?

[Andy Green <andy@warmcat.com>]

Jeff Garzik wrote:
> Andy Green wrote:
>> Sexy-sounding "hw offloading" is a very different thing to migrating off
>> open code and putting it in vendor-specific closed source firmware.  The
>> firmware is just code like any other, for an embedded ARM7 or similar,
>> except that it is customized for a specific vendor hardware
>> implementation and you will never see the sources.  What I understand is
>> being talked about (maybe unlike the scan stuff this actually is in
>> hardware, but I doubt it) is ignoring code in the stack and instead
>> implementing pretty much the same code privately, to compile to a binary
>> blob you can't see source for or even reverse according to its license.
>>  That is a lot less romantic than mysterious hardware just waiting to be
>> used.
> 
> OTOH, this is all vague, paranoid hand-waving since I'm guessing you
> don't know the internals of the Intel hardware.

It's nice that you took the time to read and respond to my points in a
way that moved the debate on.  What is vague?  There definitely is
closed-source firmware for this product, you can download it yourself

http://intellinuxwireless.org/iwlwifi/downloads/iwlwifi-ucode-2.14.1.tgz

and read the license: and the code for it is produced as I describe
above. As for the specific case of the rate list, James knows if that is
firmware and I am sure he will tell us if it is genuine hardware support.

> We'll see what happens when Intel posts code to specify a different rate
> control algorithm.

What will you see?  You won't be seeing the firmware side of it except
in binary.

-Andy