Re: brcmsmac on BCM47XX SoCs

[Hauke Mehrtens <hauke@hauke-m.de>]

On 04/08/2012 09:54 PM, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
> 2012/4/8 Arend van Spriel <arend@broadcom.com>:
>> On 04/06/2012 11:43 PM, Hauke Mehrtens wrote:
>>> What are your plans to support phy_ht in brcmsmac, for now it is just
>>> supported by b43?
>>
>>
>> I have not been paying good attention to community feedback on b43 phy_ht
>> support. As b43 support bcm4331 with that phy we decided to stay clear from
>> that device. We are to add new phy code for new devices. Not sure if that
>> includes the phy_ht.
> 
> Whoops, that's extremely too bad. HT support is really wanted for a
> lot of routers. What we have in b43 is support coming from watching
> mmio ops only, there is no way for it to be complete. I believe you
> really should think and releasing HT PHY code, a lot of ppl will be
> interested in that.
> 
The TODO list for brcmsmac in the wireless wiki [0] says "Add support
for more chips, including (near term) BCM43227, BCM43228, and BCM4331."
The BCM4331 uses a HT-Phy, but b43 does not support 802.11n speed (the
chip supports up to 450MBit/s) and 5GHz wifi and I do not think b43 will
support these features in the near future, if it will ever support these
features.

I do not think it is a big problem if brcmsmac supports some chips b43
also supports as b43 misses some important features, for now some
devices IDs for devices supported by brcmsmac and b43 they are
deactivated in b43 by default so brcmsmac is used every time. I would
like to see brcmsmac supporting all wifi chips using bcma (ai bus).

Hauke

[0]:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211#Developer_information