In the deep past, when this code compiled as a binary module, ath_hal
built as a module. This allowed custom, smaller HAL modules to be built.
This was especially beneficial for small embedded platforms where you
didn't require /everything/ just to run.
However, sometime around the HAL opening fanfare, the HAL landed here
as one big driver+HAL thing, and a lot of the (dirty) infrastructure
(ie, #ifdef AH_SUPPORT_XXX) to build specific subsets of the HAL went away.
This was retained in sys/conf/files as "ath_hal_XXX" but it wasn't
really floated up to the modules themselves.
I'm now in a position where for the reaaaaaly embedded boards (both the
really old and the last couple generation of QCA MIPS boards) having a
cut down HAL module and driver loaded at runtime is /actually/ beneficial.
This reduces the kernel size down by quite a bit. The MIPS modules look
like this:
adrian@gertrude:~/work/freebsd/head-embedded/src % ls -l ../root/mips_ap/boot/kernel.CARAMBOLA2/ath*ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 adrian adrian 5076 May 23 23:45 ../root/mips_ap/boot/kernel.CARAMBOLA2/ath_dfs.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 adrian adrian 100588 May 23 23:45 ../root/mips_ap/boot/kernel.CARAMBOLA2/ath_hal.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 adrian adrian 627324 May 23 23:45 ../root/mips_ap/boot/kernel.CARAMBOLA2/ath_hal_ar9300.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 adrian adrian 314588 May 23 23:45 ../root/mips_ap/boot/kernel.CARAMBOLA2/ath_main.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 adrian adrian 23472 May 23 23:45 ../root/mips_ap/boot/kernel.CARAMBOLA2/ath_rate.ko
And the x86 versions, like this:
root@gertrude:/home/adrian # ls -l /boot/kernel/ath*ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 36632 May 24 18:32 /boot/kernel/ath_dfs.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 134440 May 24 18:32 /boot/kernel/ath_hal.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 82320 May 24 18:32 /boot/kernel/ath_hal_ar5210.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 104976 May 24 18:32 /boot/kernel/ath_hal_ar5211.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 236144 May 24 18:32 /boot/kernel/ath_hal_ar5212.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 336104 May 24 18:32 /boot/kernel/ath_hal_ar5416.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 598336 May 24 18:32 /boot/kernel/ath_hal_ar9300.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 406144 May 24 18:32 /boot/kernel/ath_main.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 55352 May 24 18:32 /boot/kernel/ath_rate.ko
.. so you can see, not building the whole HAL can save quite a bit.
For example, if you don't need AR9300 support, you can actually avoid
wasting half a megabyte of RAM. On embedded routers this is quite a
big deal.
The AR9300 HAL can be later further shrunk because, hilariously,
it indeed supports AH_SUPPORT_<xxx> for optionally adding chipset support.
(I'll chase that down later as it's quite a big savings if you're only
building for a single embedded target.)
So:
* Create a very hackish way to load/unload HAL modules
* Create module metadata for each HAL subtype - ah_osdep_arXXXX.c
* Create module metadata for ath_rate and ath_dfs (bluetooth is
currently just built as part of it)
* .. yes, this means we could actually build multiple rate control
modules and pick one at load time, but I'd rather just glue this
into net80211's rate control code. Oh well, baby steps.
* Main driver is now "ath_main"
* Create an "if_ath" module that does what the ye olde one did -
load PCI glue, main driver, HAL and all child modules.
In this way, if you have "if_ath_load=YES" in /boot/modules.conf
it will load everything the old way and stuff should still work.
* For module autoloading purposes, I actually /did/ fix up
the name of the modules in if_ath_pci and if_ath_ahb.
If you want to selectively load things (eg on ye cheape ARM/MIPS platforms
where RAM is at a premium) you should:
* load ath_hal
* load the chip modules in question
* load ath_rate, ath_dfs
* load ath_main
* load if_ath_pci and/or if_ath_ahb depending upon your particular
bus bind type - this is where probe/attach is done.
TODO:
* AR5312 module and associated pieces - yes, we have the SoC side support
now so the wifi support would be good to "round things out";
* Just nuke AH_SUPPORT_AR5416 for now and always bloat the packet
structures; this'll simplify other things.
* Should add a simple refcnt thing to the HAL RF/chip modules so you
can't unload them whilst you're using them.
* Manpage updates, UPDATING if appropriate, etc.
This is the initial framework to call into the MCI HAL routines and drive
the basic state engine.
The MCI bluetooth coex model uses a command channel between wlan and
bluetooth, rather than a 2-wire or 3-wire signaling protocol to control things.
This means the wlan and bluetooth chip exchange a lot more information and
signaling, even at the per-packet level. The NICs in question can share
the input LNA and output PA on the die, so they absolutely can't stomp
on each other in a silly fashion. It also allows for the bluetooth side
to signal when profiles come and go, so the driver can take appropriate
control. There's also the possibility of dynamic bluetooth/wlan duty cycle
control which I haven't yet really played with.
It configures things up with a static "wlan wins everything" coexistence,
configures up the available 2GHz channel map for bluetooth, sets a static
duty cycle for bluetooth/wifi traffic priority and drives the basics needed to
keep the MCI HAL code happy.
It doesn't do any actual coexistence except to default to "wlan wins everything",
which at least demonstrates that things do indeed work. Bluetooth inquiry frames
still trump wifi (including beacons), so that demonstrates things really do
indeed seem to work.
Tested:
* AR9462 (WB222), STA mode + bt
* QCA9565 (WB335), STA mode + bt
TODO:
* .. the rest of coexistence. yes, bluetooth, not people. That stuff's hard.
* It doesn't do the initial BT side calibration, which requires a WLAN chip
reset. I'll fix up the reset path a bit more first before I enable that.
* The 1-ant and 2-ant configuration bits aren't being set correctly in
if_ath_btcoex.c - I'll dig into that and fix it in a subsequent commit.
* It's not enabled by default for WB222/WB225 even though I believe it now
can be - I'll chase that up in a subsequent commit.
Obtained from: Qualcomm Atheros, Linux ath9k
This should be a big no-op pass; and reduces the size of if_ath.c.
I'm hopefully soon going to take a whack at the USB support for ath(4)
and this'll require some reuse of the busdma memory code.
CWARNFALGS.$file centrally so we don't have to have it in all the
places. Remove a few warning flags that are no longer needed.
Also, always use -Wno-unknown-pragma to (hopefully temporarily) work
around #pragma ident in debug.h in the opensolaris code. Remove some
stale warning suppression that's no longer necessary.
The AR9485 chip and AR933x SoC both implement LNA diversity.
There are a few extra things that need to happen before this can be
flipped on for those chips (mostly to do with setting up the different
bias values and LNA1/LNA2 RSSI differences) but the first stage is
putting this code into the driver layer so it can be reused.
This has the added benefit of making it easier to expose configuration
options and diagnostic information via the ioctl API. That's not yet
being done but it sure would be nice to do so.
Tested:
* AR9285, with LNA diversity enabled
* AR9285, with LNA diversity disabled in EEPROM
for the WB195 combo NIC - an AR9285 w/ an AR3011 USB bluetooth NIC.
The AR3011 is wired up using a 3-wire coexistence scheme to the AR9285.
The code in if_ath_btcoex.c sets up the initial hardware mapping
and coexistence configuration. There's nothing special about it -
it's static; it doesn't try to configure bluetooth / MAC traffic priorities
or try to figure out what's actually going on. It's enough to stop basic
bluetooth traffic from causing traffic stalls and diassociation from
the wireless network.
To use this code, you must have the above NIC. No, it won't work
for the AR9287+AR3012, nor the AR9485, AR9462 or AR955x combo cards.
Then you set a kernel hint before boot or before kldload, where 'X'
is the unit number of your AR9285 NIC:
# kenv hint.ath.X.btcoex_profile=wb195
This will then appear in your boot messages:
[100482] athX: Enabling WB195 BTCOEX
This code is going to evolve pretty quickly (well, depending upon my
spare time) so don't assume the btcoex API is going to stay stable.
In order to use the bluetooth side, you must also load in firmware using
ath3kfw and the binary firmware file (ath3k-1.fw in my case.)
Tested:
* AR9280, no interference
* WB195 - AR9285 + AR3011 combo; STA mode; basic bluetooth inquiries
were enough to cause traffic stalls and disassociations. This has
stopped with the btcoex profile code.
TODO:
* Importantly - the AR9285 needs ASPM disabled if bluetooth coexistence
is enabled. No, I don't know why. It's likely some kind of bug to do
with the AR3011 sending bluetooth coexistence signals whilst the device
is asleep. Since we don't actually sleep the MAC just yet, it shouldn't
be a problem. That said, to be totally correct:
+ ASPM should be disabled - upon attach and wakeup
+ The PCIe powersave HAL code should never be called
Look at what the ath9k driver does for inspiration.
* Add WB197 (AR9287+AR3012) support
* Add support for the AR9485, which is another combo like the AR9285
* The later NICs have a different signaling mechanism between the MAC
and the bluetooth device; I haven't even begun to experiment with
making that HAL code work. But it should be a lot more automatic.
* The hardware can do much more interesting traffic weighting with
bluetooth and wifi traffic. None of this is currently used.
Ideally someone would code up something to watch the bluetooth traffic
GPIO (via an interrupt) and then watch it go high/low; then figure out
what the bluetooth traffic is and adjust things appropriately.
* If I get the time I may add in some code to at least track this stuff
and expose statistics. But it's up to someone else to experiment with
the bluetooth coexistence support and add the interesting stuff (like
"real" detection of bulk, audio, etc bluetooth traffic patterns and
change wifi parameters appropriately - eg, maximum aggregate length,
transmit power, using quiet time to control TX duty cycle, etc.)
* Introduce TX DMA setup/teardown methods, mirroring what's done in
the RX path.
Although the TX DMA descriptor is setup via ath_desc_alloc() /
ath_desc_free(), there TX status descriptor ring will be allocated
in this path.
* Remove some of the TX EDMA capability probing from the RX path and
push it into the new TX EDMA path.
There's some TX path TDMA code in if_ath_tx.c which should be migrated
out, but first I should likely try and verify/fix/repair the TDMA support
in 9.x and -HEAD.
opt_ah.h file if KERNBUILDDIR isn't defined.
For now, AH_SUPPORT_AR5416 is required, so I'll just fix any
configuration file in /usr/src which is missing this option.
Pointy hat when things do break to: adrian
results in the HAL being built without HAL debugging/diagnostic support,
the module building process needs to be somehow taught to not build AR5416+
NICs if AH_SUPPORT_AR5416 isn't defined in opt_ah.h .
This implies that users who are building the driver do so with
KERNBUILDDIR set to the compile/CONFIG directory so the various
opt_* sources can be pulled in.
This is in no way a complete DFS/radar detection implementation!
It merely creates an abstracted interface which allows for future
development of the DFS radar detection code.
Note: Net80211 already handles the bulk of the DFS machinery,
all we need to do here is figure out that a radar event has occured
and inform it as such. It then drives the DFS state engine for us.
The "null" DFS radar detection module is included by default;
it doesn't require a device line.
This commit:
* Adds a simple abstracted layer for radar detection state -
sys/dev/ath/ath_dfs/;
* Implements a null DFS module which doesn't do anything;
(ie, implements the exact behaviour at the moment);
* Adds hooks to the ath driver to process received radar events
and gives the DFS module a chance to determine whether
a radar has been detected.
Obtained from: Atheros
The AR9130 is an AR9160/AR5416 family WMAC which is glued directly
to the AR913x SoC peripheral bus (APB) rather than via a PCI/PCIe
bridge.
The specifics:
* A new build option is required to use the AR9130 - AH_SUPPORT_AR9130.
This is needed due to the different location the RTC registers live
with this chip; hopefully this will be undone in the future.
This does currently mean that enabling this option will break non-AR9130
builds, so don't enable it unless you're specifically building an image
for the AR913x SoC.
* Add the new probe, attach, EEPROM and PLL methods specific to Howl.
* Add a work-around to ah_eeprom_v14.c which disables some of the checks
for endian-ness and magic in the EEPROM image if an eepromdata block
is provided. This'll be fixed at a later stage by porting the ath9k
probe code and making sure it doesn't break in other setups (which
my previous attempt at this did.)
* Sprinkle Howl modifications throughput the interrupt path - it doesn't
implement the SYNC interrupt registers, so ignore those.
* Sprinkle Howl chip powerup/down throughout the reset path; the RTC methods
were
* Sprinkle some other Howl workarounds in the reset path.
* Hard-code an alternative setup for the AR_CFG register for Howl, that
sets up things suitable for Big-Endian MIPS (which is the only platform
this chip is glued to.)
This has been tested on the AR913x based TP-Link WR-1043nd mode, in
legacy, HT/20 and HT/40 modes.
Caveats:
* 2ghz has only been tested. I've not seen any 5ghz radios glued to this
chipset so I can't test it.
* AR5416_INTERRUPT_MITIGATION is not supported on the AR9130. At least,
it isn't implemented in ath9k. Please don't enable this.
* This hasn't been tested in MBSS mode or in RX/TX block-aggregation mode.
Introduce the AHB glue for Atheros embedded systems. Right now it's
hard-coded for the AR9130 chip whose support isn't yet in this HAL;
it'll be added in a subsequent commit.
Kernel configuration files now need both 'ath' and 'ath_pci' devices; both
modules need to be loaded for the ath device to work.
Linux ath9k.
The ath9k ar9002_hw_init_cal() isn't entirely clear about what
is supposed to be called for what chipsets, so I'm ignoring the
rest of it and just porting the AR9285 init cal path as-is and
leaving the rest alone. Subsequent commits may also tidy up the
Merlin (AR9285) and other chipset support.
Obtained from: Linux ath9k
generally tidy up the TX power programming code.
Enforce that the TX power offset for Merlin is -5 dBm, rather than
any other value programmable in the EEPROM. This requires some
further code to be ported over from ath9k, so until that is done
and tested, fail to attach NICs whose TX power offset isn't -5
dBm.
This improves both legacy and HT transmission on my merlin board.
It allows for stable MCS TX up to MCS15.
Specifics:
* Refactor out a bunch of the TX power calibration code -
setting/obtaining the power detector / gain boundaries,
programming the PDADC
* Take the -5 dBm TX power offset into account on Merlin -
"0" in the per-rate TX power register means -5 dBm, not
0 dBm
* When doing OLC
* Enforce min (0) and max (AR5416_MAX_RATE_POWER) when fiddling
with the TX power, to avoid the TX power values from wrapping
when low.
* Implement the 1 dBm cck power offset when doing OLC
* Implement temperature compensation for 2.4ghz mode when doing OLC
* Implement an AR9280 specific TX power calibration routine which
includes the OLC twiddles, leaving the earlier chipset path
(AR5416, AR9160) alone
Whilst here, use these refactored routines for the AR9285 TX power
calibration/programming code and enforce correct overflow/underflow
handling when fiddling with TX power values.
Obtained from: linux ath9k
The AR5416 and later TX descriptors have new fields for supporting
11n bits (eg 20/40mhz mode, short/long GI) and enabling/disabling
RTS/CTS protection per rate.
These functions will be responsible for initialising the TX descriptors
for the AR5416 and later chips for both HT and legacy frames.
Beacon frames will remain using the non-11n TX descriptor setup for now;
Linux ath9k does much the same.
Note that these functions aren't yet used anywhere; a few more framework
changes are needed before all of the right rate information is available
for TX.
There's two reasons for this:
* the raw and non-raw TX path shares a lot of duplicate code which should be
refactored;
* the 11n-ready chip TX path needs a little reworking.
sys/dev/ath/ath_hal/ar5416/ is getting very crowded and further
commits will make it even more crowded. Now is a good time to
shuffle these files out before any more extensive work is done
on them.
Create an ar9003 directory whilst I'm here; ar9003 specific
chipset code will eventually live there.
