controller. The controller is also known as L1E(AR8121) and
L2E(AR8113/AR8114). Unlike its predecessor Attansic L1,
AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 uses completely different Rx logic such that
it requires separate driver. Datasheet for AR81xx is not available
to open source driver writers but it shares large part of Tx and
PHY logic of L1. I still don't understand some part of register
meaning and some MAC statistics counters but the driver seems to
have no critical issues for performance and stability.
The AR81xx requires copy operation to pass received frames to upper
stack such that ale(4) consumes a lot of CPU cycles than that of
other controller. A couple of silicon bugs also adds more CPU
cycles to address the known hardware bug. However, if you have fast
CPU you can still saturate the link.
Currently ale(4) supports the following hardware features.
- MSI.
- TCP Segmentation offload.
- Hardware VLAN tag insertion/stripping with checksum offload.
- Tx TCP/UDP checksum offload and Rx IP/TCP/UDP checksum offload.
- Tx/Rx interrupt moderation.
- Hardware statistics counters.
- Jumbo frame.
- WOL.
AR81xx PCIe ethernet controllers are mainly found on ASUS EeePC or
P5Q series of ASUS motherboards. Special thanks to Jeremy Chadwick
who sent the hardware to me. Without his donation writing a driver
for AR81xx would never have been possible. Big thanks to all people
who reported feedback or tested patches.
HW donated by: koitsu
Tested by: bsam, Joao Barros <joao.barros <> gmail DOT com >
Jan Henrik Sylvester <me <> janh DOT de >
Ivan Brawley < ivan <> brawley DOT id DOT au >,
CURRENT ML
current@ and stable@ for the locking patches. The driver can always be
revived if someone tests it.
This driver also sleeps in its if_init routine, so it likely doesn't really
work at all anyway in modern releases.
the serial console speed (i386 and amd64 only). If the previous
stage boot loader requested a serial console (RB_SERIAL or RB_MULTIPLE)
then the default speed is determined from the current serial port
speed. Otherwise it is set to 9600 or the value of BOOT_COMCONSOLE_SPEED
at compile time.
This makes it possible to set the serial port speed once in
/boot.config and the setting will propagate to boot2, loader and
the kernel serial console.
user to interrupt autoboot process at all. Currently, even when
`autoboot_delay' is set to 0, loader(8) still allows autoboot process to be
interrupted by pressing any key on the console when the loader reads kernel
and modules from the disk. In some cases (i.e. untrusted environment) such
behaviour is highly indesirable and user should not be allowed to interfere
with the autoboot process at all.
Sponsored by: PBXpress Inc.
MFC after: 3 days
