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
8fe107d730