LWN: Comments on "Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation"

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

nye — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 13:20:21 +0000

>It's not really a PCI ADSL modem. It's an ADSL modem communicating through an ethernet port, all stuck on a PCI card.

So is the Sangoma card, if you want the ADSL2 version.

(Also the Sangoma card seems to have problems with port forwarding. After a while (minutes, hours, or days depending on connection rate) connections to that port will just stop being forwarded until it's restarted. Since it isn't really a modem, you have very little choice but to use it as if it were a standalone router, since it doesn't have a half-bridge mode, or indeed any sensible bridging facility unless you're in a part of the world in which PPPoE bridging is an option. IE: the US. It also means you can't make bonded ADSL connections with two of them. Not that I'm bitter.)

Atheros is not that OS-friendly

dion — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 14:22:56 +0000

While Atheros does play nice with some of the wifi-only chips it makes, there is a whole heap of nice, but undocumented chips in its catalog.

Specifically Atheros makes highly integrated SoCs with built in CPU, wifi and switch that are completely impossible to use without signing an NDA and buying several thousand units.

There are many products that use Atheros chips where the manufacturer has signed NDAs with Atheros that forbids them from properly documenting the products, thus rendering the product useless from an OS point of view.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

xanni — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:44:09 +0000

Their old "Pulsar" ADSL1 product is a real DSL modem on a PCI card, and it looks like the Solos multi-port card is as well: "Open Source Linux ATM driver"

http://www.traverse.com.au/productview.php?product_id=116

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

xav — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 12:07:03 +0000

It's not really a PCI ADSL modem. It's an ADSL modem communicating through an ethernet port, all stuck on a PCI card.
I don't see the use of this.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

xanni — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 06:35:16 +0000

There are also the Traverse Technologies products:
http://www.traverse.com.au/productview.php

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

rahvin — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 18:05:20 +0000

It was my understanding that the binary blob was just the typical little chunk of uploadable firmware they all use.

Although the drivers aren't in the mainline they have great support and make sure it builds against everything. The only pain I had was upgrading the kernel alters the symbols of course and their software won't load the driver until you run their little utility to recompile it against the kernel. Everything was automated including building and installing the object. They also include all the software necessary including handshaking and obtaining an IP which negates the need for the PPPd daemon.

I liked their stuff, particularly their extensive Linux support to the point of being the primary focus of their business as most of their business is VOIP and asterisk is a big deal to them. AFAIK they are the only internal ADSL and ADSL2 card you can buy with Linux drivers (in kernel or not).

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

pabs — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 18:50:12 +0000

Yeah, as a user of AR6001 (with embedded buggy beta firmware) I've been pestering Atheros about their AR600X firmware for a long time. Surely ath5k, ath9k have embedded firmware too?

Thats very interesting about the Broadcom microcode, got a link to the assembler/disassembler?

Sadly I can only agree about incentives :(

It would be nice if at least EOLed hardware got documentation or source code dumps.

I wonder what happened to that old effort to make free firmware for the Prism54 devices.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

shemminger — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 01:45:39 +0000

That is not correct.
The Sangoma ADSL driver has binary only parts. The code for the rest of the other hardware is GPL. The developer didn't want to maintain it in mainline kernel and it was removed a couple of years ago.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

rahvin — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:42:12 +0000

I'd suggest you buy from Sangoma, Full Linux drivers and good software to run them.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

daniel — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 20:44:25 +0000

"There is also a possibility that Atheros's attitude will spread to Qualcomm"

One can hope but it is more traditional for acquirer to have its way with acquiree, which more often than not involves a triumph of darkness over light. See Oracle vs Sun.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

mb — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 16:29:05 +0000

> Since then, the driver has been integrated into the latest Linux kernel release 2.6.37

Hm, my definition of "integrating" is another than "dumping it into the staging section".
The integration process is still going on and by no means finished.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

clump — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:57:20 +0000

Well said.

[Off Topic] about PR S/N ratio

rfunk — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:01:17 +0000

Doesn't surprise me in the least. Page-long press releases have contained about four lines of actual information for as long as I can remember.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

johill — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 14:13:51 +0000

Well, that's only one (ar9170) of Atheros's two (or more, if you count older ones) USB chips, the others are still closed. Their PCI-E chips (ath5k, ath9k) do not use firmware, and their SDIO chip (ath6k) doesn't have open firmware.

The Broadcom firmware is pretty boring though, it's really just a bit of a state machine to handle timings etc. I know this because we've almost completely reverse engineered the instruction set: http://bcm-v4.sipsolutions.net/802.11/Microcode (it may be slightly different in the latest devices).

I don't expect Broadcom to open up their firmware for various reasons -- for one I believe they added some sort of regulatory helper code to it. It's also a highly customized processor (see above link), so they must have a proprietary toolchain etc. Michael has an open assembler/disassembler, but who knows how their code is written -- it will certainly not be compatible with those tools.

Finally, I don't believe there's any market reason to open it. Yes, the ar9170 firmware release spawned an open source replacement that adds features -- but frankly, that didn't buy Atheros anything but wows from a few people in the community -- the chip is already EOLed afaik. And since there's no guarantee for anything like that, realistically there's little incentive for a company to spend effort on it since all the features they can/want to sell must be developed in house anyway.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

robert_s — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:50:29 +0000

Going slightly off topic,

I'm very impressed by Atheros's recent attitude towards the Free software community. However, with the recent purchase of Atheros by Qualcomm, I have to worry whether Qualcomm's slightly less enlightened culture will spread back to Atheros.

Optimistically there is also a possibility that Atheros's attitude will spread to Qualcomm. There ought to be a good few well respected execs in Atheros's ranks now that can testify there's nothing to fear from openness.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

sxpert — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:13:54 +0000

ok.
I want open drivers for the DSL chips !

[Off Topic] about PR S/N ratio

xav — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:39:56 +0000

It's astonishing how, by following the "Full Story" link and reading the entire press release, you learn nothing more than when reading the 4 lines summary.
I thank LWN for giving me only the ... let's say "news for nerds, stuff that matters" :)

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

pabs — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 08:28:44 +0000

I wonder about the firmware for these things. Atheros already released GPL firmware source code for one of their chips, will Broadcom be next?

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ar9170.fw

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

drag — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 07:17:34 +0000

Yep. Used to be if it was wireless and it was labelled 'broadcom' the best thing to do with it for Linux was to toss it into the bin.

The unfortunate part was that these were among the most popular wireless devices on the planet for consumers which helped contribute massively to Linux being incompatible with many people's laptops.

This is terrific progress and shows how things can be worked out.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

bojan — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 06:52:30 +0000

Better late than never. The driver will get chemo from Linux developers and all will be well. A very big category of devices now works out of the box (e.g. a lot of Dell laptops), which is good news for sure.

Broadcom joins the Linux Foundation

csamuel — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 06:09:30 +0000

Broadcom:

# In September, Broadcom® announced it had open sourced
# its drivers for selected Wi-Fi chipsets, a pivotal move
# that garnered applause throughout the Linux community.

vs.

http://lwn.net/Articles/405375/

# Nevertheless, everyone I know that has reviewed the
# newly released driver code is being treated for eye
# cancer.

Ain't PR great! :-)