Jeff Garzik wrote: > Andy Green wrote: >> Sexy-sounding "hw offloading" is a very different thing to migrating off >> open code and putting it in vendor-specific closed source firmware. The >> firmware is just code like any other, for an embedded ARM7 or similar, >> except that it is customized for a specific vendor hardware >> implementation and you will never see the sources. What I understand is >> being talked about (maybe unlike the scan stuff this actually is in >> hardware, but I doubt it) is ignoring code in the stack and instead >> implementing pretty much the same code privately, to compile to a binary >> blob you can't see source for or even reverse according to its license. >> That is a lot less romantic than mysterious hardware just waiting to be >> used. > > OTOH, this is all vague, paranoid hand-waving since I'm guessing you > don't know the internals of the Intel hardware. It's nice that you took the time to read and respond to my points in a way that moved the debate on. What is vague? There definitely is closed-source firmware for this product, you can download it yourself http://intellinuxwireless.org/iwlwifi/downloads/iwlwifi-ucode-2.14.1.tgz and read the license: and the code for it is produced as I describe above. As for the specific case of the rate list, James knows if that is firmware and I am sure he will tell us if it is genuine hardware support. > We'll see what happens when Intel posts code to specify a different rate > control algorithm. What will you see? You won't be seeing the firmware side of it except in binary. -Andy - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
