[OpenWrt-Devel] [PATCH] kernel: ath10k-ct: provide a build variant for small RAM devices

[Christian Lamparter]

On Sunday, 15 December 2019 13:01:14 CET Paul Fertser wrote:
> Thank you for the answer Christian,
> 
> On Sun, Dec 15, 2019 at 12:00:48PM +0100, Christian Lamparter wrote:
> > I think for this to have any chance of moving forward you'll need to
> > pressure your ODMs and if that doesn't work: Go with a different WIFI
> > chip vendor that supports low memory devices, or add more RAM.
> > From what I can tell, Qualcomm nowadays gets what they want "for free"
> > and for the past four-five years, they certainly didn't feel pressured
> > to add "low memory" support to ath10k.
> 
> FWIW, OpenWrt's ath10k vendor is CT now, not QCA, so it's not much
> relevant what do ODMs and (whatever is left from) QCA say, I guess.
Well, not sure what you are trying to say here. But I think Ben is free
to do what he wants as well. For example see the:
"ath10k: add LED and GPIO controlling support for various chipsets"
patch that OpenWrt has been carrying because neither upstream (linux-wireless)
nor CT wants to integrate it.
<https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt/blob/master/package/kernel/ath10k-ct/patches/201-ath10k-4.16_add-LED-and-GPIO-controlling-support-for-various-chipsets.patch>

The situation with the "low memory" support wasn't much better. Because
from what I remember, there was a discussion about this very topic between
Ben an Hauke in the past (and you can see how it played out, since you wouldn't
have posted this series if it was integrated back then). 
But it seems that Ben had a change of heart in this regard. I don't know the
details or why, But it makes sense because it would enable his company to save
some money for the systems his company sells:
 <https://www.candelatech.com/lf_systems.php> so there is some value
in supporting these devices, especially if someone else does all the work 
for it.

> It would be kind of weird to force OpenWrt users of certain devices to
> downgrade to upstream ath10k (or to abandon hardware that is working
> fine for them with previous OpenWrt release) just because Atheros no
> longer exist and Qualcomm can't care less about free software
> community, don't you think so?
This is something like "another" 32/4 situation, right? Well, can you tell
me what was the result of that?

> I'll try to find the mailing list posts you're talking about to help
> Ben decide if he is still OK with those patches getting used on
> low-RAM devices in OpenWrt or not.
Well, if you look at ath10k-ct (<https://github.com/greearb/ath10k-ct>),
you see that Ben takes upstream ath10k, adds his patches and pulls upstream
fixes. So if you are willing to work for it anyways, you might as well go
with upstream Linux-wireless and see what they want. After all the QSDK has
the "Low Memory" mode.

Cheers,
Christian



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