Hello,
As a week-end project I got the BCM4330 chip to work with the mainline
Linux kernel on the MIPS CI20 board. One of the problems I was facing
was the firmware crashing, resulting in timeout errors in the brcmfmac
driver.
It turns out the bcm4330-sdio.bin firmware that's currently in
linux-firmware is not the latest one. Running "strings" on the blob
points out to a version 5.90.125.104 dated 2011-10-25. The firmware
that originally came on the CI20 is version 5.90.195.26 dated
2012-05-09, and the version found in Android [1] is 5.90.195.114 dated
2013-01-23. Only the last two will work on the CI20 board.
My question then, could we bump the firmware available in
linux-firmware to the latest version? Or is there a valid reason why an
older firmware is kept in the tree?
Best regards,
-Paul Cercueil
[1]
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/hardware/broadcom/wlan/+/refs/heads/master/bcmdhd/firmware/bcm4330/fw_bcm4330_bg.bin
On 11/22/2022 12:06 AM, Paul Cercueil wrote:
> Hello,
>
> As a week-end project I got the BCM4330 chip to work with the mainline
> Linux kernel on the MIPS CI20 board. One of the problems I was facing
> was the firmware crashing, resulting in timeout errors in the brcmfmac
> driver.
>
> It turns out the bcm4330-sdio.bin firmware that's currently in
> linux-firmware is not the latest one. Running "strings" on the blob
> points out to a version 5.90.125.104 dated 2011-10-25. The firmware that
> originally came on the CI20 is version 5.90.195.26 dated 2012-05-09, and
> the version found in Android [1] is 5.90.195.114 dated 2013-01-23. Only
> the last two will work on the CI20 board.
>
> My question then, could we bump the firmware available in linux-firmware
> to the latest version? Or is there a valid reason why an older firmware
> is kept in the tree?
We "Broadcom" could. The linux-firmware repo provides all firmware that
linux distro can freely redistribute. The license info is listed in the
README in the repo as are the applicable firmware license documents. So
releasing the firmware to linux-firmware under the given license can
only be done by anyone owning it, not by people licensed to use it.
The bcm4330 chip was one of the first chips that brcmfmac supported and
Broadcom has EOL-ed that chip a long time ago hence no newer firmware
was considered for release to linux-firmware. In the past we often
re-released what was available in Android so we probably can do that
again for this and other chips.
Regards,
Arend
Hi Arend,
Le mar. 22 nov. 2022 ? 20:35:41 +0100, Arend van Spriel
<[email protected]> a ?crit :
> On 11/22/2022 12:06 AM, Paul Cercueil wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> As a week-end project I got the BCM4330 chip to work with the
>> mainline Linux kernel on the MIPS CI20 board. One of the problems I
>> was facing was the firmware crashing, resulting in timeout errors
>> in the brcmfmac driver.
>>
>> It turns out the bcm4330-sdio.bin firmware that's currently in
>> linux-firmware is not the latest one. Running "strings" on the blob
>> points out to a version 5.90.125.104 dated 2011-10-25. The firmware
>> that originally came on the CI20 is version 5.90.195.26 dated
>> 2012-05-09, and the version found in Android [1] is 5.90.195.114
>> dated 2013-01-23. Only the last two will work on the CI20 board.
>>
>> My question then, could we bump the firmware available in
>> linux-firmware to the latest version? Or is there a valid reason
>> why an older firmware is kept in the tree?
>
> We "Broadcom" could. The linux-firmware repo provides all firmware
> that linux distro can freely redistribute. The license info is listed
> in the README in the repo as are the applicable firmware license
> documents. So releasing the firmware to linux-firmware under the
> given license can only be done by anyone owning it, not by people
> licensed to use it.
I actually did not know this.
> The bcm4330 chip was one of the first chips that brcmfmac supported
> and Broadcom has EOL-ed that chip a long time ago hence no newer
> firmware was considered for release to linux-firmware. In the past we
> often re-released what was available in Android so we probably can do
> that again for this and other chips.
This would be great.
Cheers,
-Paul