On Feb 26, 2010, at 9:23 AM, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 08:08:31AM -0800, Galen wrote: >> I'm trying to determine the differences in features of the various Atheros >> chipsets supported by ath9k. Please note, I have only chosen dual band parts >> with at least 2 spatial stream support, as the single band parts are >> generally subsets of the dual band parts and the <2 spatial stream parts are >> generally extremely value-oriented (or power oriented.) >> >> Gen 1 - AR5008: >> AR5416+AR5122 - 2x2 dual band, PCI >> AR5416+AR5133 - 3x3 dual band, PCI >> AR5418+AR5133 - 3x3 dual band, PCIe >> >> Gen 2 - AR9001: >> AR9160+AR9104 - 2x2 dual band, PCI >> AR9160+AR9106 - 3x3 dual band, PCI >> >> Gen 3 - AR9002: >> AR9220 - 2x2, dual band, PCI >> AR9280 - 2x2, dual band, PCIe >> >> Did I miss any 2x2 or better 802.11n radios? > > Yeah our AR9287 is 2x2 single band IIRC. > There is also our USB 2x2 AR9170 but that uses > a Zydas MAC and Atheros Radio. But hey the firmware > is available as GPL and driver is upstream. > > There is another USB 2x2 with Atheros MAC and Atheros > Radio but not yet sure of the chipset name and if it > ships. Think it might somewhere. > >> Questions: >> >> 1) What differences exist between the AR5133 and AR9106? > > Beats me. > >> If the AR9106 offers 3x3 with superior performance to the AR5008, why >> didn't they ever offer any kind of PCIe option? > > Not sure, but the answer to these sort of questions is usually demand. > >> 2) What is the advantage of the AR9002 family over the AR9001 >> family? Obviously, the AR9002 is a single chip solution, likely >> reducing cost, power and size. >> >> But is there any improvement to radio functionality or other features? > > Having a single chip itself yields a lot more benefits than that. > Since things are closer together it also means less complexity on > overall programming. You can tell where things got easier by looking > at AR_SREV_9280_10_OR_LATER(ah) checks on the hardware code, I had > documented some of this on phy.c. > > Apart from that you also get radio and baseband enhancements, > fixes, tunings, etc, the usual life of generation changes of > chipsets for 802.11. I can't get into specifics as that would > imply giving away the actual list of differences on each of > the blocks, but to be honest I only look at that stuff when > needed and that doesn't happen that often. I'm sure marketing > would have glanced over that and put together docs about this > with what is to be shared publicly. > > If you have more questions you should work with our sales or > marketing teams. > >> Note, I am interested in 802.11n features supported, quality of >> implementation, relative effective sensitivity, pretty much >> everything on the radio / DSP / layer 1 angle of things. I am >> curious as I want to be able to make the most appropriate >> hardware choices, and frankly, testing these chipsets to try >> and figure this out isn't the best way to do this based on >> my experiences thus far... > > I recommend the single chip families, and specificaly AR9280 > is a great candidate as its dual band and uses PCI-E. From a > software perspective Atheros dedicates more of its own resources > for testing our newer chipsets, the newer gernation 802.11n > chipsets. The AR9001 didn't get formal testing but the AR9002 > did. Now its AR9002, in the near future it will be AR9003 and > so on.
I think that AR9003 will really do a lot to unify things, as we will finally see 3x3 and a lot of new features and will put this whole discussion to rest! I can't wait for that day... > > And that's the way the cookie crumbles. > > Luis _______________________________________________ ath9k-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ath9k.org/mailman/listinfo/ath9k-devel
