I've been looking into this for the last few days and it turns out the
issue is definitely caused by PCI link power management: Using the
CONFIG_PCIEASPM_DEBUG config option of the kernel I was able to track
the issue down to the PCI ASPM L1.2 power saving state (set link_state
of the parent PCI bridge to 15 or 111 to enable everything except L1.2
[1]).

Not sure how to continue at this point, since PCIe ASPM is implemented
in hardware and debugging would require special equipment, I really hope
someone at Marvell steps up and has a look into this. It might also be
possible that L1.2 is disabled on Windows, but I haven't found tools to
read the L1 substates from the PCI configuration on Windows yet.

Another interesting fact is that the random command timeouts I'm looking
into here only seem to happen on some Surface devices using the 8897
chip via PCI, that is the Pro 4, Pro 2017, the Pro 6, Laptop 2 (see
comments in [2]), but not on the Surface Book 2 (according to owners of
the device). There are also multiple reports of the same issue on
completely different devices to be found on the internet ([3], [4]), but
those never got any attention by Marvell developers.

[1] https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/pci/pcie/aspm.c#L28
[2] https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surface/issues/163
[3] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-wireless/msg159776.html
[4] https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-wireless/msg175943.html

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1730924

Title:
  Wifi does down "crash" in Surface Pro 4

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/linux/+bug/1730924/+subscriptions

-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs

Reply via email to