[Prism54-users] Re: [Prism54-devel] Prism54 development update

[Rainer Weikusat]

Jean-Baptiste Note <jean-baptiste.note at m4x.org> writes:
>> > Yes - don't waste this 30MHz ARM946E that every ISL38xx embeds.
>> > Moreover, now that GCC can compile a firmware, it won't be more complicated to 
>> > implement something in firmware than it is in the host, as far as no 
>> > proprietary hardware acceleration is involved (ie. RC4/AES).
>> 
>> The ieee80211 stack in host will receive much more testing, I would prefer
>> a very simple and robust firmware. It should be no problem to develop both,
>> as the simple would likely be a subset of the featurefull.
>
> We could even do more (and i'd like this to show in the code -- stay
> tuned !). From what i can see, there's no reason at all to even run code
> on the ARM. ei, it is certainly possible to control the whole radio
> thing entirely from the host !

Eh ... are you aware of the fact that a Linux-driver that allows
control of a radio fully from the host will likely be illegal just
about everywhere? 

[...]

> This may not be the right thing to do in the long term,

This depends. If you are hardware vendor looking to increase your
margins, you want Win-modems, GDI-printers and 'SoftMAC' 802.11,
because the hardware becomes cheaper to produce if you offload
functionality to the host CPU. I am using this device (fullmac) in an
embedded setting and I do not want to not use this 30 Mhz CPU because
my host CPU has only 200 Mhz and should run application code and not
hardware emulation code.