ath10k / WCN3990: firmware-5.bin and wlanmdsp.mbn being out of sync

[Dmitry Baryshkov]

On Mon, 4 Dec 2023 at 14:56, Kalle Valo <kvalo at kernel.org> wrote:
>
> Hi Dmitry,
>
> Dmitry Baryshkov <dmitry.baryshkov at linaro.org> writes:
>
> > I wanted to ask your opinion regarding one of the issues we stumbled
> > upon on the Qualcomm RB1 and RB2 platforms. These platforms use ath10k
> > snoc (WCN3990) WiFi "card". We noticed the following messages being
> > spawned on the console, which I traced it to the
> > ATH10K_FW_FEATURE_SINGLE_CHAN_INFO_PER_CHANNEL feature:
> >
> > ath10k_snoc c800000.wifi: chan info: invalid frequency 0 (idx 41 out of bounds)
> >
> > As a reminder, on this platform the wlan firmware and firmware-N.bin
> > files come separately.
> > The wlanmdsp.mbn is downloaded by the onboard modem DSP via the
> > tqftpserv request (which is served from the board-specific folder
> > qcom/qcm2210). The firmware-N.bin file is loaded by the WiFi driver
> > itself from the generic folder, ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0. Current
> > firmware-5.bin file was provided with the sdm845's wlanmdsp.mbn, which
> > is older than qcm2210/qrb4210's wlanmdsp.mbn.
> >
> > I'm looking for suggestions on how to make ath10k driver load
> > firmware-N.bin file which corresponds to the board-specific
> > wlanmdsp.mbn.
>
> We have had similar discussions in the past but it didn't go very far.
> It would be so nice if you could finally fix this :) At one point we
> even had a discussion that we might need something similar for ath11k
> but it didn't go anywhere.
>
> > In particular I'd like to hear your opinion on the following proposal:
> >
> > Add the  optional property to the board DT, that specifies:
> > firmware-name = "path/to/wlanmdsp.mbn".  The property, if present,
> > will be used as an override for the firmware directory. So, while the
> > ath10k driver will not load wlanmdsp.mbn on its own, it will still
> > look for the firmware-N files in the specified directory.
>
> Back in the day I was thinking something like below, please let me know
> what you think.
>
> So the normal firmware path for WCN3990 is:
>
> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/
>
> My idea was that if we could extend it for different "platforms" (not
> sure what's the proper term for this) by having platform specific
> directories:
>
> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-platform/
>
> (Replace "platform" with a unique name for the platform, for example
> "acme-kv7" for a product from Acme with model name kv7.)
>
> Then DT could inform ath10k about this "platform" string and ath10k
> would then download boath firmware-N.bin and board-2.bin from the
> platform specific directory.
>
> And even cleaner if we could have the *.mbn firmware files in the same
> directory, even if ath10k doesn't access them directly.

We can, and a symlink from qcom/SoC/.../dir to that subdir.

So, for example, for Pixel-3, using your schema we will have:

ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn
ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-blueline/firmware-5.bin
ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-blueline/board-2.bin

qcom/sdm845/Google/blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn ->
../../../../ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn

This sounds mostly fine to me. My only suggestions is to change it as following:

ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/board-2.bin

ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn
ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/blueline/firmware-5.bin
ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/blueline/board-2.bin

qcom/sdm845/Google/blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn ->
../../../../ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn

-- 
With best wishes
Dmitry