[PATCH 2.6] Intersil Prism54 wireless driver

[Jim Thompson]

On Mar 11, 2004, at 12:31 AM, Pavel Roskin wrote:

> On Thu, 11 Mar 2004, vda wrote:
>
>> On Thursday 11 March 2004 06:11, Jim Thompson wrote:
>>> madwifi already put a generic 802.11 stack in linux.
>>
>> It's not in Linus tree, and will have hard time merging due to
>> binary-only part.
>>
>> Actually from technical perspective I like Atheros hardware. Since it
>> uses *x86* binary part, not ARM/whatever, I conclude it allows host 
>> CPU
>> more control over inner workings of the card. Interesting ;)
>
> The important difference is that "ARM/whatever" is firmware that works 
> on
> the card, while the "x86 binary part" is linked into the driver and 
> runs
> as part of the kernel.

I'm sorry, I just don't follow this.

> This makes it impossible to compile madwifi for non-Intel 
> architectures,
> including ARM, PowerPC and AMD64.  This is a major drawback, 
> especially if
> you consider embedded applications.

Its just 'C' code.