Ath10k Candela Technologies CT 10.2.4 Firmware
The CT 10.2 firmware is a modified version of the
official firmware from Qualcom-Atheros
based on the 10.2.4.97 release.
It should support all features available in the upstream 10.2.4.97 firmware as well as additional
features.
To use this firwmare, download one of the firmware images and rename it firmware-5.bin.
The command below should work on most systems:
cp firmware-5-ct-full-community.bin /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA988X/hw2.0/firmware-5.bin
Get the board.bin file from the official firmware site.
Then, reboot or reload the ath10k_pci driver to start using the new firmware.
Look in the kernel logs (or dmesg) to make sure the firmware version contains '-ct',
such as: 10.2.4.97-1-ct-swc-D-001-b0f9b0
For more advanced configuration options, see the 10.4 advanced config section.
The fwcfg file logic works for at least 10.1, 10.2 and 10.4 CT firmware.
There are two types of CT firmware: The community version supports all features EXCEPT
connecting multipe vifs to the same AP when using encryption. The community version may
be used for any purpose allowed by the official firmware from Qualcom-Atheros, including
commercial applications.
firmware-5-ct-full-community.bin (latest).
The non-commercial firmware from Candela Technologies does support multiple station vifs
connecting to a single AP (really, it supports rx-software-crypt, which is the enabling feature).
The non-commercial firmware is NOT freely available. It is
restricted to non-commerical use unless you arrange a commercial-use license with
Candela Technologies. Contact sales@candelatech.com for additional information on this topic.
firmware-5-ct-non-commercial.bin (latest).
Any and all bug reports involving this firmware (and the modified kernels from
Candela Technologies) should be sent to support@candelatech.com. Qualcom-Atheros
is not responsible for the changes made to the modified firmware and should not
be bothered with bug reports relating to it. Reports of success are welcome as well!
To submit a useful bug report, please include kernel logs, especially any firmware
crash logs. These crash logs are often chunks of ascii hex. Candela has tools that
can usually decode these, but due to NDA issues, these tools may not be shared with
the general public. Candela engineers will attempt to decode any reported crashes
and provide help as possible. Note that unless you have a contract with Candela that
provides otherwise, any help with bugs may be slow or even not much actual help at all.
Please also report the kernel version and any other details about how the problem was
triggered.
Candela offers paid support options, please contact sales@candelatech.com if you have interest.
See the bottom of this page for some common crash signatures.
CT 10.2 Firmware Differences from Official QCA Firmware
The ath10k 10.2 firmware from Candela is based on the 10.2.4.97 firmware from QCA,
but has quite a few added features and fixes (and probably a few added bugs).
Some notable differences are listed below.
Most of these require the kernel modifications in the 4.4 Candela Linux kernel,
but the firmware images should work on un-modified kernels for the standard features.
- Supports rx-software-crypt (non-commercial version only, unless you
purchase commercial license.).
This enables having multiple station VIFs
connect to the same AP. Decrypt is done on CPU, so it is relatively slow,
especially on slower CPUs.
- Optimized tx-credits handling. Host driver can configure maximum tx-credits
and firmware will return credits immediately so less flush-mgmt hacks
are needed on host.
- Support IBSS (ADHOC) mode.
- Supports reporting tx-rate to the sending stack.
- Optimized firmware memory usage to be more stable in strange configurations.
- Supports configuring the firmware tx-buffer count below 1024 (diet variants only, since
they compile out the descriptor-management code that likes to assert when too few
tx-descriptors are configured.)
- Support sending RAW frames, but only non-encrypted frames are currently
supported. Also requires out-of-tree patch.
- Lots of bug fixes and hardening related to memory usage issues.
- Fix 802.11r (fast roaming) in station mode.
Un-tested and likely to not yet work.
- Supports up to 64 station VIFS.
Known CT 10.2 Firmware/Kernel Bugs
- Not enough testing to know at this point.
To take advantage of all of the CT firmware features, please consider using one
of these kernels. These kernels are rebased fairly often to keep all CT patches
at the top of the git changelog. 4.4 is currently the suggested kernel.
## Full Candela Technologies patch set
git clone https://github.com/greearb/linux-ct-4.4.git
The CT firmware has a separate release number appended to the end of the version string.
Most (about 450) of the patches from CT 10.1 firmware have now been ported to 10.2, so
the initial release has a huge number of changes. Future releases will be smaller in scope.
- Ath10k CT 10.2 Beta (-3)
- No changes from Release 1 yet.
See BETA release notes for details.
- firmware-5-ct-full-community.bin
- No CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
available for commercial and non-commercial use at no charge.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial.bin
- No CT-HTT-MGT feature, swbmiss, beacon filtering, roaming code, descriptor-mgt compiled out,
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-full.bin
- No CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
These htt-mgt firmwares require a driver patch. See release notes.
- firmware-5-ct-full-htt-mgt-community.bin
- Has CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
available for commercial and non-commercial use at no charge.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-htt-mgt.bin
- Has CT-HTT-MGT feature, swbmiss, beacon filtering, roaming code, descriptor-mgt compiled out,
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-full-htt-mgt.bin
- Has CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
- Ath10k CT 10.2 Release 2
- Fix double-alloc bug introduced in release 1.
- Enable SAFE-BURST and CCA feature flags. Seems 10.2.4.97 supports
this, so add feature flag in the firmware blob to advertise the fact.
- Add 'no-beacon-miss-ct' feature flag for 'diet' builds. This lets the host know that
beacon-miss is not enabled so it can let mac80211 handle the beacon miss.
- When a user used a scan request that needed more than 5 buffers (many ssids, for instance)
the scan logic ran out of local mgt buffers and then just failed to
send more frames. Instead, use it's (now fixed) delay-time logic
to wait a bit and send the rest of the frames 5ms or so later.
- The firmware tries to cache rate-ctrl objects in the host (driver) memory. But,
with lots of active stations, this appears to cause constant cache swapping and
in the end, rate-ctrl fails to work well at all.
CT Firmware has lots of RAM savings, especially when using fewer than 64 vdevs,
so allow users to configure more than the default (currently 32) of in-ram
rate-ctrl objects. As long as firmware RAM is available, allocating as many
rate-ctrl objects as possible (up to number of peers) is probably a good idea.
This setting should be harmless in all CT firmware, but it will only have an
effect in release-2 firmware and later. Setting value to 0 means use firmware
defaults.
This requires a kernel patch to enable the feature,
(search for ath10k_modparam_target_num_rate_ctrl_objs_ct in CT kernels)
- Fix crash due to running out of stateless TID objects in
a test with 128 stations: Allocate more stateless TIDS, and
drop frames for which we do not have TIDs instead of indirectly causing
an assert.
See Release notes for details.
- firmware-5-ct-full-community-2.bin
- No CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
available for commercial and non-commercial use at no charge.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-2.bin
- No CT-HTT-MGT feature, swbmiss, beacon filtering, roaming code, descriptor-mgt compiled out,
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-full-2.bin
- No CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
These htt-mgt firmwares require a driver patch. See release notes.
- firmware-5-ct-full-htt-mgt-community-2.bin
- Has CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
available for commercial and non-commercial use at no charge.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-htt-mgt-2.bin
- Has CT-HTT-MGT feature, swbmiss, beacon filtering, roaming code, descriptor-mgt compiled out,
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-full-htt-mgt-2.bin
- Has CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
- Ath10k CT 10.2 Release 1
- Disable congestion bins in firmware.
- Support CT HTT-MGT feature (upstream has it's own HTT-MGT implementation as well).
- Fix 802.11r.
- Allow fine-grained control over rate-ctrl ratesets, including ability to set management,
broadcast, and multicast rates independently of the main ratesets.
- Allow configuring CCA limits (upstream has it's own CCA configuration support as well.)
- Fix some issues with sending off-channel frames at the wrong encoding rates.
- Support IBSS (ADHOC) mode.
- Report tx-rate info.
- Fix some crashes in Station mode (station mode tested and works)
- Allow skipping channel-reservation when starting vdev. Helps when bringing up
secondary vdevs where you know you are already on the proper channel.
- Improve RAM, IRAM usages. Users can use CT ath10k driver modifications to tune
vdevs, peers, tx-descriptors, etc to make best use of resources for their use case.
- The diet variants compile out: swbmiss, beacon filtering, roaming code, and descriptor-mgt (VoW)
logic to save IRAM and RAM resources.
- Add improved flush API to flush all frames for a particular vdev (or all vdevs).
See Release notes for details.
- firmware-5-ct-full-community-1.bin
- No CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
available for commercial and non-commercial use at no charge.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-1.bin
- No CT-HTT-MGT feature, swbmiss, beacon filtering, roaming code, descriptor-mgt compiled out,
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-full-1.bin
- No CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
These htt-mgt firmwares require a driver patch. See release notes.
- firmware-5-ct-full-htt-mgt-community-1.bin
- Has CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
available for commercial and non-commercial use at no charge.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-htt-mgt-1.bin
- Has CT-HTT-MGT feature, swbmiss, beacon filtering, roaming code, descriptor-mgt compiled out,
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
- firmware-5-ct-non-commercial-full-htt-mgt-1.bin
- Has CT-HTT-MGT feature, no upstream features compiled out (no diet),
supports rx-sw-crypt (commercial use not allowed unless you have a license from Candela Technologies.
CT 10.2 Firmware Crash Signatures
None known at this time.
