Hello,

this series adds support for WiFi to the samsung,coreprimevelte
smartphone (and can be straightforwardly reused for the other known
Marvell PXA1908-based smartphones).

The series is currently not intended for application as indicated in the
subject prefix as the firmware necessary for the operation of the chip is not
available in linux-firmware.

Instead, my intentions are to publish the recent developments regarding
the chip support (see the third patch of the series) and offer them for
others to use and if possible get some feedback on them and also
hopefully to spark some conversation with NXP regarding getting the FW
into linux-firmware which would allow this series to be mainlined.

Regarding the firmware I have been in contact with Jeff Chen of NXP some
time ago who promised to ask about it internally – I am thus now gently
reminding Jeff of the matter. I will also appreciate input from anyone
else who may help with upstreaming whichever version of the firmware.

The trouble of upstreaming the FW is mostly a legal one (although an up
to date version of it would also be very welcome) as it is available as
part of the stock Android of the devices with this chip and can thus be
used on individual basis, it cannot however be submitted to
linux-firmware by myself for instance as the license is not known
(although probably is the same as for the other blobs in the mrvl
directory) and as the submission would require a sign-off from someone
involved with NXP.

The third patch in this series fixes a serious issue with the WiFi
observed on the phone (see the relevant commit message). The form is
however not directly usptreamable and it is not clear to me how to best
make it be since it involves changing a data type which probably cannot
be easily be special-cased for the new chip and would likely break the
other chips the mwifiex driver supports if applied as is. I will thus
welcome suggestions on this, although I'm also hopeful that a possible
reasonably up to date FW would not require this workaround at all.

The series is based on the pxa1908-dt-for-6.19 tag of Duje's tree [1] as
it contains the necessary SDIO description in the phone's device tree.

I have not applied the trailers sent in response to v1 as it has been
some time and as this is not expected to be applied anyway.

[1] https://gitlab.com/pxa1908-mainline/linux/-/commits/pxa1908-dt-for-6.19

Cc: Jeff Chen <jeff.chen_1@nxp.com>
Cc: Peng Fan <peng.fan@nxp.com>

v2:
- Rebase to Duje's tag.
- Add a new patch fixing observed firmware crashes.
- Link to v1: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20231029111807.19261-1-balejk@matfyz.cz/

Karel Balej (4):
  dt-bindings: mwifiex: document use with the SD8777 chipset
  net: mwifiex: add support for the SD8777 chipset
  DONOTMERGE: net: mwifiex: fix timeouts with the SD8777 chip
  arm64: dts: samsung,coreprimevelte: add wifi node

 .../bindings/net/wireless/marvell,sd8787.yaml |  1 +
 .../mmp/pxa1908-samsung-coreprimevelte.dts    | 15 +++++++++++++
 drivers/net/wireless/marvell/mwifiex/fw.h     |  4 +---
 drivers/net/wireless/marvell/mwifiex/sdio.c   | 21 +++++++++++++++++++
 drivers/net/wireless/marvell/mwifiex/sdio.h   |  1 +
 drivers/net/wireless/marvell/mwifiex/sta_tx.c | 10 ++-------
 include/linux/mmc/sdio_ids.h                  |  1 +
 7 files changed, 42 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)

-- 
2.51.1

Hello,

Karel Balej, 2025-10-26T19:20:37+01:00:
> this series adds support for WiFi to the samsung,coreprimevelte
> smartphone (and can be straightforwardly reused for the other known
> Marvell PXA1908-based smartphones).
>
> The series is currently not intended for application as indicated in the
> subject prefix as the firmware necessary for the operation of the chip is not
> available in linux-firmware.
>
> Instead, my intentions are to publish the recent developments regarding
> the chip support (see the third patch of the series) and offer them for
> others to use and if possible get some feedback on them and also
> hopefully to spark some conversation with NXP regarding getting the FW
> into linux-firmware which would allow this series to be mainlined.
>
> Regarding the firmware I have been in contact with Jeff Chen of NXP some
> time ago who promised to ask about it internally – I am thus now gently
> reminding Jeff of the matter. I will also appreciate input from anyone
> else who may help with upstreaming whichever version of the firmware.
>
> The trouble of upstreaming the FW is mostly a legal one (although an up
> to date version of it would also be very welcome) as it is available as
> part of the stock Android of the devices with this chip and can thus be
> used on individual basis, it cannot however be submitted to
> linux-firmware by myself for instance as the license is not known
> (although probably is the same as for the other blobs in the mrvl
> directory) and as the submission would require a sign-off from someone
> involved with NXP.
>
> The third patch in this series fixes a serious issue with the WiFi
> observed on the phone (see the relevant commit message). The form is
> however not directly usptreamable and it is not clear to me how to best
> make it be since it involves changing a data type which probably cannot
> be easily be special-cased for the new chip and would likely break the
> other chips the mwifiex driver supports if applied as is. I will thus
> welcome suggestions on this, although I'm also hopeful that a possible
> reasonably up to date FW would not require this workaround at all.
>
> The series is based on the pxa1908-dt-for-6.19 tag of Duje's tree [1] as
> it contains the necessary SDIO description in the phone's device tree.
>
> I have not applied the trailers sent in response to v1 as it has been
> some time and as this is not expected to be applied anyway.
>
> [1] https://gitlab.com/pxa1908-mainline/linux/-/commits/pxa1908-dt-for-6.19

could I please get some feedback on this?

Mainly I'm wondering whether there is some way I could get this in (the
basic support, without the hack in the third patch) without the firmware
as I have unfortunately not been successful in my communication with NXP
yet. 

To reiterate, the firmware is generally available but is not part of
linux-firmware and the entire process of upstreaming the chipset support
is stuck on that.

Thank you, best regards,
K. B.

Hello Karel,

On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 04:29:12PM +0100, Karel Balej wrote:
> To reiterate, the firmware is generally available but is not part of
> linux-firmware and the entire process of upstreaming the chipset support is
> stuck on that.

I'll try to see if any of my contact in NXP Wi-Fi group is able to help. Give
me a few days.

Francesco

Hello, Francesco,

Francesco Dolcini, 2025-11-28T18:05:37+01:00:
> On Thu, Nov 27, 2025 at 04:29:12PM +0100, Karel Balej wrote:
>> To reiterate, the firmware is generally available but is not part of
>> linux-firmware and the entire process of upstreaming the chipset support is
>> stuck on that.
>
> I'll try to see if any of my contact in NXP Wi-Fi group is able to help. Give
> me a few days.

that's great, thank you very much!

I have received a reply from Jeff in the meantime who has discussed the
matter with his managers and unfortunately, they are not interested in
supporting this chip as it's considered outdated and would pose
maintainance burden.

Jeff however thinks that you as their customer may perhaps have more
luck when talking to them.

I am also still trying to find out whether upstreaming the old firmware
version (available as part of the stock Android) would be an acceptable
compromise for them - I never really intended for this to be supported
officially and I wasn't too hopeful about getting an up to date version
of the firmware either (although it would be very useful as it would
likely solve the issue I'm hacking around in the third patch of this
series), I mainly just want to upstream the support for the chipset as
far as possible.

Please let me know when you have some news.

Thanks again and best regards,
K. B.