Nutcracker Challenge: Blob-Free WiFi and BLE

Re:Nutcracker Challenge: Blob-Free WiFi and BLE by Reventlov on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @06:04AM (#24917060)

Not really worth it to be honest, as the BL602 is 2.4GHz only (it's aimed at IOT after all), and only b/g/n (no ac, let's not even talk about ax). I don't get why Pine64 would look at this, and not let's say mt76 based devices…

MT76 firmwares are pretty small (of the order of 100kB), while Intel Iwlwifi firmwares are like 1MB, and ath10k-ct is like 200kB big, so it means reversing MT76 firmware is probably a bit easier.

Oh, yeah, it's probably not RISCV so no hype.

Good luck to them anyway, more "open" firmware, the better.

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Re:Nutcracker Challenge: Blob-Free WiFi and BLE by Avamander on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @06:06AM (#24917071)

> I don't get why Pine64 would look at this, and not let's say mt76 based devices…

There isn't a blob-free WiFi/BLE IoT chipset. It would be appealing for many.

> Oh, yeah, it's probably not RISCV so no hype.

It is though?

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Re:Nutcracker Challenge: Blob-Free WiFi and BLE by pantalaimon on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @06:38AM (#24917241)

mt76 is an application processor (running Linux) whereas BL602 is a microcontroller (running the RTOS of your choice).

Entirely different categories in both electrical and compute power.

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Re:Nutcracker Challenge: Blob-Free WiFi and BLE by monocasa on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @05:54PM (#24924553)

There's a lot of mt76 chips. Some are application processors with MIPS cores, some are dedicated wireless chips with just a Cortex R4 and a Cortex M4.

Their marketing/product folk really aren't doing them any favors.

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Re:Nutcracker Challenge: Blob-Free WiFi and BLE by swiley on Wednesday October 28, 2020 @08:32AM (#24917941)

IMO 2.4GHz is fine, even in the crowded high rise I live in. If I really need high speed for something I just use Ethernet.

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