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wifi: iwlwifi: add iwlmld sub-driver
iwlwifi is the driver of all Intel wifi devices since 2008. Since then, the hardware has changed a lot, but the firmware API has changed even more. The need to keep one driver that supports all those different APIs led us to introduce a new architecture circa 2012 which allowed us to keep the same interface to the hardware (DMAs, Tx queues, etc...) with a new layer to implement the mid-layer between mac80211 and the firmware. The first component is called the 'transport' and the latter is called 'operation_mode' a.k.a op_mode. In 2013 we took advantage of the new architecture to introduce iwlmvm which allowed us to implement the, then, new firmware API. This op_mode supports 7260 and up, those devices supports support at least VHT. Since then, wifi evolved and so did the firmware. It became much bigger and took a lot of functionality from the driver. It became increasingly hard to keep the same op_mode for the newest devices and we experienced frequent regressions on older devices. In order to avoid those regressions and keep the code maintainable, we decided it was about time to start a new op_mode. iwlmld is a new op_mode that supports BE200 or newer if the firmware being used is 97.ucode or newer. If the user has an older devices or BE200 with .96.ucode, iwlmvm will be loaded. Of course, this op_mode selection is seamless. All the features supported in iwlmvm are supported in iwlmld besides a few seldom used use cases: injection and Hotspot 2.0. Those are under work. A few points about the implementation: * iwlmld doesn't have any mutexes, it relies on the wiphy_lock * iwlmld is more "resource oriented": stations, links and interfaces are allocated and freed only after all the relevant flows are completed. * Firmware notifications' sizes are validated in a more structured way. We would love to see this new op_mode merged in 6.15. The firmware for this new driver (.97.ucode) is not yet publicly available but it'll be sent very soon. People eager to get an early version of this firmware can contact Emmanuel at: emmanuel.grumbach@intel.com I've listed the people who directly contributed code, but many others from various teams have contributed in other ways. Co-developed-by:Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com> Signed-off-by:
Avraham Stern <avraham.stern@intel.com> Signed-off-by:
Daniel Gabay <daniel.gabay@intel.com> Signed-off-by:
Emmanuel Grumbach <emmanuel.grumbach@intel.com> Signed-off-by:
Anjaneyulu <pagadala.yesu.anjaneyulu@intel.com> Signed-off-by:
Yedidya Benshimol <yedidya.ben.shimol@intel.com> Signed-off-by:
Benjamin Berg <benjamin.berg@intel.com> Signed-off-by:
Shaul Triebitz <shaul.triebitz@intel.com> Signed-off-by:
Miri Korenblit <miriam.rachel.korenblit@intel.com> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-wireless/20250216094321.537988-1-miriam.rachel.korenblit@intel.com/ [fix Kconfig, fix api/phy.h includes, SPDX tag and coding style issues, duplicated includes per 0-day robot] Signed-off-by: