=== Intel Wireless driver support and LinuxKPI 802.11 compatibility layer

Links: +
link:https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi/Iwlwifi[iwlwifi status FreeBSD wiki page] URL: link:https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi/Iwlwifi[https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFi/Iwlwifi]

Contact: Bjoern A. Zeeb <bz@FreeBSD.org>

The Intel Wireless driver update project aims to bring support for newer chipsets along with mac80211 LinuxKPI compat code.
The dual-licensed Intel driver code was ported in the past for the iwm(4) native driver; using the LinuxKPI compat framework allows us to use the driver directly and gives support to all the latest chipsets, with only minor local modifications.
Some of the changes made while porting the driver to FreeBSD were kindly incorporated into the upstream Linux driver already.

During the first quarter work continued with about 70 commits.
Updating the driver and firmware reduced differences to the Linux version and gave us bugfixes and improvements.
Changes to the LinuxKPI 802.11 compatibility layer were made to avoid firmware crashes and possible panics for users along with other improvements.

Auto-loading support for LinuxKPI PCI drivers was comitted.
This means that iwlwifi(4) will now load automatically during boot if a supported card is detected without any user interactions.
Considering the current state of the driver and the next release a decision was made that iwm(4) supported chipsets will continue to attach to iwm(4) for now and only newer and otherwise unsupported chipsets will use the iwlwifi(4) driver.
This is likely going to change in CURRENT as soon as iwlwifi(4) provides better support than iwm(4).

The code was merged to the stable/13 branch and the current state will be shipped with the upcoming 13.1-RELEASE.

In addition to The FreeBSD Foundation thanks need to go to all users who have been testing and reporting back or are patiently waiting for the next update.
For the latest state of the development, please follow the freebsd-wireless mailing list.

Sponsor: The FreeBSD Foundation
