The Foundation sponsored Landon Fuller’s work to modernize FreeBSD support for Broadcom Wi-Fi adaptors, laying the groundwork for comprehensive Broadcom Wi-Fi support on FreeBSD, including enabling the adoption of additional softmac PHY and fullmac device support from Broadcom’s ISC-licensed Linux drivers.
Previously, FreeBSD support for Broadcom Wi-Fi adapters was provided by the bwn(4) and siba(4) drivers, with siba(4) mediating bwn(4)’s access to hardware cores accessible via the onchip SSB interconnect. This project ported the current bwn(4) drivers to bhnd(4) –written to replace the unsupported siba(4) drivers, and used by the FreeBSD/MIPS Broadcom port–providing a unified interface to both SSB and BCMA interconnects, with support for both Wi-Fi adapters and Wi-Fi SoCs.
This project was completed in February 2018, to be released in FreeBSD 12.0.