minhdinhtran / asix88179_88178a Goto Github PK

This repository is about the existing ASIX 88179/88178a Linux USB drivers. These drivers have some performance issues on ARM, the transmit performance is quite low. It is about 9-13 MiB/s on low-end and middle-end ARMs (Cortex-A7/A53) and up to 20 MiB/s on really high-end ARMs (Cortex-A15/A72) while hitting full 38 to 39 MiB/s on x86. This issue can be seen in USB 2.0 mode and happens with the mainline driver and the Vendors own driver.

So I started to write my own driver for this hardware (called asix_gbit), based on the mainline, vendor and generic usbnet drivers. During my work on this I also added some missing features like being able to read and write the EEPROM to change USB ids or the MAC.

This driver is not part of the initial commit. I still have to do a rework, but a working prototype exists (but does not fix the performance issue, still working on this).

The directory asix_gbit will holds my driver and was written using an AMD64 2.6.26.2 kernel and an 5.6.16 aarch64 kernel. So most tests are done with these kernels. But the driver is written to support 2.6.25 up to the latest.

The EEPROM patch is experimental and may fail in some situations (but I did not encounter one yet). I only have an AX88178a based USB 2.0 adapter with the generic USB id 0x0b95:0x178a, so maybe other adpaters, like the USB 3.0 ones, could show some issues.