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Hardware Support

Julius Bairaktaris edited this page Jun 18, 2026 · 2 revisions

Hardware Support

Target

qualcommax/ipq807x on kernel 6.12. The integration is SoC-family-wide: everything rides on the upstream qca_edma/ qca_ppe drivers from PR #22381, which cover the whole subtarget.

Device tree

ipq8074-nss.dtsi describes the two UBI32 NSS cores (clocks, resets, interrupts, firmware reserved-memory handles, h2n/n2h queue config) and is included by every IPQ807x-family device tree in the tree (28+ boards: AX3600, AX9000, 301W, EAP660HD, RAX120v2, NBG7815, DL-WRX36, …). A kernel patch renames the upstream nss reserved- memory region to the label the dtsi references.

Devices that never load the NSS packages are unaffected: nothing binds to these nodes until qca-nss-drv loads, and the EDMA ethernet data path is untouched while the firmware is not booted.

ramoops (pstore crash console) is likewise target-wide, with a pstore-archive init script that preserves crash logs across reboots.

Memory profiles

One image targets one profile (see Firmware and Source Pins):

Board RAM Profile Note
1 GB (AX9000, RAX120v2, …) NSS_MEM_PROFILE_HIGH ipq807x default
512 MB (AX3600, 301W, …) NSS_MEM_PROFILE_MEDIUM must be selected explicitly
256 MB NSS_MEM_PROFILE_LOW untested on this stack

Port and interface numbering (IPQ807x)

One number means three things — this identity is load-bearing for the whole stack:

PPE port index == DSA out-of-band tag port == NSS physical interface number

  • NSS physical interfaces: 1..6 (START_IFNUM = 1).
  • CPU port is PPE port 0 (the DSA conduit).
  • Example, AX3600: wan = port 2, lan1 = 3, lan2 = 4, lan3 = 5 → glue arm mask 0x3c.
  • NSS preheader: 32 bytes.

⚠ Physical jack labels on some devices do not match netdev names. Trust the bridge FDB and carrier state (/sys/class/net/br-lan/brif/*/port_no, brctl showmacs), not the case printing, when mapping cables to ports.

Validation status

Device Status
Xiaomi AX3600 (IPQ8071A, 512 MB) Fully validated: firmware path on all 4 ports, ECM NAT/PPPoE at line rate, NSS SQM, production soaks
Other IPQ807x-family boards DT nodes present, same drivers and port model; not yet hardware-tested — reports welcome

Wi-Fi (ath11k) runs on the host stack on all devices; NSS Wi-Fi offload is not integrated (see Limitations and Roadmap).

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