ath9k: Fix maximum tx fifo settings for single stream devices

Atheros single stream AR9285 and AR9271 have half the PCU TX FIFO
buffer size of that of dual stream devices. Dual stream devices
have a max PCU TX FIFO size of 8 KB while single stream devices
have 4 KB. Single stream devices have an issue though and require
hardware only to use half of the amount of its capable PCU TX FIFO
size, 2 KB and this requires a change in software.

Technically a change would not have been required (except for frame
burst considerations of 128 bytes) if these devices would have been
able to use the full 4 KB of the PCU TX FIFO size but our systems
engineers recommend 2 KB to be used only. We enforce this through
software by reducing the max frame triggger level to 2 KB.

Fixing the max frame trigger level should then have a few benefits:

  * The PER will now be adjusted as designed for underruns when the
    max trigger level is reached. This should help alleviate the
    bus as the rate control algorithm chooses a slower rate which
    should ensure frames are transmitted properly under high system
    bus load.

  * The poll we use on our TX queues should now trigger and work
    as designed for single stream devices. The hardware passes
    data from each TX queue on the PCU TX FIFO queue respecting each
    queue's priority. The new trigger level ensures this seeding of
    the PCU TX FIFO queue occurs as designed which could mean avoiding
    false resets and actually reseting hw correctly when a TX queue
    is indeed stuck.

  * Some undocumented / unsupported behaviour could have been triggered
    when the max trigger level level was being set to 4 KB on single
    stream devices. Its not clear what this issue was to me yet.

Cc: Kyungwan Nam <kyungwan.nam@atheros.com>
Cc: Bennyam Malavazi <bennyam.malavazi@atheros.com>
Cc: Stephen Chen <stephen.chen@atheros.com>
Cc: Shan Palanisamy <shan.palanisamy@atheros.com>
Cc: Paul Shaw <paul.shaw@atheros.com>
Signed-off-by: Vasanthakumar Thiagarajan <vasanth@atheros.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com>
Signed-off-by: John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/mac.h b/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/mac.h
index 6cc04951a05..0c87771383f 100644
--- a/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/mac.h
+++ b/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/mac.h
@@ -86,9 +86,15 @@
 #define ATH9K_TX_SW_ABORTED        0x40
 #define ATH9K_TX_SW_FILTERED       0x80
 
+/* 64 bytes */
 #define MIN_TX_FIFO_THRESHOLD   0x1
+
+/*
+ * Single stream device AR9285 and AR9271 require 2 KB
+ * to work around a hardware issue, all other devices
+ * have can use the max 4 KB limit.
+ */
 #define MAX_TX_FIFO_THRESHOLD   ((4096 / 64) - 1)
-#define INIT_TX_FIFO_THRESHOLD  MIN_TX_FIFO_THRESHOLD
 
 struct ath_tx_status {
 	u32 ts_tstamp;