Radio-On-Chip for Mobile (ROCm) Products
The combination of ROCm wireless solutions for mobile WLAN, Bluetooth and GPS, with Atheros’ dominant position in the home, office and Metro Wi-Fi networking markets enables a worldwide wireless ecosystem based on the company’s technologies. Atheros-engineered ROCm technologies provide the most reliable wireless performance and connectivity anywhere you go. The Atheros ROCm technologies give customers the unsurpassed ability to:
The Atheros AR6002 features leading power efficiency for mobile WLAN solutions, enabling high performance Wi-Fi to be integrated into mobile devices with efficiency and ease. The AR6002’s extremely low power consumption overcomes the key obstacle to designers looking to add Wi-Fi capability in mobile and handheld products.
The game-changing power efficiency delivered by the AR6002 significantly extends battery life. In fact, the AR6002 consumes 70% less power in active mode than competitive solutions and near-zero power in standby. The AR6002 further extends battery-life with its industry-leading throughput for 11a/g which allows the chip to remain in low power states longer.
The exceptionally high level of integration achieved in the AR6002 eliminates the need for most external components typically associated with mobile WLAN solutions. This allows for a very small solution footprint and the lowest bill-of-materials (BOM) on the market. Building on the success of the first-generation Atheros ROCm mobile WLAN products, the AR6002 offers mature, feature-rich software that has been market-proven by industry-leading customers and partners. This turnkey design platform allows for easy integration of WLAN into a wide range of mobile devices.
The Atheros AR6002 family serves a growing number of mobile devices that benefit from pervasive, high-speed connectivity offered by a growing number of Wi-Fi hotspots. These include mobile phones, portable media players, digital cameras and portable gaming devices.
'ath6kl' is the wireless driver for Atheros AR600x family of chips. It has been tested to work with the latest in the family, AR6003.
AR6003: It is the third-generation Wi-Fi chip from Atheros optimized for the throughput, size, and energy efficiency needs of mobile and embedded devices. With its tiny footprint and energy-saving qualities, the AR6003 rounds out Atheros™ comprehensive Align ecosystem of 1-stream 11n solutions, targeting smartphones, mobile gaming and portable CE devices.
This driver is upstream as part of the Linux 2.6.37 release under the staging area. From Linux 3.2 onwards it will be promoted from staging to a proper wireless driver.
It is also available for older kernels through the stable compat-wireless releases.
ath6kl is now part of wireless kernel trees. All the development happens in dedicated ath6kl.git tree. To clone the tree:
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kvalo/ath6kl.git
Note: As of this writing (2011-09-08) kernel.org servers are down and it's not possible to update any git repositories. Instead use a temporary mirror in github's ath6kl project.
The driver is located in drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath6kl. To compile the driver enable CONFIG_ATH6KL which is found under Device Drivers/Network device support/Wireless LAN/Atheros Wireless Cards/Atheros ath6kl support. Also enable CONFIG_ATH6KL_DEBUG to include all debugging code.
Send any patches to Kalle Valo <kvalo@qca.qualcomm.com> and CC linux-wireless. To learn more about git you can refer to our Git guide. It even documents how to send patches with git format-patch.
We are doing heavy cleanup on ath6kl so any patch you send will likely interfere with our current work. Because of this we ask you to please use IRC to help coordinate development.
IRC server: irc.freenode.net
IRC channel: #ath6kl
Please take into account the different timezones and schedules, it might take a long time to get an answer.
Note: Windows boxen by default seem to block IRC
ports so go find yourself a Linux box 
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mcgrof/firmware/ath6k.tar.gz http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mcgrof/firmware/LICENCE.atheros_firmware
sha1sum: b6e474d8306edaae867ab60e9e81c83cc1469c6e
Just extract that into your /lib/firmware/ directory. This firmware was submitted upstream for inclusion into the linux-firmware git tree on April 22, 2011.
You should subscribe to this page so you can get e-mail updates on changes and news for ath6kl automatically. You'll get an e-mail as soon as this page gets updated.