6 ms·

What are the issue with Broadcom chips?

by anitil 5y ago

SilverRed 5y ago
Not sure about OP but the hardest part about getting linux on a macbook is getting wifi to work because there are no FOSS drivers.
- zodiakzz 5y ago
  Genuinely curious, is it harder than getting Linux working with the proprietary Apple variant of ARM? Or are you talking pre-M1?
  - ben-schaaf 5y ago
    The M1 still uses a broadcom wifi chip: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669358, so presumably because it's a newer chip it'll be more difficult.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- notaplumber 5y ago
  Sure there are, it's called brcmfmac. If the AsahiLinux team hasn't already got it working, certainly Corellium did a few months ago in their much hyped public demo image. https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/brcm80211 https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/brcm80211 OpenBSD has also added support to their bwfm(4) driver already for 6.9. Wireless is absolutely not the hardest problem for the M1 Mac, or running on any Mac, for that matter.
  - IntelMiner 5y ago
    Broadcom Wi-Fi languished for something around a decade under the "b43" driver before Broadcom showed up with their brcmfmac driver, it caused significant anger within the kernel community that they decided to write a new driver instead of just augmenting the existing one
    - usr1106 5y ago
      They have various product families and more than 2 drivers. I need the bcmwl driver (dkms) for some 4-5 year old HP laptop and it has severe problems with some APs and slight problems with others. Overall it's just bad. Debugging it showed that it's only a thin Linux wrapper around some huge binary blob they use. So not really FOSS, but of course that's what we are used to with firmware. This was't really firmware, they use the blob on the CPU IIRC. (It's been years I debugged this, since then Broadcom is just something that raises a red flag to me.)
- swiley 5y ago
  Usually it's missing firmware rather than drivers.
cptskippy 5y ago
Broadcom chips aren't very well regarded in PC Gaming or Server enthusiast markets either, they're a step above Realtek. Oddly Intel is well regarded though... It mostly comes down to drivers from what I understand but I'm not entirely familiar with all the objections.
- nwallin 5y ago
  I would much rather have a realtek or intel controller than a broadcom one. My thinkpad has a realtek, my last laptop (an xps13) had an intel controller, and they just worked without issue. Admittedly it's been a while since I had a broadcom controller, but I had all sorts of problems with it. Random disconnects etc.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    Realteks also have documentation and thus open-source drivers, which was for a very long time (and very much still is) a problem with Broadcom's notorious closedness. In my experience, Intel has higher performance and more features (which might be a downside from the point of complexity and configuration) at a higher cost, while Realtek is slower, but cheap, simple and reliable.
  - gspr 5y ago
    I long ago realized that just buying an Intel wifi card and replacing whatever crap my laptop ships with is totally worth it. (At least many 15" laptops ship with replaceable cards, don't know about smaller ones).
- Bluecobra 5y ago
  > Broadcom chips aren't very well regarded in PC Gaming or Server enthusiast markets either I always thought that it was funny that their NICs are much to be desired yet their ASICs power a wide variety of enterprise network switches capable of moving terabits of traffic at low latency. https://people.ucsc.edu/~warner/buffer.html https://people.ucsc.edu/~warner/buffer.html
  - 5y ago
rasz 5y ago
One year ago: Broadcom bluetooth/wifi chips ran out of firmware hot patch ram slots long time ago. Company seems to be too cheap to respin the rom mask with all the fixes baked in. From what I remember even brand new iphone x ships with no room for BT firmware patching. RECON 2019 - Reversing and Exploiting Broadcom Bluetooth (Jiska Classen, Dennis Mantz) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Mi8_9ABCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Mi8_9ABCc 35C3 - Dissecting Broadcom Bluetooth (Jiska Classen, Dennis Mantz) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_nI9ok7iQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_nI9ok7iQg

What are the issue with Broadcom chips?

by anitil 5y ago

What are the issue with Broadcom chips?

Not sure about OP but the hardest part about getting linux on a macbook is getting wifi to work because there are no FOSS drivers.

zodiakzz 5y ago
Genuinely curious, is it harder than getting Linux working with the proprietary Apple variant of ARM? Or are you talking pre-M1?
- ben-schaaf 5y ago
  The M1 still uses a broadcom wifi chip: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25669358, so presumably because it's a newer chip it'll be more difficult.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
notaplumber 5y ago
Sure there are, it's called brcmfmac. If the AsahiLinux team hasn't already got it working, certainly Corellium did a few months ago in their much hyped public demo image. https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/brcm80211 https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/brcm80211 OpenBSD has also added support to their bwfm(4) driver already for 6.9. Wireless is absolutely not the hardest problem for the M1 Mac, or running on any Mac, for that matter.
- IntelMiner 5y ago
  Broadcom Wi-Fi languished for something around a decade under the "b43" driver before Broadcom showed up with their brcmfmac driver, it caused significant anger within the kernel community that they decided to write a new driver instead of just augmenting the existing one
  - usr1106 5y ago
    They have various product families and more than 2 drivers. I need the bcmwl driver (dkms) for some 4-5 year old HP laptop and it has severe problems with some APs and slight problems with others. Overall it's just bad. Debugging it showed that it's only a thin Linux wrapper around some huge binary blob they use. So not really FOSS, but of course that's what we are used to with firmware. This was't really firmware, they use the blob on the CPU IIRC. (It's been years I debugged this, since then Broadcom is just something that raises a red flag to me.)
swiley 5y ago
Usually it's missing firmware rather than drivers.

cptskippy 5y ago

Broadcom chips aren't very well regarded in PC Gaming or Server enthusiast markets either, they're a step above Realtek. Oddly Intel is well regarded though... It mostly comes down to drivers from what I understand but I'm not entirely familiar with all the objections.

nwallin 5y ago
I would much rather have a realtek or intel controller than a broadcom one. My thinkpad has a realtek, my last laptop (an xps13) had an intel controller, and they just worked without issue. Admittedly it's been a while since I had a broadcom controller, but I had all sorts of problems with it. Random disconnects etc.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Realteks also have documentation and thus open-source drivers, which was for a very long time (and very much still is) a problem with Broadcom's notorious closedness. In my experience, Intel has higher performance and more features (which might be a downside from the point of complexity and configuration) at a higher cost, while Realtek is slower, but cheap, simple and reliable.
- gspr 5y ago
  I long ago realized that just buying an Intel wifi card and replacing whatever crap my laptop ships with is totally worth it. (At least many 15" laptops ship with replaceable cards, don't know about smaller ones).
Bluecobra 5y ago
> Broadcom chips aren't very well regarded in PC Gaming or Server enthusiast markets either I always thought that it was funny that their NICs are much to be desired yet their ASICs power a wide variety of enterprise network switches capable of moving terabits of traffic at low latency. https://people.ucsc.edu/~warner/buffer.html https://people.ucsc.edu/~warner/buffer.html
- 5y ago

rasz 5y ago

One year ago: Broadcom bluetooth/wifi chips ran out of firmware hot patch ram slots long time ago. Company seems to be too cheap to respin the rom mask with all the fixes baked in. From what I remember even brand new iphone x ships with no room for BT firmware patching. RECON 2019 - Reversing and Exploiting Broadcom Bluetooth (Jiska Classen, Dennis Mantz) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Mi8_9ABCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96Mi8_9ABCc 35C3 - Dissecting Broadcom Bluetooth (Jiska Classen, Dennis Mantz) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_nI9ok7iQg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_nI9ok7iQg