Intel IWLWIFI Adding 802.11ax Support In Linux 4.19

The latest Linux wireless driver code was sent in today for queueing in the net-next tree ahead of the Linux 4.19 kernel.

With the latest wireless-drivers-next activity, the most notable feature pull request is the IWLWIFI driver now supporting 802.11ax, the latest WiFi standard succeeding 802.11ac. The WLAN 802.11ax specification operates on 2.4/5GHz spectrums and beyond MMIO/MU-MIMO adds in OFDMA: Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access. The top speed of 802.11ax is expected at 11 Gbps. The first of the next-gen WiFi devices supporting this standard are expected over the next calendar year.

The 802.11ax WLAN support is now plumbed into the IWLWIFI driver ahead of more Intel wireless chipsets coming out to support this standard. Along with this comes for the Intel IWLWIFI driver initial support for the Intel Wireless-AX 22560 adapter.

This IWLWIFI driver update, separate from the 802.11ax work, adds more PCI IDs from the Intel Wireless 22000 and 22560 series.

Other Linux WiFi work for Linux 4.19 includes Mediatek MT76x2u and MT76x0U support along with WIL6210 Talyn-MB support, WoWLAN support for QTNFMAC, USB support for the MT76 driver, and other minor improvements/fixes. The complete list of wireless-drivers-next changes for 4.19 can be found from this pull request.