Intel Preparing Wi-Fi 7 / 802.11be / EHT Support For The Linux Kernel

Intel's open-source engineers have already begun preparing Linux kernel patches around 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT) support that will be known as WiFi 7.

802.11be / WiFi 7 is expected to reach speeds as high as 30 Gbps (there are also some public references to reaching 40 Gbps) but the final specification isn't expected to be firmed up for another two years. While it will be some time before seeing Intel wireless chipsets on the market supporting WiFi 7, their Linux engineers have already been working on preparing the Linux network stack internally and recently began posting publicly their Linux kernel patches for wiring up that 802.11be / EHT support.

With WiFi 7 expected to be ~2.4x faster than WiFi 6 while having lower latency, the prospects for WiFi 7 are very good.

Qualcomm posted a few Linux WiFi EHT patches at the end of last year while this past week there was a big set of the initial patches from Intel. The patches get the mac80211 changes in place, hardware simulator updates, enabling the 320MHz channel new to WiFi 7, and other base changes in place so they can move on to working out their device driver support when the time comes.

The initial EHT / 802.11be / WiFi 7 Linux kernel patches are currently undergoing review on the linux-wireless list.