Linux 5.5 Staging To Add New "WFX" WiFi Driver For Low-Power IoT Hardware

WFX is a new WiFi driver being added to the staging area with the Linux 5.5 cycle coming up in a few months.

WFX is the driver enabling support for the Silicon Labs' WF200 family of wireless transceivers and future products. The Silicon Labs WF200 series hardware is designed for low-power IoT WiFi use-cases and provides a 2.4GHz 802.11b/g/n radio. The WF200 transceiver can interface via SPI and SDIO.

This WFX driver now queued in staging-next is fortunately being worked on by Silicon Labs themselves as opposed to just being an external/third-party effort.

Silicon Labs has been providing out-of-tree WiFi driver support for Linux and other real-time operating systems while it's great to see WFX set to reach mainline with Linux 5.5. The staging code appears to have all of the fundamentals in place while hopefully will mature over the next few kernel cycles in order to graduate out of the staging area.