We’re getting some AGX Orin kits (64Gb) for educational purposes and I’d like to know, before buying the network cards, if there’s support for WiFi7 PCIe cards.
I’ve been doing some research and it seems there are two main chipsets providing WiFi7 connectivity:
Intel BE200: Some people report it only works properly on Intel-based systems, but other people report some success on AMD. I know Orin is not x86 based, though.
Qualcomm NCM865: allegedly, this chipset works on both Intel and AMD.
Has someone used any of those chipsets on the Orin?
Hi,
For WIFI function we use the module inserted to M.2 Key-E slot. So it is a PCIe device to the Orin. No WIFI protocol is involved with Orin. It is supposed to work if the PCIE bandwidth is sufficient for the protocol.
Hi Danell,
Thank you for your answer.
I was referring to the possibility of using an external PCIe card on the Orin’s PCIe slot. Available PCIe WiFi 7 cards on the market use either the Intel BE200 or the Qualcomm NCM865 chipsets.
As far as I know, the internal antenna connectors for the internal, M.2 Key-E wireless card are not exposed on the outside and we’d like to use an external antenna (using standard SMA connectors) and the fastest, more modern standard supported.
So my original question was more about the OS support for any of those chipsets.
Is the driver available in source code format? If it is part of a mainline kernel, then the L4T R36.x kernel might have the source code available. If not, then it depends on whether the source that you do find can be compiled against your kernel version.
If the driver is only available in binary format, then it has to load against the running kernel. That kernel is a 64-bit ARM architecture.
Firmware is often required, but firmware is uploaded into the device, and not used directly by the Jetson itself. This means the firmware, if present, can be used the same regardless of whether the device is on a desktop PC or a Jetson (the firmware loaded into the device doesn’t care about the host architecture).
Someone probably needs to try it to know for certain, but I’d start by finding out what kernels can use that driver, and compare to your kernel release. Then find out if there is firmware, and likely this can install to the Jetson without issue. Then actually find out if it works (it isn’t entirely predictable).
Excellent answer, thank you. This was really informative and I’ve learned a few things, and clarified what’s needed to have it supported.
Now I’ll do my work and see if I can confirm your points. Thanks again for your time writing this answer.