Silicon Labs WiFi Linux Driver To Be Promoted Out Of Staging

Added back in 2019 to the Linux staging area was the "WFX" WiFi driver for low-power IoT hardware from Silicon Labs. After three years of hard work by Silicon Labs engineers and open-source developers, this driver for the WF200 series of wireless chips is set to be promoted in the Linux 5.19 cycle.

The Silicon Labs WF200 series is a class of wireless chipsets designed for low-power, IoT WiFi use-cases with 802.11 b/g/n radio capabilities. The WF200 transceiver interfaces via SPI or SDIO while this driver is also designed to support future Silicon Labs wireless hardware too. This WFX driver was started and continues to be maintained by Silicon Labs itself, which is always great to see.

Since entering the staging area in Linux 5.5, the WFX driver has been seeing a lot of fixes/clean-ups and working through its TODO list. Now merged this week into staging-next is moving the WFX code out of the staging area and will now live formally within the Linux kernel's networking subsystem in its mature state.

It's great to see this happen with Silicon Labs persevering through on this upstream WiFi Linux kernel driver. Silicon Labs' WF200 ICs can be purchased individually from popular DIY electronics retailers or in an evaluation board form that also makes it another choice for hobbyists and other use-cases outside of IoT devices.