Bug 81721

Summary:	brcmsmac: no power savings
Product:	Drivers	Reporter:	Jon Nelson (jnelson-kernel-bugzilla)
Component:	network-wireless	Assignee:	drivers_network-wireless (drivers_network-wireless)
Status:	NEW ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	aspriel, linville
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	3.16.0-rc7-2-desktop	Subsystem:
Regression:	No	Bisected commit-id:

Description Jon Nelson 2014-08-06 03:03:14 UTC

I am running openSUSE 13.2 "Factory" (13.2 is not-yet released) on a laptop with a built-in wireless broadcom BCM4313. This device consumes a *lot* of power and (usually, but not always) works. When the module is loaded, powertop reports that it uses between 4 and 6 *Watts*.  I have four other wireless devices here, and they consume far less:

ZD1211RW  - 600-1300 mW
AR5523    - 100-200 mW
Rx200     - 100-200 mW
rtl8192cu - 100-200 mW

This turns my battery life down and (helps to) make the laptop run hot.

Comment 1 Jon Nelson 2014-08-10 16:51:32 UTC

Also reported at https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=890454

Per a comment in that bugzilla, I tried kernel 3.16.0-rc7-2-desktop (and openSUSE kernel) with backports-20140725:


admittedly, it's not a perfect test, but now brcmsmac seems to consume much
less:

- 350mW to 3900mW

However, that's still 3 to 30x what the rtl8129cu appears to be using.