Why is the 43438 firmware much larger than 43362?

[Anonymous]

Hi, I have been working with 43362 wifi chip so far and I have started adding support for the 43438 wifi chip. However, I noticed that the 43438A1.bin is 363.8kB while the 43362A2.bin is only 210.6kB. Could someone from Cypress or a user on the forum help explain the increased size?

For reference, I am using the Wiced SDK 3.7.0

[MichaelF_56]

CYW43362 = 2.4GHz, 802.11b/g/n

CYW43438/CYW4343W = 2.4GHz, 802.11b/g/n, BT/BLE

[Anonymous]

Yes, I am aware of the difference. But, it does not explain why will the wifi firmware is larger when there is a separate BT firmware that also has to be downloaded to the core?

[vsubbiah]

Potentially there is more code to support 11n and other additional features. Once you driver is loaded you could run wl cap to shows the features included in firmware.

[AxLi_1746341]

vsubbiah_1779701 wrote:

Potentially there is more code to support 11n and other additional features. Once you driver is loaded you could run wl cap to shows the features included in firmware.

That does not make sense because CYW43362 also supports 11n.

In additional, the size is not just slightly bigger, it increases a lot.

e.g. in SDK-3.7.0-7:

resources/firmware/43362/43362A2.bin 210624 bytes

resources/firmware/43438/43438A1.bin 366729 bytes.

[Anonymous]

Hello Gokul,

Each release of the WICED SDK includes a series of bug fixes/optimisations, new applications, security updates as well as firmware support for new devices as they are added to the WICED portfolio.

Wherever possible the new features have been rolled back on to earlier generations of wlan,wlan/bt devices but there does come a time when this is no longer possible to keep adding features to older devices due to memory constraints.  The 43362 firmware was last updated in SDK3.4.0, later firmware revisions were for the 43364/43438/4343W and later devices.

If you wish to review the main changes/updates then please refer to the changelog.txt in the latest WICED Studio 4.1 release.

Regards

Dave

[Anonymous]

Sorry, that does not add up either. Even going back to 3.4.0 when 43438 was first added (based on the changelog) I see that the 43438 firmware is over 100 KB larger than 43362. You might say its a newer chip and supports more features but I want to know what exactly these features are.

[MichaelF_56]

user59​

Since you are a member of the design team at one of our module partners, please use the MyCases feature on Cypress.com here: Microcontrollers, Connectivity, Memory Solutions | Cypress Semiconductor (login, top left corner of the browser = MyCases)

We will then be able to route this into Level 2-3 Engineering so that you can continue to receive similar support as the others in your company.

[Anonymous]

Thank you. Please route case 00323344 appropriately.

[vsubbiah]

1) Have any of you who have concerns on this tried the "wl cap" on the two chips. This should help address what features are included in the firmware. I don't have the two chips handy.

2) What is the specific concern about the firmware size being big? There are many details about the firmware that are Cypress confidential. If you let us know the concerns maybe we can address them without revealing any confidential information. Overtime the architecture of the firmware also had changed which could have cased the memory increase. Either ways this memory is not used by the RAM which is used by applications, so increase in this size is not something I would be too concerned about.

And trust me the size of this is closely tracked and tweaked by developers at Cypress!

[Anonymous]

Please see ticket above for details. It is incorrect to conclude that a larger fw is not a concern since the RAM is not used. Flash too is a limited resource on modules that use these wifi cores. The firmware is downloaded from the flash by the stm32f4 into the wifi core.

With a 1M flash, this represents a 10% decrease in usable code space for the app.

[vsubbiah]

Ok. For addressing flash space concerns, I see that using gzip on the binary file does reduce the size of the binary. Could also potentially use a better compression algorithm and save more space. But is there enough memory to be able to do that:(

Looking at the strings of feature  I see some new features are swdiv, srfast, lpc, fuart.  If you have questions about what those features you  should go into a separate thread.

[Anonymous]

I have created a ticket for some detailed response. It may not be efficient for me to to ask questions about each of these features or of they can be left out. I am just looking to see if there is any non core feature in the wifi firmware that can be left out to reduce the size. If no such options exist I will have to look into compression.

Deflate saves me about 60K only.