Linux ath11k Driver Improvements For Qualcomm WiFi 6 Hardware Yields 7x Lower Latency

A patch series from developer Julius Bairaktaris addresses a long-standing inefficiency in the Linux ath11k driver for Qualcomm WiFi 6 (802.11ax) chipsets. The driver lacks its own queue and does not support AQL or airtime fairness mechanisms in mac80211, causing bufferbloat when hardware TX rings fill up during saturated downloads. Benchmarks on an IPQ8074 access point show the patches can cut latency roughly 7x (from about 155ms to 22ms) with a tunable AQL limit, or deliver 2.2x higher throughput at the same latency via a completion-driven scheduling patch. The nine-patch series, under review on the Linux kernel mailing list, was partly assisted by Claude Opus in its ~150 lines of code.

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