NVIDIA & MediaTek Reportedly Readying "N1" Arm-based SoC for Introduction at Computex

[blinnbanir]

Anyone have experience with Media Tek? I do they make the Wifi 7 adapter on my MB. It likes to dropout once in a while. More than any Intel adapter I had before.

 

[Deleted member 245263]

Anyone have experience with Media Tek? I do they make the Wifi 7 adapter on my MB. It likes to dropout once in a while. More than any Intel adapter I had before.

Yes, I have experience with the MT7922. I got it dirt cheap, used, from a local Craigslist seller. It worked fine in my desktop with the B650M-HDV/M.2 motherboard. It also supports AP (Access Point) mode, unlike Intel cards. I liked how it performed, so I decided to try it in my Dell 7400 2-in-1 laptop as a replacement for the Intel 9560NGW. To my surprise, it worked better—offering improved range, faster transfer speeds, and longer battery life, even though the Intel card is CNVi, which is supposed to offload functions to the CPU. I expected worse battery life, but it actually improved. However, I had to create a systemd service to disable the driver before sleep, otherwise it wouldn't work properly after wake up. If I booted into Windows, the card would become non-functional in Linux until I fully powered down the laptop. Later, I replaced the Dell 7400 2-in-1 with a Dell 7435 2-in-1, which also happens to have the MT7922—and on this machine, it works without any issues. I also bought a Qualcomm QCNCM865 Wi-Fi 7 card to try in my desktop PC, but it only works with the LTS kernel, and AP mode doesn’t work at all on it.

mm@desktop ~
> inxi -xxxF
System:
  Host: desktop Kernel: 6.14.6-zen1-1-zen arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
    v: 15.1.1 clocksource: tsc
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.3.5 tk: Qt v: N/A wm: kwin_wayland vt: 1 dm:
    1: LightDM v: 1.32.0 note: stopped 2: SDDM Distro: Arch Linux
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: B650M-HDV/M.2 serial: <superuser required>
    uuid: <superuser required> UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: 3.20
    date: 02/21/2025
....
Network:
  Device-1: Qualcomm WCN785x Wi-Fi 7 320MHz 2x2 [FastConnect 7800]
    vendor: Foxconn Band Simultaneous Wireless driver: ath12k_pci v: N/A pcie:
    speed: 8 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 07:00.0 chip-ID: 17cb:1107 class-ID: 0280
....

> cat /etc/modprobe.d/ieee80211.conf
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
File: /etc/modprobe.d/ieee80211.conf
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
options cfg80211 ieee80211_regdom=US

> cat mt7921e-sleep.service
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
File: mt7921e-sleep.service
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

#/etc/systemd/system/mt7921e-sleep.service
[Unit]
Description=mt7921e sleep
Before=sleep.target
StopWhenUnneeded=yes

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/sbin/modprobe -r mt7921e
ExecStop=/sbin/modprobe mt7921e

[Install]
WantedBy=sleep.target

 

[Chrispy_]

Sorry, other's have said it, sorry about that.

100% agree.

Yeah, there's definitely some 'the sky is falling panic', but AMD and Intel spend a cumulative $22bn/year on R&D at current estimates. They're not just going to lie down and give up if ARM starts to pose a serious threat to their main income, and they're not interested in the low-margin fringe computing that dominates phones, tablets, low-end laptops etc. IIRC they've both tried x86 in those markets and found it to be not financially worth pursuing.

Presumably if the two x86 vendors do come under significant threat from ARM offerings, the first thing to do is trim down the ISA so that it emulates more of the legacy stuff like all the ARM cores do. I'm a little outside my wheelhouse with CPU architecture discussions but AFAIK the reason ARM can compete on efficiency and performance is because it doesn't have 30 years of x86 baggage it needs to support. Feel free to correct me if that's not the reality.

Anyone have experience with Media Tek? I do they make the Wifi 7 adapter on my MB. It likes to dropout once in a while. More than any Intel adapter I had before.

I guess you haven't used Intel's 225 or 226 ethernet adapters then. Intel's ability to execute these days is so bad that they're making wired ethernet adapters that drop out!

As for the processors, Mediatek are fine. They're in use in a bunch of phones from Oppo, Poco, RedMi, Samsung. I've seen them in loads of tablets from Lenovo and Samsung as well as a few budget brands - we buy cheap tablets for construction sites because iPads walk off by themselves and never come back. A £100 Samsung can sit on a table for a week and nobody wants to steal it even though it'll open the same PDFs as the iPad for quick markup.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Yeah, there's definitely some 'the sky is falling panic'

Which is silly. You'd think people would have more sense.

AFAIK the reason ARM can compete on efficiency and performance is because it doesn't have 30 years of x86 baggage it needs to support.

ARM has 30years of RISC baggage, so it's effectively sixes on that point. It's the same thing, to a somewhat lesser degree.

 

[Baba]

I'm not going to claim I know the details of ARM architecture but I'll never buy an x86 CPU based laptop. I have never heard the fans on my Macbook M4 Pro turn on. Vents are hidden on the sides. I never felt hot air. I actually keep it on my lap and it's always cold on the bottom.

Now, the x86 laptops I own/owned are hair dryers. And I'm talking just turning them on and checking email. I can't tell if it's the x86 architecture or Windows or combination of both.

I would gladly get an ARM cpu if I could game on it for my desktop. AMD and Intel are not advancing much. AMD used to have bigger gains when there were trying to catch Intel but now they became Intel. I'm just not looking forward to anything x86.