Quantenna QSR1000/QSR2000/QSR10g Wi-Fi PCIe adapters
A family of high-end 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) PCIe Wi-Fi chipsets from Quantenna used in premium consumer routers and residential gateways from around 2014 on, including the 4x4 QSR1000 in routers like the ASUS RT-AC87 and the 8x8 MIMO QSR10g in carrier-supplied home gateways. The chips run their own firmware and hand a FullMAC interface to Linux.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche: the hardware was a Wi-Fi 5-era flagship that has aged out of retail but is still embedded in legacy routers and ISP gateways, and the code is not abandoned — it received upstream cleanup touches as recently as a 2024 treewide PCI series. No other in-tree driver covers these chips, so dropping it would strand remaining users; an annotation noting the limited legacy deployment footprint is the right call.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
qtnfmac still receives upstream touch in recent kernels; this file was edited in a 2024 treewide managed-PCI cleanup series rather than being abandoned or queued for removal.
- cateee.net
Current LKDDb still lists CONFIG_QTNFMAC_PCIE for mainline kernels and identifies supported hardware as Quantenna QSR1000/QSR2000/QSR10g PCIe devices (vendor 1bb5, device 0008).
- techspot.com
QSR1000 appeared in consumer routers such as the ASUS RT-AC87 in 2014, indicating the driver targets an older Wi-Fi 5 generation rather than current retail designs.
- everythingrf.com
QSR10G was marketed into residential gateways and access points, supporting a remaining embedded/AP legacy niche rather than broad new 2025 deployments.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local source read via shell (`sed` on Kconfig) identifies the family as QSR1000/QSR2000/QSR10g aka Topaz/Pearl FullMAC over PCIe. Lore evidence came from `lore_file_timeline` on `drivers/net/wireless/quantenna/qtnfmac/pcie/pcie.c`; it showed recent activity and no removal-thread evidence surfaced, while a separate `lore_regex` removal scan timed out rather than finding removal mail. Deployment judgment is an inference from web-search results: LKDDb confirms the driver is still built in current kernels, but product evidence found only older Wi-Fi 5-era consumer/router and gateway announcements, suggesting legacy embedded deployments persist at low volume. No natural in-tree replacement covers the same Quantenna PCIe FullMAC hardware, so removal would strand remaining users; annotate rather than deprecate/remove.