Intel releases Development manual for e1000 chips

Finally, within years, at least one hardware vendor does The Right Thing (TM): Intel releases hardware documentation about their Gigabit Ethernet Controller chips (known as 'e1000') in the Linux world. (For the curious ones: you can get it from the e1000 sourceforge page)

Even more surprising, they are doing it _despite_ providing a high-quality GPL licensed Linux driver. And by doing this, they show that they have understood that the many developers who are playing with their chip will in the end help them to perform even better, but only if they can actually read the hardware documentation.

There's a group of Linux networking developers who are constantly trying to optimize the driver and come up with new strategies on how to deal with high packet rates.. And at least until now, all the big current Gigabit Ethernet chips did not come with any kind of documentation.

Broadcom tg3 and Syskonnect/Marvell Yukon2 now have a severe competitive disadvantage. Let's see whether they get the clue, and release documentation, too.

I'm not a big fan of Intel, but what they're doing with regard to Linux and their e1000 and ipw2xxx chips is really good. Thanks, Intel!