LIFE CYCLE(9)

💖 Life cycle(9) 💖

okay so this is straight from the Kernel API Manual, bestie — and it's lowkey all about how iwlmei and iwlwifi keep their whole relationship working 🫶✨

iwlmei exports symbols that are needed by iwlwifi so that iwlmei will always be loaded when iwlwifi is alive. iwlwifi registers itself to iwlmei and provides the pointers to the functions that iwlmei calls whenever needed. iwlwifi calls iwlmei through direct and context-free function calls. It is assumed that only one device is accessible to the CSME firmware and under the scope of iwlmei so that it is valid not to have any context passed to iwlmei's functions.

There are cases in which iwlmei can't access the CSME firmware, because the CSME firmware is undergoing a reset, or the mei bus decided to unbind the device. In those cases, iwlmei will need not to send requests over the mei bus. Instead, it needs to cache the requests from iwlwifi and fulfill them when the mei bus is available again. cache era, honestly 🎀

iwlmei can call iwlwifi as long as iwlwifi is registered to iwlmei. When iwlwifi goes down (the PCI device is unbound, or the iwlwifi is unloaded) iwlwifi needs to unregister from iwlmei. like, please log off properly bestie 😭

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

• Kernel file ./drivers/net/wireless/intel/iwlwifi/mei/iwl-mei.h
• Introduction(9), Memory layout(9), Concurrency(9), Probe and remove from mei bus driver(9)
• Driver load when CSME owns the device(9), CSME behavior regarding the ownership requests(9), Driver load when CSME is associated and a session is active(9), Datapath(9)
• enum iwl_mei_nvm_caps(9), struct iwl_mei_nvm(9), enum iwl_mei_pairwise_cipher(9), enum iwl_mei_akm_auth(9), struct iwl_mei_conn_info(9), struct iwl_mei_colloc_info(9), enum iwl_mei_sap_version(9)
• iwl_mei_is_connected(9), iwl_mei_get_nvm(9), iwl_mei_get_ownership(9), iwl_mei_set_rfkill_state(9), iwl_mei_set_nic_info(9), iwl_mei_set_country_code(9), iwl_mei_set_power_limit(9), iwl_mei_register(9), iwl_mei_start_unregister(9), iwl_mei_unregister_complete(9), iwl_mei_set_netdev(9), iwl_mei_tx_copy_to_csme(9), iwl_mei_host_associated(9), iwl_mei_host_disassociated(9), iwl_mei_device_state(9), iwl_mei_pldr_req(9), iwl_mei_alive_notif(9)

mwah 💋 xoxo bestie — source/version ./drivers/net/wireless/intel/i..., dated October 2026, and this icon is Life cycle(9) 💅✨