MediaTek Filogic — Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, and Wi-Fi 7 router SoCs

Filogic is MediaTek's router and access-point SoC line. The line covers Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E, and Wi-Fi 7 in three main parts: Filogic 630 for entry Wi-Fi 6 consumer routers, Filogic 830 for mid-range Wi-Fi 6E mesh nodes, and Filogic 880 for Wi-Fi 7 flagship products. Each part pairs an application-class Cortex-A cluster running Linux for the control plane with a dedicated Wi-Fi MAC, a hardware packet engine called WED (Wireless Ethernet Dispatch), and the radio front-ends that drive 2x2 to 4x4 antenna configurations. For systems engineers the interesting points are the WED packet acceleration model, the split between OpenWrt and MediaTek's enterprise SDK, and Filogic's position relative to Qualcomm IPQ807x and Broadcom BCM4908.

Filogic 880 — the Wi-Fi 7 flagship

Filogic 880 is the headline part. It combines two Cortex-A73 application cores at 1.8 GHz with two Cortex-A53 service cores, a Wi-Fi 7 MAC supporting Multi-Link Operation (MLO) across 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz bands simultaneously, 4K-QAM modulation, 320 MHz channel width, and a 4x4 antenna configuration on the 6 GHz band. The aggregate radio throughput specified by MediaTek is 36 Gbps across all three bands combined, which is the theoretical PHY rate before MAC overhead and real-world signal degradation.

The interesting architectural decision in the Filogic 880 is the Ethernet side. It ships with dual 10 GbE ports plus four 2.5 GbE ports, which is unusually generous for a consumer-router SoC. The intention is to feed the Wi-Fi 7 radios at their actual throughput — a Wi-Fi 7 client on the 6 GHz band can move 4-5 Gbps under ideal conditions, and a router with only gigabit WAN would be a comically obvious bottleneck. The 10 GbE ports are intended for WAN to a multi-gigabit service or for inter-router backhaul in a wired mesh deployment.

Multi-Link Operation explained briefly

MLO is the headline new feature of Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be). A single client device can associate with the access point across multiple bands simultaneously — typically 5 GHz and 6 GHz at the same time — and the AP transmits the same TCP flow across both bands at once. Two outcomes follow. First, latency drops because either band can deliver any given packet first. Second, effective throughput is the sum of the bands' capacities, not just the maximum of one. MLO requires both the AP and the client to support it; Filogic 880 supports MLO at the AP side.

WED — the packet acceleration engine

WED (Wireless Ethernet Dispatch) is MediaTek's hardware offload for forwarding packets between the Wi-Fi MAC and the Ethernet MACs without CPU involvement. The mechanism is the standard slow-path/fast-path split: the first packet of a new flow goes to Linux, which runs the netfilter rules, builds a flow descriptor, and pushes it into the WED's flow table. Subsequent packets matching that descriptor are forwarded entirely in hardware, with NAT translation and QoS marking applied by WED.

The practical impact is that a Filogic 880 with two A73 cores at 1.8 GHz can sustain multi-gigabit NAT throughput, which would otherwise saturate the CPU. Disable WED (for example to apply deep-packet-inspection rules that WED cannot accelerate) and NAT throughput drops by roughly a factor of three. The same architectural pattern exists on Qualcomm (NSS), Broadcom (FlowAccel), and is described in detail in Wi-Fi router system architecture.

Filogic 830 — Wi-Fi 6E mainstream

Filogic 830 is the Wi-Fi 6E mainstream part. It keeps the 2x A73 + 2x A53 CPU configuration but reduces the radio capacity to 4x4 on 5 GHz plus 2x2 on 2.4 GHz plus 2x2 on the new 6 GHz band, with 1024-QAM. Ethernet is dual 2.5 GbE plus four 1 GbE ports. The 830 is the natural choice for mid-tier mesh nodes and prosumer routers, and it has the best mainline kernel support of the current Filogic generation.

Filogic 630 — Wi-Fi 6 entry

Filogic 630 is the entry Wi-Fi 6 part, with just two Cortex-A53 cores at 1.3 GHz, no 6 GHz radio, and a 2.5 GbE WAN port plus four 1 GbE LAN ports. It targets the volume budget-router segment. WED is present in a reduced form (lower flow-table capacity).

Family comparison

Real products

The Filogic 880 generation reached retail in late 2023 and remains the volume Wi-Fi 7 silicon for major OEMs. Qualcomm's competing IPQ9574 and IPQ5332 reached retail slightly later in the cycle.

Software: OpenWrt versus enterprise SDK

MediaTek's approach is unusual in the Wi-Fi router silicon market. Where Qualcomm and Broadcom are notably hostile to community OpenWrt support — strict NDAs, signed firmware blobs, no public datasheets — MediaTek actively contributes to OpenWrt. The mt76 driver in mainline Linux supports the Filogic 830 well and the Filogic 880 partially. MediaTek-Labs publishes reference U-Boot, kernel patches, and example configurations on GitHub. The result is that hackable consumer routers (GL.iNet, Banana Pi, several smaller brands) almost universally pick MediaTek silicon, while the big OEMs (ASUS, TP-Link, Xiaomi) use the closed enterprise SDK for their stock firmware and OpenWrt as an unofficial fallback path.

Comparison with Qualcomm and Broadcom

Filogic's positioning is roughly: better open-source story than the two competitors, similar Wi-Fi 7 PHY capability, somewhat lighter CPU configuration than Qualcomm IPQ9574, much better availability for small OEMs and developers.

Building OpenWrt for a Filogic target

git clone https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt.git
cd openwrt
./scripts/feeds update -a && ./scripts/feeds install -a
 
# Configure for Banana Pi BPI-R4 (Filogic 880) — interactive
make menuconfig
# Target System: MediaTek Ralink ARM
# Subtarget: MediaTek Filogic 8 family
# Target Profile: Bananapi BPI-R4
 
make -j$(nproc) defconfig download clean world
 
# Output image lands in bin/targets/mediatek/filogic/
ls bin/targets/mediatek/filogic/

For Filogic 830 targets, the subtarget is "MediaTek Filogic 8 family" with profile "GL.iNet GL-MT6000" or "Bananapi BPI-R3". The build typically takes 20-60 minutes on a modern workstation.

Cross-references

• MediaTek landing — overall vendor view.
• MediaTek Genio — IoT silicon from the same vendor.
• Wi-Fi router system — full system architecture using Filogic-class SoCs.
• Cortex-A53 — the dominant CPU core in this line.
• MediaTek Filogic product page (external).
• OpenWrt MediaTek wiki (external).
• Banana Pi BPI-R4 documentation (external).
• mt76 driver in Linux mainline (external).