Intel XScale processor

ksm · Tue Mar 08, 2005 10:06 am

Hi,

We have a pile of embedded PC's that all have Intel XScale processors, running at 533Mhz.
They have 2 Mini-PCI slots, so we were looking at the possibility of using them for wireless AP's running MikroTik.

Does RouterOS support the Intel XScale processor?

Thanks.

Eugene · Tue Mar 08, 2005 10:15 am

jober · Tue Mar 08, 2005 10:14 pm

Those would be great boards but I’m sure MT is not about to port their Router OS to a board that would compete and if not destroy the sales of their own boards.
But maybe they will be able to OEM the boards and use a hardware lock so you could only buy their boards. There’s a company that sales boards that have custom hardware IDs so maybe they could do something like this.

lastguru · Tue Mar 08, 2005 11:54 pm

Did you see the new RouterBOARD 500? maybe that is something you would want to use instead of those xScale?

blue · Tue Mar 08, 2005 11:59 pm

Did you see the new RouterBOARD 500? maybe that is something you would want to use instead of those xScale?

Where can we find information for RB500?

lastguru · Wed Mar 09, 2005 12:59 am

http://www.routerboard.com
It is cheaper and more powerful than the RB200. Please contact sales@mikrotik.com for more details.

blue · Wed Mar 09, 2005 11:22 am

Few questiong about RouterBOARD 532

CPU is 266MHz but MIPS? Whould that be enough to use 802.11a on long distances with nstream? StephenPatrick sugested 1.5GHz for that usage...

Is 32MB DDR enough for MTK?

Great stuff "daughterboard"

OK, thats it...

RaynMan · Wed Mar 09, 2005 11:51 am

The new unit looks interesting...

A couple of things we're wondering on our side...

What was the thought/reasoning behind having 6 ethernet ports on the daughterboard. It would make more sense to us to use to have two types of daughterbaords. One with the ethernet and mini-PCI and one with purely the mini-PCI.

Is the 200-300MBps aggregate throughput for the 266MHz version of the RB500 or the 400MHz version? What would be the aggregate throughput for the other version?

Do you have case diagrams available for the new RB500 as you do for the RB230?

Wed Mar 09, 2005 11:53 am

there is no other version for different CPU speed. you simply have the option to down-clock the speed to 266 if you really want to.

Hammy · Mon Mar 21, 2005 4:20 am

CPU is 266MHz but MIPS? Whould that be enough to use 802.11a on long distances with nstream? StephenPatrick sugested 1.5GHz for that usage...

1.5GHz per link or total? I was looking at 4 sectors and 2 backhauls using an XP2200.

stephenpatrick · Mon Mar 21, 2005 11:42 am

Hi,

Our measurements on Pentium M 1.5GHz show just over 20% CPU usage for full throughput 72Mbps TCP or 83Mbps UDP in P2P.
So if you wanted to build an Nstreme base station with 4 sectors with max loading, or one with full speed backhaul built in, it'd do the job fine.
VIA or other family CPUs would probably behave differently due to pipelining, cache etc.

Regards

Hammy · Mon Mar 21, 2005 5:28 pm

Differently as in more poorly?

stephenpatrick · Mon Mar 21, 2005 6:19 pm

Actually I don't have any decent data, and probably only MT would know the answers, but instinct tells me the level of pipelining in the processor, cache, pre-fetch algorithms etc will affect performance.
In our tests 1.5GHz Pentium M runs considerably better than a 1GHz via, i.e. better than the 50% clock rate increase would suggest
[footnote: and does not suffer the lock-up problems we had with EPIA boards] That might be the CPU, support chipset, PCI bridge, BIOS or some combination of effects.

In the Wintel world there are well established benchmarks for CPU and platform, I guess we (users) should put some together for CPU usage% and throughput using Mikrotik-powered routers in classic benchmark application setups (bridging, wireless throughput, EOIP, routing, queues).
Anyone got time for that?

Intel XScale processor

Intel XScale processor

LOL, Kill RB sales, NOT!

RB500 questions...