Re: Shopping for low-power ARM firewall SBC

[Martin Guy <martinwguy%gmail.com@localhost>]

On 9/15/09, Anders Lindgren <ali%df.lth.se@localhost> wrote:
>   I am looking for a low-power, preferrably-pc104-form-factor (or
> thereabouts) dual ethernet SBC type of ARM board with a CF slot for building
> a custom NetBSD firewall thingy.
>
>   I've also been looking at
> http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product=TS-7300
> which really has more features than I need, but a more attractive price.

The 7300 is based on the Cirrus EP93xx chip, which is a Soc providing
only one ethernet port, and it can't read or write more than 3 Mbytes
per second to it 100Mbps link. The ethernet hardware in the SoC is a
bit simple so you have to checksum all data with the main CPU, which
bottoms out at 100% system time at 3mbytes per second.
I dunno where they're deriving the second ethernet port from - maybe
it's on the the FPGA? - so if you're lucky the second ethernet will be
processor-efficient but you're still stuck with 3Mbytes/sec
throughput, if that matters.

That figure is for Linux - I assume NetBSD has to do the same thing.

   M