E52C is available now

#21

There are a number of other boards with 1G+2.5G and these are not that interesting because the single GbE becomes a bottleneck to reach other links. The real benefit of 2.5G is not in fact 2.5G internet, but the ability to connect to a switch splitting into multiple ports by VLAN, without any single port saturating the device. For example at home I’m having almost 1 Gbps net in peaks, going through the firewall, and due to the trunk link being 1G, I’m facing network freezes between some servers when downloading large files. That’s unbearable. With >1G physical on shared links, there remains enough room for the rest of the communications.

What could work instead would be to use a dual-port network chip on a single lane. For example the i350-am2/am4 were once popular for this, allowing to connect two/four GbE ports to one or two 5GT/s lanes.

I can’t find such dual-2.5G controllers now. However I’ve found dual-port NICs using the ASM1182e PCIe switch for two Gen2x1. This chip is super cheap (around $3). It could be a reasonable option for cheap boards to use this with a single lane: 5GT/s (4 Gbps) split between two 2.5G ports is not bad at all, it allows up to 2.5Gbps on any port, and slightly less than 2 Gbps per port when both are saturated.

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#22

I received mine, it’s really a great device. Compact and moderately heavy, stays barely warm.
It draws 1.65W in idle with no cable connected, 1.91W with one 2.5G cable and 2.11W with two 2.5G cables.

iStoreOS (openwrt derivative) is installed on it and boots by default, offering a web interface that even contains a terminal. I rechecked the CPU and DRAM speed. The A55 cores work at 1.8 GHz, and the A76 at 2.3 GHz here. The DRAM exhibits the same phenomenon as on Rock5B, which is that the default DMC governor (dmc_ondemand) doesn’t seem sensitive to activity on the A76 cluster: by default, tasks on the A76 core face a 230ns DRAM latency, but when switching the DMC governor to “performance”, it drops to 130ns.

Thus, depending on what workload you expect to run, don’t forget to do that:

# cat /sys/devices/platform/dmc/devfreq/dmc/governor
dmc_ondemand
# echo performance > /sys/devices/platform/dmc/devfreq/dmc/governor

This command should work at the end of rc.local (before exit 0 though :slight_smile: ).

In this case the idle power with one cable increases from 1.91W to 2.35W. In performance mode, the DMC consumes 0.44W of extra power. During a RAM bandwidth test on all 6 cores, the consumption raises to 7.35W (i.e. exactly 5W above the idle one), while “openssl speed -multi 6 rsa2048” only draws two extra Watts above idle. All of this looks pretty reasonable to me.

BTW, other governors are available (check in available_governors), though I have not tested all of them. For me the huge performance increase is worth the small power increase.

I noticed that the model name in u-boot says “Easepi RK3588 Board”, I don’t know if it’s the official board name or a leftover from an earlier project. Next steps will be to try to boot it on mainline and install my firewall image on it.

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#23

Also, for those who like me will wonder why the HYM8563TS RTC was being reported in error, and in fact it’s just not mounted on this version. The schematics say “NC/HYM8563TS”, indicating it’s optional. I just didn’t know if it was expected to be there or not, and after opening, I can confirm that it’s not in it (U17 is empty).

I could successfully rebuild latest mainline 6.12-rc7 with my firewall’s config and Naoki’s DTS above, and at first glance everything’s OK (CPUs well detected and running at correct frequency, DDR properly sized and running at correct speed, eMMC working fine, PCI+network OK, LEDs blinking etc). Looks good! I’ll rebuild once Linus issues 6.12 in a few hours, and will soon replace my current firewalls!

The boot loader uses boot.scr, but automatically uses extlinux/extlinux.conf if found. That’s what I did to load my own kernel+image, however the partition is a bit tight (64MB). But the flash is not fully partitioned, only ~2G are in use so it was easy to create a 4th larger partition and move all boot stuff there. At this point, it’s left to remove the bootable flag from part 1 and set it on part 4. It would be easier if the original first part was larger to support multiple kernels and initrd, and also if extlinux was in use by default instead of boot.scr.

But quite frankly the device is really cool. A friend asked me if I had looked inside and I said “not yet, I didn’t need it”, and he replied “then that’s the proof that it’s well designed if you didn’t need a screwdriver to replace the OS”, which is totally true :wink:

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#24

Hello all

I just received mine today :slight_smile:
Does someone is able to give the link for openwrt ?

I have just seen this page on openwrt:
https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/23.05.5/targets/rockchip/armv8/
where it’s only possible to download this image : radxa_rock-pi-4a-ext4-sysupgrade.img.gz

however we can see on the shopping site that is supported.
Do I make a mistake ?

ksnip_20241120-172137
ksnip_20241120-172137.jpg1100×339 108 KB

#25

The image that was already present on mine is iStoreOS which apparently is a packaging of OpenWRT. I could even install existing packages. I just don’t know the relations between the two, but I found luci/uci etc on it.

#26

I also have a default iStoreOS installed on mine.
Because the router that I want to set, have to use the maximum of resources, I don’t want to have many layers like a docker image inside IStoreOS or using the router functionalities provided with IStoreOS.

On the download page of Radxa only 2 OS are available :

ksnip_20241121-001402
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I bought this device to own OpenWRT :frowning:

It’s frustating

#27

Not sure what you mean regarding docker. Do they use docker on iStoreOS ? And if so, for what purpose ? I didn’t notice it at all when I wandered on the FS, at least. I would be tempted to believe that all the basic stuff (routing, config etc) is just native. BTW, I used “uci” to modify the config so this at least is native.

#28

You can download the openWRT from:

https://github.com/ophub/flippy-openwrt-actions/releases/tag/OpenWrt_lede_save_2024.11

Here is the direct link:

https://github.com/ophub/flippy-openwrt-actions/releases/download/OpenWrt_lede_save_2024.11/openwrt_rk3588s_e52c_R24.10.24_k5.10.160-rk3588-flippy-2410a.img.gz

2 Likes
#29

Excellent, exactly what I needed

Thank you

#30

Say we have ports a,b (vlan tag 1 & 2) and the network data flow is like 2.5G(b1) -> 1G(a) -> 2.5G(b2)? So when all a, b1 and b2 are all on the SAME virtual switch, traffic is limited to the slowest link = GbE@(a)? It sounds a bit odd that bandwidth would be limited in this case, as traffic should never be routed to GbE (assume vlan tag 0 / none).

Yep, ASM1182e is a good add-on with perhaps US$5 extra on BoM? for m.2 b-key, if there is one with USB 2.0 only, at least one can use it with 4G LTE as a fall back when wired internet is down, and that’s what I am looking into. But say if a new version (E52D?) that would have ASM1182e -> m.2 b-key + RTL8125B, that would also be good, though in this case the variant should be a bit bigger, then why not adding the SoC GbE as well :slight_smile: though likely the layout would be quite different… that the SoC and RAM etc should be on the downward side, so there are space on the top to allow adding cards to a m.2 b-keyed slot, with a cool enclosure that also work as heatsink.

I have a “cheap” Intel 8505 based machine with 4x i226-V, but this mini machine is not really that “mini”, so the E52C definitely has an edge here over size, power consumption and cost… I think mine is like US$120 as I used my “spare parts” with it, or maybe US$200 if I have everything new.

#31

Not sure what you mean by “virtual switch” here since a “virtual switch” normally is pure software hence has no per-port speed limit. In any case, if you have, say, a proxy connected on port A at 1G and your LAN machines at 2.5G on port B (even spread between two VLANs), indeed the communication will be limited by the slower machine at 1G, but that will not restrict the rest of the communications that can still happen on the other port with the remaining unused 1.5G.

Network architecture is always about trying to optimize the slowest path in order to remove bottlenecks, and that’s why this machine with two 2.5G ports is great, it definitely permits to do this.

There would definitely be a use case for a 3rd port connected to the internal GMAC, but it would be a larger box, possibly be less interesting to some users. One use case I’m thinking about is connecting a WiFi access point. I no longer want to use internal WLAN cards in a firewall, all of them are crap and full of bugs, and it happens very frequently that the only way to work around a bug such as two machines not seeing each other, is to reboot the device, which you usually don’t want to do on your firewall, while if it’s a dedicated machine it’s not a problem.

Regarding 4G/LTE, have you considered using an external USB adapter to connect to the existing USB3 port ? Many of them are solely USB anyway, and some dongles start at even less than $10.

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#32

ordered one! will replace my nanopi :slight_smile:

added a ubiquiti 2.5G switch flex mini

woot

#33

Also, for those who’re wondering how to deal with the RTC at the moment, I’ve posted in this thread how I added one salvaged from another board. It’s really tiny and painful to deal with (I love soldering small stuff so that wan’t that much of a problem, just a matter of patience):

However in parallel I’ve ordered this RTC on Ali which should be exactly the same and which also integrates the battery:

It will just require desoldering the connector, and will be small enough to fit, supposedly with a 2ppm deviation (advertised). And with the same driver, I found a cheap SOP8 version of the HYM8563 whose manual soldering will be pretty manageable:

(yes that’s the price for 10pcs, roughly 43 pcs each). I’ll see if I can manage to make some small boards for it.

#34

I could use USB 4G externally and I have such a case + module, but I want it to be “self contain”, say I could use internal antenna as well? In terms of “design”, I think Banana Pi’s R3 mini is quite good, except that I wanted a thinner case and RK3582 as SoC :laughing:

#35

Sorry, but I don’t understand what you want to do nor what you have. You mean you have a 4G module ready to be soldered inside the enclosure, is that it ? Also “such a case” means what, the E52C case ? I though the board was always sold with the case.

#36

just say that I have such a USB enclosure you’d mentioned, that I had put in a m.2 4G LTE modem there, but it would be better if there’s a m.2 B-keyed + nano SIM slot on the board instead, as it would make E52C much more flexible, but definitely it means the overall size should be bigger. Otherwise, E52C is not much better than other “solutions”, maybe good in a way that there should be better software support as it is based on RK3588, which should have good support in Linux already

#37

Maybe there would be enough room for a nano-sim on the bottom of the board, under the cover. In this case we could imagine having a short m2 slot on the other side for the board, but yes, there’s a risk that it still inflates the enclosure, plus you’d need holes anyway to let an antenna pass through, since this is a metal enclosure. Maybe what you need is the (larger) E25 instead ?

Where I find E52C better than all other equivalent devices found to date is that it’s really designed as a router/firewall, i.e. it has 2 ports of the same speed, doesn’t require a screen nor a screwdriver to reconfigure/fix thanks to the console port, and is small and fanless. The only other one I’m aware that matches this is the E20C. The difference between the two really is the network speed (1G vs 2.5G). You can find equivalent or even better products using x86 CPUs (often coming with more ports), but then they’re significantly bigger and produce way more heat. Not to mention the much higher price by the way.

#38

Hello, I’m also looking to install openwrt on this device as indicated in the spec; can we install openwrt? or is this just to mislead us?

#39

Ditto and if someone could explain how to install that on the device that would be great.

#40

I have downloaded k3588-flippy and flash firmware with IOStore GUI interface (SHA doesn’t match :frowning: ).
I’m now on an ‘OpenWrt’, but I have two problems: the web interface doesn’t launch automatically (ssh: uhttpd -p 80 -h /www). And the package sources for update software are on a URL mirrors.tencent.com … In fact: nothing is official (openwrt).
I don’t know if I’m going to continue trying to use this device to protect a network: too many dark areas. I’m not too sure about this device. I’ll give myself a little more time to find out more.
And, the support doesn’t look lively outside China.