PC Engines apu2 experiences

A Former User

@stewart
May be it goes, but they will also being up with many more
actual models APU4D4 and APU6B4 and for building up
routers and firewalls it is one of the best options regarding
to the European energy costs too! It runs often on;

MikroTik RouterOS
pfSense
IPFire
OPNSense
OpenWRT
DD-WRT (custom build)
fli4li & eisfair
small servers such CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian based
with OpenLDAP, OpenDNS, FreeRadius, IDS/IPS
(sensors or servers) such Snort, Suricata and OSSec

So you should not seeing it only from the pfSnese side
and perhaps more wide open for other things too.

A Former User

@soder
Please don´t be worry a so small company is not able to
set up many boards and/or series as Netgate or a greater
one like Supermicro. They will be setting it up for a long
time run action and a long time placement in the market
that the entire cost coming out for them too and this is
not verry often so easy as many clients will be accepting
and/or thinking off. They try out to hit a real great maximum amount of use cases to match many of their clients. And this will be not very easy as saied above.

Many clients will be on the need of more RAM, many
will be seeing more CPU horse power and/or CPU cores,
some want to make it sorted with a RAM slot for 2 - 16 GB
of RAM that can be swapped over, and, and, and, and..........
Fitting all there needs, matching many use cases and hold
pay able (cheap) is not so easy that saied again.

A Former User

I dont understand, why pcengines is unable to come up with a modern more recent embedded design. They literally built their company on 1 single product. This 1 Ghz board is too weak since many years.

They are a very small company and this is their basis and
absolutely nothing should be going wrong with one series
so they will be perhaps broke. Please don´t forget this!

While we are able to get near Gbit speeds out of it,
we only use it up to 600Mbps if there's more than a few > people using it.

In Europe it is at this time (2022) very often to see ISPs
offering VDSL account with the maximum of 250/50 (down/up) so it is perhaps more clear to many other with
1 GBit/s why it is so popular in the western European side.

I sent them an email yesterday to see if they have
plans for something new since the CPU goes EOL
next year.

This will be one think they are looking for more and/or other underlaying hardware, but also with an looking eye
towards technically standards and customer wishes.

4 Core CPUs
10-100-1,0-2,5-5,0 GBit/s GBe ports
Intel QAT
AES-NI

mSATA / M.2 SSD slot
mSATA / M.2 LTE modem slot (with SIM)
mSATA / M.2 WiFi 5/6 (acx) cards option
Laptop RAM module option (2,4,8,16 GB ECC/nonECC)
either you need it.

Not sure if I'll ever hear back from them but it's
at least worth checking out.

Again many of the forum users here, have a look from the pfSense point to this or that hardware, for sure because it is the pfSense forum, but as I am informed this hardware
will be be in any kind of usa case in game for many different things! And since Soekris was gone (broke), it
was much more peoples that are buying and using this
hardware from PC Engines.

programmers will be able to run their code on small
servers to how it performs
snort, suricata and OSSec sensors and servers
OpenLDAP, OpenDNS, FreeRadius, DHCP and NTP Servers and/or small honeypots
smaller NAS servers
smaller LTE WiFi routers and/or Firewall for camping
and outdoor usage
Small OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NetBSD servers

There are dual cases for two board at the varia store
and also for one board with an added PCIe card to bring
ports and/or connectors outside. Redundant routers firewalls load balancers and, and , and... so on.

At Timberwolf you may be able to buy a case that is also nice looking inside of your living room, for APU2/3 boards.

The entire use case is really high, and will be perhaps also
scaling with another CPU and amount of ram (2-16 GB)
than untangle, endian and ClearOS might be also interesting use cases for that piece of hardware for small
company and/or home (SOHO) usage. But the main argument for the one or other way is in real the colling.
Cooling this unit silent, and save over a longer time may
be the most argument for them to go with this or another
CPU. Who knows how it comes, but I for myself would wish
the the best for the catual and upcomming time.

kevindd992002

What is an alternative to the apu2c4 if I need to upgrade mine to handle 1Gbps (or more) Internet speeds?

stephenw10

The Netgate 4100.

A Former User

@kevindd992002

What is an alternative to the apu2c4 if I need to
upgrade mine to handle 1Gbps (or more) Internet speeds?

Since version 2.6 of pfSense it is not so easy to answer
if you are not using PPPoE the entire WAN connection
will be running over several queues and if your device is sorted with many CPU core, you can run more queues
over more CPU core for sure. So it is also pending on
the entire rest and/or other circumstances, as I see it
right. By the way if you are using PPPoE and you play
around with some settings here and there over a
weekend or so you may be see here and there also
something around 800 MBit/s - 900 MBit/s throughput
and with the overheat on top counting you will be
more near to your real 1 GBit/s as you could be.

Is also not that bad as I see it right, or?

As @stephenw10 wrote the Netgate 4100 or 6100 will be
nice to do so. Or if you need some stuff to realize what the
Netgate might be not able to serve you, I will be pretty sure the entire Supermicro Intel Atom C3x58 line will
be able to route a real 1 GBit/s at the WAN for you.

But with the Netgate ones you will be ensure that all
is running fine and compatible. And a pfSense+ (Plus)
or an TSNR option will be available too.

I personally owns three of the APU devices, one for
pfSense+ (Plus) with lab or home license, one with MikroTik RouterOS and one with OpenWRT. For my
home lap and /or home network it is enough and I
am happy with it.

dugeem

Hello all,

Some of you may recall a number of APU2 tweaks I posted in this thread back in April 2020. I promised that when my home internet evolved to 500Mb/s I'd worry some more. Well it's happened - I now have an asymmetric HFC 500/50 service up & running (for only a modest price increment on my previous 250/25 service).

For multiple connections the APU2 throughput is fine for home use but single connections are a bit constrained - typically maximum download is around ~370Mb/s. This seems a bit lower than expected.

As always there is YAT = Yet Another Tunable In this case the ability to change the FreeBSD 12 iflib interface TX tasking via tx_abdicate tunable (see FreeBSD iflib(4) man page)

It turns out that our BSDRP friends documented the FreeBSD 12 tx_abdicate sysctl back in 2019 (not useful for the pfSense community back then as pfSense was still using FreeBSD 11) ... https://bsdrp.net/documentation/examples/forwarding_performance_lab_of_a_pc_engines_apu2#enabling_tx_abdicate_iflib_drivers

Caveats: The only known issue with tx_abdicate is if IPSEC is in use - enabling tx_abdicate may result in lower IPSEC throughput. In this case leave it disabled (ie default).

Enabling this tunable on the LAN interface yields a useful ~20% throughput boost - in my case for single connections I'm now seeing ~450 Mb/s (with no other config changes).

So a quick summary of my current APU2 tweaks:

Upgrade APU2 BIOS to enable CPB (mainline v4.9.0.2 or later - suggest v4.16 or later)
Add sysctl hw.em.rx_process_limit=-1 to /boot/loader.conf.local (note the prefix change from hw.igb to hw.em)
Add following sysctls to either /boot/loader.conf.local or /etc/sysctl.conf

dev.igb.0.iflib.tx_abdicate=1
dev.igb.1.iflib.tx_abdicate=1
dev.igb.2.iflib.tx_abdicate=1

NB1 yes there is sysctl device naming inconsistency ... hw.em & dev.igb
NB2 some of you might notice the suggestion in the linked BSDRP report to disable IP redirects - this is no longer necessary due to subsequent enhancements to FreeBSD 12-STABLE

Anyway for me the APU2 continues on - let's see what pfSense CE 2.7 / pfSense+ 23.01 (based on FreeBSD 14) will bring.

Enjoy!

stephenw10

Hm, that's interesting. I don't have an APU2 but they have i210 NICs which I expect to be recognised as igb. I wouldn't expect that hw.em sysctl to do anything. They are both the e1000 driver under iflib though.

Steve

dugeem

@stephenw10 Yes it's confusing. I am merely following advice from FreeBSD UPDATING

20170109:
	The igb(4), em(4) and lem(4) ethernet drivers are now implemented via
	IFLIB.  If you have a custom kernel configuration that excludes em(4)
	but you use igb(4), you need to re-add em(4) to your custom
	configuration.

In any case the rx_process_limit tweak was only a 1-2% improvement (at least with previous versions).

dugeem

In their usual style PC Engines have released a long term APU2 EOL statement.

Appears that the APU2 CPU - the AMD Embedded G series GX-412TC - will move to EOL status later this year. PC Engines are intending to do a final buy of AMD GX-412TC CPUs and associated components with APU2 board availability running into 2024.

No successor is currently planned by PC Engines.

PC Engines EOL notice: https://www.pcengines.ch/eol.htm

logan5247

@dugeem sad to see this, love my APU2.

Thoughts on a future replacement that is small, low-power, and fanless? I haven't checked the NICs on these, but these pop into mind right away...

Protectli
Fitlet3
Seed Studio Odyssey Blue
ZimaBoard
ODROID H3
A fanless SuperMicro?
Netgate 1100 or 2100
Some no-name AliExpress boxes?

stephenw10

What actual features would you be looking for?

logan5247

@stephenw10 I'm a home user, so pretty basic:

1Gbps
Handful of VLANs
pfBlockerNG

Just added the Netgate 1100 and 2100 to my list above.

stephenw10

1Gbps throughput or 1G NICs? Or both I guess...

Other hardware requirements? mPCIe slots? Intel NICs?

Stewart

@logan5247 I've looked for a while. I suppose PC Engines isn't exactly a well established brand but we've been using them since Netgate used them so they've always been a great reliable product. I don't know of any others that have a whitebox at that price that has an established US presence and distribution. Netgate directly has some good hardware as well as Protectli but both are quite a bit more expensive. Quotom seems to have intriguing models but no US distribution and many models appear only through AliExpress.

Also, ISPs are moving beyond 1Gb connections so we are moving up to have 2.5Gb ports. A few weeks ago I had a Spectrum rep tell me they are looking to roll out symmetrical coax which would be a big jump. All together I would think that the J4125 units would be under-powered in a year or two, even if it's 3x the processing of an APU2. Then all these newer units are using the i226-v chips now which isn't even available in mainstream pfSense yet. (I believe 2.7 will have support for that.)

I wish I had a recommendation for you. I've been hoping that there would be a successor to the APU2 built on a newer Zen platform with i-225V. I think those would sell incredibly well but it looks like that won't happen. I've been looking at a HUNSN model but was kinda waiting for the NIC support in pfSense. But then again, who is HUNSN and will they even be around in 3 years?

Dobby_

I only "know" that there is a Board called or named APU7 based on APU2 but with 2,5 GBit/s ports (Intel i225), but I
am not knowing when and where it will be sold, or even
if this will be the or a chance to get hands on for us all.

During the search fot the latest BIOS for my both APU4
and APU6 I was finding out that the latest BIOS was also
tested on a board that called APU7, that´s all I know about.

Pleas go to the bottom line of that link and choose APU7
to view the tests about and with it. PC Engines Regression test results

Pleas e have a look over the latest BIOS description:
PC Engines GitHub.io BIOS files

v4.19.0.1
Release date: 2023-02-02

Changed:
Rebased with official coreboot repository commit 2ccbcc5
Removed configuration and mainboard files for apu1 due to the board being dropped from upstream coreboot

*Known issues:
APU7 iPXE network boot with i225 NICs does not work

apuled driver doesn't work in FreeBSD.
Check the GPIOs document for workaround.

some PCIe cards are not detected on certain OSes and/or in certain mPCIe slots. Check the mPCIe modules document for solution/workaround.

booting with 2 USB 3.x sticks plugged in apu4 sometimes results in detecting only 1 stick certain USB 3.x sticks happen to not appear in boot menu

booting Xen is unstable

Rumors about PC Engines board here in Germany
were also talking about an device from PC Engines
that will be named or called IPU and comes out
after the APU series will be set really to EoL status,
but who knows if this will be all real?

VAMike

The handwriting was on the wall for a while. I don't think they ever had the volume to compete with the various multi-port boxes coming out of china on the high end (which can be configured with much more powerful processors than could fit in the APU form factor) nor with stuff like the raspberry pi on the low end. Soekris ran into the same problems but threw in the towel earlier. The niche they filled was just getting too small.

Stewart

@dobby_ The APU2 can barely do gigabit. Not sure how it was expected to go higher.

Stewart

@vamike Did they do any marketing or outreach? The only place I know them from is that we used to purchase them through Netgate before they took over pfSense. When they stopped using them we tracked them down and began purchasing and using them on our own. For the last several years they've just been our go-to box dozens of times. I hate to move on from them.

VAMike

@stewart to whom? for what purpose? I really just don't think there's enough of a market that doesn't want either 1) cheaper, 2) smaller/lower wattage, or 3) more powerful. And there are existing players in each of those segments. We used to buy a good number of APUs as well, but for the past couple of years we've been going with faster higher-core intel boxes with more interfaces, m.2, and expandable RAM, because we can use the extra capacity for not much more money and not much of a larger device---we just didn't need the specific constraints of the APU form factor. On the flip side, small ARM boards can be found cheaper, smaller, and lower power than the APU. Sure, there are people for whom the APU line is a better fit than anything else, the question is whether there's enough of them. Scale is a thing, and the lower the volume the more expensive each part becomes until it's not cost competitive at all. There are probably disproportionately more of them here given the limited architecture options for pfsense, but I don't think you can build a sustainable business on the set of people who want to run pfsense but don't want to buy hardware from netgate.