PC Engines apu2 experiences

VAMike

@stewart said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

@vamike

@vamike said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

You leave the settings alone; the confusion is mostly people who don't know what they're doing repeating things they've read on reddit that were written by other people who don't know what they're doing. I would not be at all surprised if there are people pushing "tricks" to "speed up" crypto by doing idiotic things to override the defaults long after 2.5 is released.

Maybe that's the way it is now but it's hasn't always been clear. At one time there was a lot of discussion as to what to set where as the results were all over the place depending on the hardware you had. Right now, do you select hardware or software decryption? Or none at all? It all depends on your hardware and which encrypting you are doing.

It's been pretty clear except for people posting misunderstood and misleading openssl benchmark results and shooting themselves in the foot. The discussions mostly revolved around fanciful numbers in which screwing up the config would magically make a system do crypto even faster than it could access memory. Just leave it alone has been the correct action for a long time.

stephenw10

Mmm, that sslspeed thread was.... um...wild!

The default settings should work well for most. Some tuning can help. The asynchronous-crypto setting in 2.4.4 can dramatically increase ipsec throughput in some situations but can also break it in some edge cases so it not enabled by default in CE.

Steve

dugeem

PC Engines / 3mdeb have released a new legacy coreboot BIOS v4.0.23.

Interestingly the release notes (https://pcengines.github.io/#lr-15) note that ECC is enabled with this release.

So on my test APU2 apu2c4 I've updated the BIOS from v4.0.7 to v4.0.23. All working well although only storage in use is a 32GB mSATA card.

Unfortunately command dmidecode -t 17 (this should dump memory config) does not work with coreboot - so it is not easy to verify to determine if ECC is actually working. Just have to wait for some cosmic rays or something ...

Qinn

@dugeem Thanks for sharing the result, I just upgraded from v4.0.18 to v4.0.23, all went well (for now ;) )

dugeem

PC Engines / 3mdeb have released another new legacy coreboot BIOS v4.0.24.

The release notes (https://pcengines.github.io/#lr-16) note that CPB is now enabled with this release. CPB = Core Performance Boost ... the AMD equivalent of Intel Turbo Boost.

On my test pfSense system (2.4.4-RELEASE-p2) I'm seeing a useful 5-10% improvement in single core task performance.

Example using openssl:

openssl speed -elapsed -evp aes-128-gcm
...
type             16 bytes     64 bytes    256 bytes   1024 bytes   8192 bytes
aes-128-gcm      52651.25k   134318.72k   296380.07k   408489.98k   482383.19k

PowerD is enabled in adaptive mode. No significant change in CPU temperature was observed.

/boot/loader.conf.local
#hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest=C2
hw.igb.rx_process_limit=-1

Kudos to PC Engines & 3mdeb for these continuing BIOS improvements.

Edit: the hints hint.p4tcc.0.disabled & hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled in loader.conf.local are no longer required as they are now defaults in /boot/device.hints
Edit2: hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest=C2 does not apply from loader.conf.local

Qinn

I am on Bios v4.0.24 also.

edit: noticed that CPU temperature dropped. Normally it was around 54c now it's around 47c.

keen

i must upgrade my APU, but i would like to know why we can not use Mainline releases...

Veldkornet

@keen said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

i must upgrade my APU, but i would like to know why we can not use Mainline releases...

I use mainline, no problems here.

I’m on 4.9.0.2 currently.

Qinn

Please read this
http://www.pcengines.info/forums/?page=post&id=6D2EEC40-5928-463B-8BAE-7C74A46B2060&fid=DF5ACB70-99C4-4C61-AFA6-4C0E0DB05B2A

Cheers Qinn

https://pcengines.github.io/#mr-19

Qinn

@veldkornet said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

@keen said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

i must upgrade my APU, but i would like to know why we can not use Mainline releases...

I use mainline, no problems here.

I’m on 4.9.0.2 currently.

@veldkornet Do you use mSATA disk?

Veldkornet

@qinn Yes, I have a Samsung SSD 850 EVO mSATA 250GB.

Qinn

@veldkornet Thanks and good to know as the table on site mentioned, not tested.

0_1550319029889_ScreenHunter_183 Feb. 16 13.07.png

dugeem

For another quick comparison I updated my test APU2C4 to mainline v4.9.0.2. Quick & dirty performance testing showed gain for light loads was similar to legacy v4.0.24 (at least within a few percent).

I also compared full multi core performance on both versions and had similar results (again within a few percent).

@Qinn FYI I'm also running mSata SSDs in both my test and live systems.

Qinn

@dugeem said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

For another quick comparison I updated my test APU2C4 to mainline v4.9.0.2. Quick & dirty performance testing showed gain for light loads was similar to legacy v4.0.24 (at least within a few percent).

I also compared full multi core performance on both versions and had similar results (again within a few percent).

@Qinn FYI I'm also running mSata SSDs in both my test and live systems.

Thanks for confirming. Btw how do you install the bios, I boot into a USB stick with has tinycore and then flashrom?

Veldkornet

@qinn SSH into it and install flashrom. No need to boot from USB etc.

pkg install flashrom

Upload the firmware to /tmp with scp and run:
flashrom -w /tmp/apu2_v4.9.0.2.rom -p internal:boardmismatch=force

Shutdown pfSense, pull the power for 10 seconds, then boot up.

Qinn

@veldkornet said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

@qinn SSH into it and install flashrom. No need to boot from USB etc.

pkg install flashrom

Upload the firmware to /tmp with scp and run:
flashrom -w /tmp/apu2_v4.9.0.2.rom -p internal:boardmismatch=force

Shutdown pfSense, pull the power for 10 seconds, then boot up.

Thanks btw you always use the command :boardmismatch=force*?

Veldkornet

@qinn No, the board mismatch is probably not required. But at one point they kept changing the name between “apu2”, “APU2”, “PC Engines APU2”, etc. So I’ve just left it in now... although I think they’ve settled now :)

Qinn

@veldkornet I will try tomorrow when I have access to the FW, it seems they have kept there promise that mainline is good for pfS http://www.pcengines.info/forums/?page=post&id=6D2EEC40-5928-463B-8BAE-7C74A46B2060&fid=DF5ACB70-99C4-4C61-AFA6-4C0E0DB05B2A

Qinn

...up and running on Coreboot Mainline bios version 4.9.0.2, so far so good..

kevindd992002

@veldkornet said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

@kevindd992002 said in PC Engines apu2 experiences:

Does this mean that as long as you add those lines to /boot/loader.conf, running the latest FW's is fine?

I'm currently running 4.8.0.5 on pfSense 4.2.2 with a SSD in ZFS and except for the small things I mentioned about the reboot not working if the system had been running for a long time, all seems to be fine. I have those lines in my config as well.

Btw, what do those config lines do and why'd you recommend them? I'll flash the latest mainline release in a few hours.