[Soekris] Net 4801 performance

[Jeff Quast]

On 9/6/06, Stefano & Alberto <polna.antlab at gmail.com> wrote:

> I have performed the same measurements with an old 486 PC (should be the
> same architecture as Soekris' Geode, right?) with NatSemi PCI cards, and
> i've measured around 85Mbit/s... does anyone know why there's this big
> difference? I expected the Soekris board to have similar performance as
> a PC with similar processor...

When it comes down to it, the AMD Geode based machines are really damn
weak. Why is this so suprising to everybody? It is -hardly- a similar
processor. It just shares some of the same instruction sets. Its like
comparing a 486 intel to a cyrix based 486.

As somebody else has partially pointed out earlier in the thread, the
network adapters MAY be partly to blame.  I think I've also read
something of the topic that this geode amd processor or the bus it
communicates acrossed is very poor at handling interrupts compared to
a relatively similarly featured intel x86 machine.

I'm not a systems architect, so I can't say much on interrupt
handling, I just know this is a very common complaint with amd geode
based boards. I am continually suprised at what people expect out of
these boards.

For instance, there are similar complaints of using a crypto
accellerator card. Because of the high interrupts and the slow
communication between the CPU and card, it is  hardly worth using.
I've seen openssl tests that perform *lower* on some encryption types
when using a crypto card on soekris, or any other similarl amd geode
based board such as a wrap.

It's slow, cheap, and is low power and efficient. Its like buying a
station wagon and wondering why its so slow.