[Bloat] router chipset selection for cero-2

Dave Taht dave.taht at gmail.com
Sat Aug 11 21:44:18 EDT 2012


I can't remember with whom I was talking to about alternatives to mips
for home router processors, but this is the first new one I've seen in
the arm world that comes close to being one...

http://electronicdesign.com/article/digital/dualcore-cortexa9-tackles-communication-gateway-chores-74092

Most of the new arms are targetted at the burgeoning handheld markets.
A router has no use for video
and a big use for pci busses and multiple ethernet chips, which the
handheld targetted chips usually don't have...

All that said, the arm ecosystem appears to be healthier than the mips
ecosystem, overall.

The marvell kirkwood (dreamplug) is getting long in the tooth, the
octeon is too expensive (and the cool onboard hardware locked away
with binary blobs), the various atheros chipsets I'm aware of a little
too weak, the broadcoms a little too proprietary, and perhaps this new
chip from mindspeed would be "just right".

So... Anyone know about the comcerto 2000, or of anything else out there?

I figure cerowrt's ar71xx chipset currently has less than 18 months of
market life left to it.

While I would hope to have finished fixing the home router market by
then, deploying fq_codel, getting ipv6 made default, solving the
naming problems, deploying dnssec, etc and genericall  fixing all the
head-ends and the rest of the known internet universe, etc, I'm not
planning on it. :)

So thinking about what next piece of open, and more powerful hardware
to complete the research/work with is starting to weigh on my mind.

Big Goals:

Faster, better, not cheaper
Open source in all core components
802.11ac
Hardware rng
Capable of gigE ipv6 *routing*
Capable of being hooked to various advanced interfaces (gpon, cable, adsl)


-- 
Dave Täht
http://www.bufferbloat.net/projects/cerowrt/wiki - "3.3.8-6 is out
with fq_codel!"



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