Sorry another issue I have found with the APU1 (likely 2 as well):

Make sure your power adaptor 2.5mm plug is at least 10mm long. I bought a 
number that are not long enough and they fall out easily :(

Regards
Michael Knill







-----Original Message-----
From: Lonnie Abelbeck <li...@lonnie.abelbeck.com>
Reply-To: AstLinux List <astlinux-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
Date: Friday, 15 April 2016 at 10:07 PM
To: AstLinux List <astlinux-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: [Astlinux-users] PC Engines apu2c2 / apu2c4

A newly released hardware description and configuration has been added to the 
AstLinux documentation:

PC Engines APU2 Quad Core AMD GX-412TC
http://doc.astlinux.org/userdoc:board_pcengines_apu2

The APU2 comes in two versions:

apu2c2: 3 i211AT LAN / AMD GX-412TC CPU / 2 GB DRAM
USD $123.40 (board/case/power) mSATA SSD and shipping extra

apu2c4: 3 i210AT LAN / AMD GX-412TC CPU / 4 GB DRAM with ECC (ECC not yet 
enabled in BIOS)
USD $136.40 (board/case/power) mSATA SSD and shipping extra

Either APU2 will run AstLinux equally well, though for $13 more the apu2c4 
offers extra RAM and ECC for the future.

I personally purchased the PC Engines apu2c4 directly from PC Engines in 
Switzerland, I added the $17 msata16d SSD and shipping was $30.50 ("lowest 
cost" using "UPS express saver"). Incredibly, I ordered on a Monday and 
received the package on Thursday of the same week, delivered to the middle of 
the United States !

Of special note, some assembly is required, the heat spreader needs to be 
attached between the CPU and case, not difficult but tedious for the first time 
since the instructions are for the older APU1.

I added an optional push button power switch, this item is not currently 
offered by PC Engines.  It fits perfectly in one of the pre-cut antenna holes.

Total system power at idle is only 6 Watts.  The case is only slightly warm to 
the touch.  The CPU temperature is around 59 C at room temperature and idle.


I performed a standard iperf test (client-iperf -> LAN-apu2c4-WAN -> 
server-iperf), the apu2c4 will route at near Gb line speed (902 Mbps) at 80% 
idle (via top), much better than the APU1.

Though surprisingly, single-core processes seem to execute somewhat slower on 
the apu2c4 for a given clock speed than other boards, one benchmark took 77 
secs. vs. 61 secs. (normalized to 1 GHz).  Future BIOS tweaks may address this 
observation.  Though multi-threaded applications like Asterisk will use the 
APU2's 4-cores to it's advantage.

The OpenVPN test took 77.3 seconds, which implies an upper-limit of 41 Mbps 
throughput.  The AES-NI instructions help here.
--
openvpn --genkey --secret /tmp/secret
time openvpn --test-crypto --secret /tmp/secret --verb 0 --tun-mtu 20000 
--cipher aes-256-cbc
--

The current shipping apu2_160307 BIOS is fully functional, though missing ECC 
support and performance tweaks.

Clearly there is no one best AstLinux hardware solution, but in my limited 
testing, the PC Engines apu2c4 is a great fit for AstLinux.


Finally, the next release of AstLinux 1.2.7 is required to fully support the 
APU2, until that time I have uploaded a pre-release AstLinux Install ISO to 
test:
https://abelbeck.com/lonnie/share/astlinux-1.0-7638-genx86_64-serial.iso

Install an mSATA SSD, boot with a USB flash drive inserted containing the 
bootable AstLinux Install ISO, then interacting via the serial console at 19200 
baud, install to the mSATA SSD.

Lonnie


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Find and fix application performance issues faster with Applications Manager
Applications Manager provides deep performance insights into multiple tiers of
your business applications. It resolves application problems quickly and
reduces your MTTR. Get your free trial!
https://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/302982198;130105516;z
_______________________________________________
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https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/astlinux-users

Donations to support AstLinux are graciously accepted via PayPal to 
pay...@krisk.org.

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