AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 Family Launched

[Cliff Robinson]

With the AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 family the company has a new product including fanless operation, 4K60 encode/ decode, and 10GbE in a small package

The post AMD Ryzen Embedded R1000 Family Launched appeared first on ServeTheHome.

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[zir_blazer]

AsRock Industrial iBOX-R1000
AsRock Industrial NUC-R1000
DFI GH171
MEN Mikro Elektronik GmbH CB71

 

[gigatexal]

Did they have to skip out on decent Ethernet nics? This makes them Linux or windows only.

 

[SwanRonson]

*sigh* when will this 10Gb ethernet meme end

 

[matthelm]

How about one of these?
AMD IPC-FP5R 10GE

 

[RTM]

Hmm... Imagine if some manufacturer (like Netgate) paired one of these APU's with a 24 1g-port switch with the 2x 10G ports as uplink (something like a Mikrotik CRS/CSS-326), that could be a pretty nice little router/switch device. It wouldn't be too different to what Netgate already do with some of their ARM boards.

How about one of these?
AMD IPC-FP5R 10GE

Those Sapphire boards look pretty cool, if they are not too expensive they could be great replacements for my PC-engines APU2 boxes.

Did they have to skip out on decent Ethernet nics? This makes them Linux or windows only.

To be fair, I don't think there is any data to suggest that the AMD NICs aren't decent (or is there?).
Of course, it is not too unlikely that the software support isn't great, but that is usually fixable

I know Supermicro went in the direction of Intel NICs on the M11SDV boards, which does make a lot of sense, but if the AMD NIC's aren't terrible, it would be great if we could start using them in our labs etc.

 

[gigatexal]

They’re Realtek NICs from the spec sheets I saw so BSD is a nope.

 

[RTM]

They’re Realtek NICs from the spec sheets I saw so BSD is a nope.

Of course, you were referring to the boards linked earlier.

Some of the Sapphire boards that matthelm linked to have 10G NICs (AMD based with Marvell PHY), which could be great if they are comparable with Intel or even Broadcom NICs in quality.

 

[ReturnedSword]

Respectively, IMHO dinging these implementations for lack of an Intel NIC misses the point of the use cases these would be used for, not withholding the fact that Realtek NICs and their drivers have vastly improved since the early days of 1 GbE, even in situations like using BSD variants. It's fairly obvious that the R1000 is for the embedded market, specifically POS, kiosks, interactive advertising displays. For these use cases the data would most likely be loaded directly on the disk. If it were pulled over the network or cloud, network utilization would be minimal.

 

[RTM]

Respectively, IMHO dinging these implementations for lack of an Intel NIC misses the point of the use cases these would be used for, not withholding the fact that Realtek NICs and their drivers have vastly improved since the early days of 1 GbE, even in situations like using BSD variants. It's fairly obvious that the R1000 is for the embedded market, specifically POS, kiosks, interactive advertising displays. For these use cases the data would most likely be loaded directly on the disk. If it were pulled over the network or cloud, network utilization would be minimal.

I think it is an oversimplification to limit the devices to those uses, though I am sure most of the boards/devices were designed for those.

At least the boards with 10G NICs, could be interesting for firewalls (especially when paired with a VLAN switch).

Compared to the EPYC 3XXX series these SoCs have lower TDP making them interesting for (potentially) cheap fanless devices. Compared to some of the newer Atom SoCs, they probably have pretty good single threaded performance (though that should be benchmarked).

With regards to the quality of Realtek NICs, I would like to see something more factual than the typical stuff we see on forums, I have a feeling that it is largely nothing more than anecdotal evidence (good and bad). That all said, I am not inclined to give Realtek too much benefit of doubt.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

With regards to the quality of Realtek NICs, I would like to see something more factual than the typical stuff we see on forums, I have a feeling that it is largely nothing more than anecdotal evidence (good and bad). That all said, I am not inclined to give Realtek too much benefit of doubt.

<derail>
I'd love to see some actual testing done on them as well - I'm in the position where Realtek NICs lost my trust over 15 years ago; although I've seen plenty of anecdotes saying they behave fine now under X conditions, there's still enough people saying they've experienced bizarre lockups, performance issues or otherwise when using Realtek NICs under condition X to make me stay away. Given that if you buy an embedded system you're stuck with those NICs for its lifetime and if they end up being unfit for purpose you're stuck.

I'm rather surprised Realtek haven't had some sort of community engagement programme where they've handed out some Realtek kit for people make routers out of (or if there is such an effort I'd never heard of it). Are there any commercial netwrking products using Realtek NICs?

Alternatively might make an interesting project for StH or a forum member - change out NICs in a router for Realtek or whatever and see if performance or reliability suffers.
</derail>

 

[mackle]

The LAN port on my pfsense box is Realtek, at first it was super unreliable, but only because the cable wasn’t properly clicked in.

Since then it’s been completely fine for 1gbe.

 

[ReturnedSword]

Well what I'm referring to is that the implementations linked in the thread are industrial embedded solutions likely for POS, digital displays, etc. Of course a platform is just a platform; the manufacturer can do what they want with it if there's a big enough need in the market. For the intended purposes, the Realtek NIC is just fine and saves the manufacturer a few bucks. Consider also that these are embedded (i.e. long life deployment) systems. I doubt a manufacturer will risk the Realtek NIC if they were truly that bad (and they're not).

My humble point is that we can't always have what we want. For example I want a NUC/thin-ITX sized platform with an 8th gen Intel CPU with at least 4 Intel i350 NICs to upgrade my PfSense, but alas the products available on the market are nowhere near what I'd like. Most are 4th or 6th gen, with i2xx NICs or even 82583V.

On the topic of Realtek NICs, they have come a long way. Remember that Realtek AC97 audio was roundly pilloried, and even Realtek HDA audio wasn't that great. I was pleasantly surprised in my last workstation build that the high end Realtek HDA solutions are plenty adequate, certainly to my audiophile ears. Sure certain discrete sound cards are "better," but are they "$100-200 better?" The main problem I saw with past Realtek NICs 10-15 years ago was the driver first and the hardware second. For the most part the hardware portion has been fixed, and Realtek seems to be a bit more proactive with providing or helping Linux/BSD developers with the drivers. Sure it's not to the level of Intel's historic NIX support, but in my view, completely adequate for the intended uses.