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Post subject: erebos on Intels Atom board: a small review
 Posted: Jul 02, 2008 - 03:32 AM
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Joined: Dec 04, 2006
Posts: 255
Location: Bavaria
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Hello folks,
last week i've got this brandnew Mini ATX board from Intel (D945GCLF). It's loaded with an Intel Atom processor (D230, 1.6 Ghz, consumes only 3 watts). lspci shows:
Quote:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
This small motherboard is rather cheap: you get it here in Germany for approx. 60-65 Euros. I installed 1GB DDR2 RAM, a 2.5" PATA HDD and the actual sidux erebos release (whatever else  ).
In my village cable DSL is not available, so i use umts (hsdpa) to get a usable speed. My primary purpose is to use this machine like a dsl router, it has to manage all the traffic between my private network and the internet (DNS, gateway). Not that big problem, but an efficient work of the ethernet and USB chips is needed.
During boot of the live cd i see 2 penguins, cause seems that this cpu is able to run threads in parallel (hyperthreading), but it has definitely one core only. sidux boots without problems, but after some tries it should be mentioned that it's better to use the "nosmp" cheatcode or an UP kernel to get a much better performance.
The ethernet chip (Realtek RTL 8101 or 8102) works with the r8169 module and i didn't get any connections at first. Using boot cheatcode "pci=noacpi" helped. The r8169 driver supports gigabit chips but the 8101 supports only up to 100Mbits. Basically it works fine, but the output of "ifconfig" looks strange, look at the dropped RX packet counter:
Quote:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet Hardware Adresse 00:1c:c0:45:2b:dd
inet Adresse:192.168.0.6 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Maske:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metrik:1
RX packets:73084 errors:0 dropped:515518579 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:72350 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:1000
RX bytes:8133217 (7.7 MiB) TX bytes:31937157 (30.4 MiB)
Interrupt:11
Repeating "ifconfig" several times shows that no one of these counters works correct. Not so important, because the driver does his work in a responsible way on the other side.
At first my internet connection via usb has become slower, i got only around 700 Mbits, normally it should be up to 3000 Mbits (it's UHCI, 12 Mbits). I don't know what the real reason for this behaviour was, anyway i started to build an UP kernel for this single core cpu, which solved this issue.
Let me sum up:
Principially sidux runs fine on this board but you have to keep an eye especially to the network and usb interfaces, for best performance a special kernel build is recommended (i have a deb package, send me a message, if you're interested).
I'm impressed of this p4 cpu with a small passive heat sink consuming only 3 watts. But don't anticipate a fanless board, the neighboured "north bridge" chip needs fan cooling and you think this is the cpu at first sight.
In summary my system consumes 30-35 watts, a kernel (using 300 modules only) compiles in 30 minutes, that's not bad for a system like this.
I hope this was a little bit useful for someone and sorry for my sometimes probably confusing English 
Greets, L.W.
P.S.: Do not try it with "nyx", due to a bug in the r8169 module udev will crash and bootup is aborted - this is fixed in erebos. |
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Everybody knows, that's how it goes ... (L. Cohen)
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Post subject: RE: erebos on Intels Atom board: a small review
Posted: Jul 02, 2008 - 10:10 AM
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Joined: Nov 25, 2006
Posts: 2383
Status: Offline
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| There are several improvements and fixes for those RealTek cards staging for kernel 2.6.27 (to be released in roughly 3 months), following your post the ACPI code might need some quirks as well. |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 02, 2008 - 10:27 AM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2007
Posts: 346
Location: Italia
Status: Offline
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Btw,
I just asked to a friend of mine who went to US for a month to come back with a similar couple of those atom-intel boards, but delivering me the mini-ITX formats.
When they arrive here I intend to use them as a test board for sidux. If anybody is interested too, we could team up to see what's still on da plate to do. |
_________________
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SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLVM
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AC MILAN CaMpIoNe d'EuRoPa 2oo7!!!!
AC MILAN WoRLd ChAmPiOn 2oo7!!!!
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 02, 2008 - 03:45 PM
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Joined: Dec 04, 2006
Posts: 255
Location: Bavaria
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slh: thanks for the info - it doesn't hurry, for now the driver is running steady. All of the acpi features aren't needed, f.e. speedstep doesn't make sense for a processor consuming only 3 watts (in my experience this is also not supported). Since a few days now the system runs stable all around the clock and fullfills my needs.
jaegermeister: i look forward to hear from you about your experience. This board is mini ITX, i don't know about availability of other boards with atom cpu. |
_________________
Everybody knows, that's how it goes ... (L. Cohen)
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 02, 2008 - 04:31 PM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2007
Posts: 346
Location: Italia
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| Oh, I was then misled by your first post speaking about mini ATX (btw, dunno if they even exist... only heard about micro ATX boards)... anyway I hope to put my grasp on one of those boards by the half of July.... everything now depends on when my friend is coming back from US with the longed for boards.... |
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SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLVM
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AC MILAN CaMpIoNe d'EuRoPa 2oo7!!!!
AC MILAN WoRLd ChAmPiOn 2oo7!!!!
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 02, 2008 - 07:28 PM
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Joined: Nov 25, 2006
Posts: 2383
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LessWire wrote:
All of the acpi features aren't needed, f.e. speedstep doesn't make sense for a processor consuming only 3 watts (in my experience this is also not supported).
It's totally uninteresting how much power the CPU needs, look at the whole package.
CPU: ~3W
chipset: ~20W
--> D945GCLF ~25W, which isn't bad by any means - just not as good as it appears to be for the casual observer.
- add a 3.5" hdd, another ~10W
- whatever you need besides this.
Basically it tallies to a 80W PSU (60W with very selected components, like 2.5" HDD, no ODD, no PCI, little RAM), to be on the safe side (if you buy a 200-500W PSU, a lot of power gets wasted there), unfortunately <200 W PSUs and Mini-ITX cases in general aren't the cheapest. |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 03, 2008 - 12:24 AM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2007
Posts: 346
Location: Italia
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slh wrote:
It's totally uninteresting how much power the CPU needs, look at the whole package.
CPU: ~3W
chipset: ~20W
--> D945GCLF ~25W, which isn't bad by any means - just not as good as it appears to be for the casual observer.
- add a 3.5" hdd, another ~10W
- whatever you need besides this.
Basically it tallies to a 80W PSU (60W with very selected components, like 2.5" HDD, no ODD, no PCI, little RAM), to be on the safe side (if you buy a 200-500W PSU, a lot of power gets wasted there), unfortunately <200 W PSUs and Mini-ITX cases in general aren't the cheapest.
Yep... but, nowadays, with increasing oil prices, electricity has become something to $ave.... especially for machines which could run 24/7 in home appliances (e.g. P2P node).
Btw, what about using Compact flash cards???? Their consumption is far below 1W.... an 8GB compact flash could easily be the system and a 2.5" hd could provide enough mass storage....
And btw, at a fair I found a used 90W micro PSU for 5¤..... not bad, ain't it? |
_________________
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SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLVM
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AC MILAN CaMpIoNe d'EuRoPa 2oo7!!!!
AC MILAN WoRLd ChAmPiOn 2oo7!!!!
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 03, 2008 - 02:50 AM
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Joined: Dec 04, 2006
Posts: 255
Location: Bavaria
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I think, slh's comment applied to comparison between power consumption of the board on the whole and the CPU, but not under environmental aspects.
jaegermeister, you are right, thats the point why i prefer this board for special purposes. I'm happy to have a solution "eating" only 25 watts and nevertheless a system with useful speed. Alone the fact to build a nearly fully featured 64 bit P4 cpu with such a low power consumption - I find it amazing!
I agree with slh, at first it's not an inexpensive solution and you can get a more powerful system for the same price, but let's assume an optimal power management, which of these eat only 25 watts?
Only 10 watts more in a 24/7 environment rise the consumption up to roughly 90 kilowatts/year (10*24*360). Assuming cheap 12 cents/kW result in ~10 "eurobucks" after a year and i think this is a conservative calculation.
jaegermeister, if you are satisfied with some Gigabytes space on a CF card, it can be a fine solution. For my needs (see above) a 2,5" drive is better, i mount all tmp and log directories to ramdisk and the hd drive will be switched off most of the time.
A 90 W micro PSU - that sounds like it is this very small one manufactured by PICO - i love this part! Only 5,- ¤, don't forget to order some for me also!
greets, L.W.
EDIT: calculation corrected, see following post of frogbert (thanks!) |
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Everybody knows, that's how it goes ... (L. Cohen)
Last edited by LessWire on Jul 04, 2008 - 02:42 AM; edited 1 time in total
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 03, 2008 - 10:53 AM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2007
Posts: 346
Location: Italia
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To be honest, rather than finding that PSU in a nice and glittering box, I found it in the "scrap can" of one of the exhibitors... sometimes people do not even realize what they have, just because it doesn't have a big market.... but in Italia is full of these exhibitions where you can buy used computer stuff (in Milano there's one every 3 months, for instance), they are all over the territory on an almost weekly basis.
Funny, in those fairs it's soooo difficoult to find people selling mini-ITX stuff (at those fairs just a stable guy and some occasional ones), and usually they sell the old crap by VIA (not even the bleeding edge like Jetway). The same old story... ignorant people want big dual core boxes for wordprocessing and emailing... and do not even realize that they spend money twice: first for useless power, second for electrical power waste.
Btw, jetway has really the coolest mini-ITX available (on a couple of models you can mount your own dual core both AMD and Intel.... but I wandered for months through internet to find an ULV Core 2 Duo before quitting....): basically on those you gotta install power-hungry cpus, which is exactly the opposite of what I had in mind.....
I'm in fact designing this system with power consumption in mind, like you. Btw, CF is meant to be just the system disk, massive storage will be for sure a 2.5", either directly connected or through USB (so that I can shift storage between office and home...). Oh, it would be nice if you'd put those settings for sending all temp crap to ramdisk here, so that I could see them and we could examine them together, even with slh, who always has a nice piece of advice for everybody....
And you're totally right, on the long run, by current prices, investing in power-efficient hardware gives great benefits in terms of costs over utility invoices.... that why I moved in the quest for such a board. Also considering that I'm into trashware, and used to install sidux on old scrapped P2's and P3's (btw right now at work I'm using a whooping self-built athlon 650MHz.... people just do not realize that old computers are a *richness* in order to face the world crisis we're flying to....) I think that on the atom linux will literally *fly* in comparison....
Btw, did u benchmark amd64 vs i686 code? Is an amd64 install worth on that platform?
Another stuff I'm curious about: considering it has intel video chipset... will compiz fusion run on it?????
Oh, btw, now we get to the cool side of the stuff... have a glance at what kinda *case* I found to refurbish with the incoming motherboard.....
http://eintr.net/systems/sun/sparcclassic/ |
_________________
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SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLVM
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AC MILAN CaMpIoNe d'EuRoPa 2oo7!!!!
AC MILAN WoRLd ChAmPiOn 2oo7!!!!
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 03, 2008 - 12:03 PM
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LessWire wrote:
I agree with slh, at first it's not an inexpensive solution and you can get a more powerful system for the same price, but let's assume an optimal power management, which of these eat only 25 watts?
Only 10 watts more in a 24/7 environment rise the consumption up to roughly 2600 kilowatts/year (10*24*30*360). Assuming cheap 12 cents/kW result in ~300 "eurobucks" after a year and i think this is a conservative calculation.
Actually you're slightly misunderstanding me (personally I'm looking for a similar solution as well, but GBit/s ethernet would be a serious feature missing almost everywhere). Just that my evaluation is based on the whole package and doesn't pick out the CPU alone. The D945GCLF is quite an improvement over its predecessor, the D201GLY2 with its slightly faster Celeron 220, VIA C7 based solutions can beat it though (at comparable performance). Nevertheless, you're still looking at ~30W idle consumption, while a P3-1000 (desktop CPU) based notebook (battery removed, lid closed) does only require 15 watts, a pentium M 1.5 GHz (which is seriously quicker than the Atom) draws about 16-17W idle under the same circumstances; what matters most is the idle power consumption, as these systems are idle or close to idle most of the day, peak consumptions under load don't matter much in comparison.
That said, the D945GCLF really is a nice package, but it could be a lot better if the chipset selection would have been more thought out (as the comparisons with notebooks show). What is a pity though, is that totally "unrelated" parts, like case and PSU, drive the prices that high, while the real core components (mainboard and RAM) are cheap in comparison. And even then, there would be way better (both, performance and power consumption) solutions based on slightly dated notebooks - just that, as with jaegermeister's 5 EUR PSU, you simply cannot get those for competitive prices at the next store... |
Last edited by slh on Jul 03, 2008 - 02:32 PM; edited 1 time in total
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 03, 2008 - 02:17 PM
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Location: Italia
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slh, I agree with you... there just one premium factor of this board compared to laptops... it's that it's mini-ITX format, and this allows to stick it in places where even a deassembled laptop would be problematic. Just now with asus eee or msi wind the market is starting the "compact way" (unless you could find at an affordable price one of those superexpensive compact sony vaios of the past, but I woulnd't have the heart to wreck one of those....).
So, with such mini-ITX solution I can put a PC (without buying unnecessary equipment) in incredible places (e.g. below a car seat) without messing up with power.... theoretically, this could be really perfect for special appliances (e.g. portable jukebox which also surfs internet etc.), requiring only some 12V input and small space, also using some CF or USB as main drive.
Btw, I bought some time ago one of those gum-keyboards which can be rolled up (again 5¤ each eheheh).... unbelievably comfortable, they could provide a swift "config board" for those embedded systems which comfortably sits in whatever drawer |
_________________
-----------------------------
SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLVM
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AC MILAN CaMpIoNe d'EuRoPa 2oo7!!!!
AC MILAN WoRLd ChAmPiOn 2oo7!!!!
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 03, 2008 - 04:58 PM
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Joined: Dec 04, 2006
Posts: 255
Location: Bavaria
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First thanks to slh, you described the facts in a whole and in a very clear form where i and, for sure, everybody has to agree with. My intention for this thread was this only 3 watts consuming but nearly fully featured cpu, maybe i'm a little bit too much enthralled.
I also have two VIA Nehemiah boards, one is in the living room and his task is not only to play my favourite songs in a randomized sequence if needed, it's also a nice replacement for a "grandfathers clock" but with much more features, f.e. cron manages my congratulations to my wife for birthday so i can never forget it (just a little bit joking although the system really speaks to her).
jaegermeister (do you really drink that ? :
Quote:
... Oh, it would be nice if you'd put those settings for sending all temp crap to ramdisk here, so that I could see them and we could examine them together, even with slh, who always has a nice piece of advice for everybody
That's easy, insert in /etc/fstab:
Quote:
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs size=512M 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs size=512M 0 0
tmpfs /var/log tmpfs size=128M 0 0
Adjust the sizes in relation to your total ramsize. The size is the maximum you want to use, but it's not prereserved, so you have enough space left for the system. On 24/7 running systems i added a cronjob watching these directories, it deletes old log files etc. to keep the ram at minimal occupation and avoid overflows.
Some applications like to see their special directories in /var/log/, so i added some makedirs in /etc/rcS.d/, best place seems to be the execution after the current S36 files, so i put these commands in a file named S36z...
This is enough to let the HD drive switch off in console mode without X11 environment (adjust it with "hdparm -S <dev>" and put this in f.e. /etc/rc.local).
This is my way, maybe there are better ones, but most important: it works
greets, L.W. |
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Everybody knows, that's how it goes ... (L. Cohen)
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Post subject: hm
Posted: Jul 03, 2008 - 08:22 PM
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Joined: Jan 29, 2008
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Hi LessWire,
"Only 10 watts more in a 24/7 environment rise the consumption up to roughly 2600 kilowatts/year (10*24*30*360). Assuming cheap 12 cents/kW result in ~300 "eurobucks" after a year and i think this is a conservative calculation."
Was it indeed intended to calculate the total cost of the rise of consumption for 30 years?
Anyway, this new piece is quite impressive...
greetings |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 03, 2008 - 11:10 PM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2007
Posts: 346
Location: Italia
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Hi Lesswire,
yes I drink Jaegermeister, but the nick is much more related to the meaning of this old German word which you surely get.... and was given me by a friend while "in action". Which kinda action, ...well, that's another story...
Anyway, thx for the fstab piece, I'm also curious about those dirs in /var/log (could u please also post your s36 and cron job?). You know what... when people say "it works" that's sooo nice!
Anyway, I'm dying to put my hands on that damn board and this wait will devoure me  |
_________________
-----------------------------
SI VIS PACEM, PARA BELLVM
-----------------------------
AC MILAN CaMpIoNe d'EuRoPa 2oo7!!!!
AC MILAN WoRLd ChAmPiOn 2oo7!!!!
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Post subject:
Posted: Jul 04, 2008 - 02:31 AM
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Joined: Dec 04, 2006
Posts: 255
Location: Bavaria
Status: Offline
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frogbert: you caught me - shame on me! Normally i'm not that bad mathematician and I wondered myself a little bit when i got this result. Perhaps it was too late in the morning So we save ~10 bucks / year, not that big deal but also noticeable, thanks for the hint!
jaegermeister:
the cronjob is not a superb solution for now, it's a simple command in the crontab:
Code:
13 03 * * * root rm -f /var/log/*.[0-9]* 2>&1 >/dev/null
For my applications it's adequate to delete only these archived standard logs after logrotate has finished. I had no problems with it since over two years now although this machine has 512 MB RAM only and i need no subdirs there. But anyways, further commands should be added to check the allocation of these directorys, subdirs, etc.
Another point is, i forgot to mention to mount the partitions with "noatime", but that's standard in the last two or three sidux releases, take a look into fstab for sure.
The "S36z" file contains only some makedir commands, f.e. "makedir /var/log/apache2" if you want run apache2. These applications will tell you if they miss something so it's easy to figure out what subdirs are needed.
BTW, has someone figured out what files or dirs should be outhoused to ramdisk to avoid system access to harddisk if X11/KDE is running, at first in a basic requirement only?
LW |
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Everybody knows, that's how it goes ... (L. Cohen)
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