Date: Tue, 03 Jul 2001 05:28:07 -0700 From: Terry Lambert <tlambert2@mindspring.com> To: Bsdguru@aol.com Cc: nate@yogotech.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Status of encryption hardware support in FreeBSD Message-ID: <3B41BA57.48F3788A@mindspring.com> References: <12d.dc435a.28724adf@aol.com>
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Bsdguru@aol.com wrote: > Entire PIII MBs are available for under $60. Your concept > that the delta in cost between a 486 chipset and PIII is > more that that is utterly ridiculous PIII chipsets and 486 > chipsets cost the same in quantity. Try using a resource > other than your Radio Shack catalogue please. Actually, I can get a 486 macrocell and etherenet controllers, along with a big chunk of RAM, a North Bridge, etc., all put on a single die, and go to fab for under $30,000. I can do the same thing with a PPC603e core, using IBM's "Blue Logic" library. If I'm building an embedded system, I really don't need more horseposer than that, and being able to run without a fan, and fit into the form-factor of a modem or a set top box is generally much more important. You know that FreeBSD can be netboot onto the Apple "AirPort" base station, right? Footprint is the name of the game, when you are building embedded systems; when we did the InterJet and InterJet II at Whistle/IBM, we ran with self-designed motherboards. The InterJet had a built-in UPS. We funded the Soft Updates work, and had a custom power supply with a very long DC hold-up time following AC fail in order to get rid of the UPS. One of our main mistakes in the InterJet II, IMO, was going to a higher power CPU, which needed a fan on the CPU, and a fan in the case, as a result us the Cyrix Media GX processor, which was mostly there to do crypto. We would have been much better off with rolling the cost savings of continuing to use a 486 class CPU into the profitability of the product, and putting a dumb crypto chipset on the board to handle the load (IBM even makes a chipset perfect for this, and IBM had bought us by the time the InterJet II design got finalized). One other thing to realize is that every $1 in cost ends up turning into $2 to the customer, so installing another serial port connector when you don't need to is a very costly proposition. I'm now working on an appliance device (rackmount). It is based on a general purpose motherboard right now (as you suggest), but it still has crypto hardware to push up the connection rate for SSL connections. We will need to eventually go to a special purpose motherboard, so that we can have things like watchdog timers, etc., which are missing from general purpose computers. All told, I've now worked on 4 embedded systems that use FreeBSD. I think you'll find that Wes Peters has worked on a number of them as well (one of his is now called "Intel InBusiness" servers). Most of us were extremely pissed off when /dev/random went in and made 386 and 486 class hardware crawl on its knees, since embedded systems have different requirements for things like moving parts, heat dissipation, etc., than general purpose computers posing as embedded systems. -- Terry To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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