5G, edge computing, network security these hot words must have been well known, the rapid development of science and technology at the same time, hardware equipment also put forward new requirements, higher computing power, more efficient forwarding capacity. ARM architecture is recognized and widely used for its low cost and high reliability. In order to meet the above market application empowerment, Forlinx Embedded launched FET1046A-C core board, simplify product design, improve development efficiency.

FET1046A-C SoM is based on NXP's LS1046A quad-core processor design, with a main frequency of up to 1.8GHz, an ARM Cortex-A72 architecture, native support for 8 Gbit Ethernets, and up to 2x XFI (10GbE) interfaces.

The highlights of the FET1046A-C core board are particularly prominent in the following five aspects:

Core performance: 4-core Cortex-A72, 1.8GHz CPU, 45000 CoreMark running points, 33840 DMIPS, compared with i.MX6Q 10370 CoreMark points, the performance is increased by 4 times.

High-speed network: The hardware data path acceleration architecture (DPAA) is adopted, and the network port communication can reach line speed. Support DPDK environment for high-performance processing of data packets in network applications.

High-speed interface: supports 32GT/s PCIe3.0 (x4), 10Gbps Ethernet, 6Gbps SATA3.0, 5Gbps USB3.0, and can be used to expand 5G, dual-band WiFi, FPGA, SSD and other high-speed peripherals.

Compatible design: using COM Express board-to-board connector, COM Express Mini Type 10 standard, the core board can be flexibly interchanged.

Multi-system support: support Ubuntu, OpenWrt operating system, convenient for user development and rich third-party software support, such as: Docker, LXC, MySQL, Apache, Python, etc.

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FET1046A-C is suitable for network security routers, edge computing gateways, 5G routers, IP-PBX and other products, as well as edge computing, energy Internet of Things, smart cities, industrial automation, video surveillance and other applications.

Here are three examples of apps.

01, 5G Routing Applications

5G provides us with a high bandwidth, low latency wireless communication experience, and to ensure download speeds of more than 1Gbps, the communication interface between the CPU and 5G modules has been upgraded from USB 2.0 in the 4G era to USB 3.0 or PCIe.

At the same time, CPU data processing and wired data throughput should also be improved synchronously to ensure that the whole system does not have a short board, ordinary CPU (such as i.MX6Q) does not have DPAA support, will lead to CPU processing delay and cable interface communication rate is low, so that 5G application effect is greatly reduced, and FET1046A-C in the support of DPAA, can improve network throughput to reach line speed.

02, Edge Computing Applications

As AI, big data, and the Internet of Things penetrate and land in various industries, cloud servers are difficult to handle when dealing with different algorithms; Reducing the user experience and wasting network bandwidth resources, edge computing puts the above problems to the fore, FET1046A-C as a high-performance, high-reliability, low-cost computing platform, for edge computing to provide a carrier.

The FET1046A-C and i.MX6Q CoreMark comparisons are as follows:

03, Network Security Applications

With the continuous development of industrial information construction and the deepening of the process of "two", the traditional security threats faced by industrial networks and the unique security threats of industrial control networks are increasing. Compared with the traditional network switch, the network security router will join the function of network monitoring and management, which puts forwarding ability and processing power of CPU, especially the processing power of 64byte packets, and is the difficulty of network data processing and forwarding of CPU.

FET1046A-C comes with the hardware data path acceleration architecture (DPAA), through the principle of hardware acceleration, reduce the CPU consumption in the process of network packet processing, with the software layer DPDK acceleration capacity, to meet the security market for the core CPU platform performance requirements.

In order to facilitate the vast number of developers debugging development, OK1046A-C development board synchronously launched. The functional interface is as follows: