new mikrotik ARM router, using 4 ARM A15

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As the title says https://mikrotik.com/product/RB1100Dx4
You will find details on the link, let me know what you think. It seems to be a replacement to their old dual core PPC.

 

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Amazon's Annapurna Labs Alpine chips are fairly stout...

Seems like a nice bump in the product line over the older PPC device.

 

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i checked the specs in detail, pricing isnt that great.

According to the block diagram however it has 3 switch chips, 2 of them are 5 ports while the 3rd has 3 ports which a bypass which might mean that you can connect it directly to CPU rather than switch. The last switch also handles POE in. All 3 switches are realtek with 2.5Gb/s connection to CPU. CPU has hardware acceleration for NAT but i dont know about encryption, if its supposed to replace the PPC its gonna need IPSEC and AES acceleration.

While it offers stuff that consumer routers dont like more bandwidth between switch and CPU, sata, m.2 and so on i just hope the CPU has the acceleration it needs. It seems to be very similar to the CPU used in some consumer routers.

 

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The Alpine is a good chip - better than Armada 38x, close to Armada 3800/Rangely-Avoton - they're all communications/network processors, and they all in the same class - and they're all bandwidth oriented...

uTik probably made the move as NXP is starting to sunset many of the FreeScale PPC chips, perhaps getting ready for the Qualcomm merge. Keep in mind that PPC Chip (QorIQ P2020 series) has roots that go back to the Apple/IBM/TI PowerPC 750 chip - That core is old enough to vote, and drink in many countries (1997). Still see a lot of these in Telecom, DoD, and Space applications - they perform well, and a lot of code behind them.

There's a couple of consumer Router/AP's that have the Alpine, and we're seeing them in NAS boxes these days.