Upcoming ASUS ROG Gaming Router: GT-AC5300

[sfx2000]

Basically it's a merge between AC88U and AC5300

This is what I've got from anither doc from them

"ROG Rapture GT-AC5300 is the first ROG router designed specifically for gaming, featuring tri-band Wi‑Fi, eight-port gigabit-LAN, and its own powerful PC-grade, 1.8GHz quad-core CPU to enable incredibly fast and responsive network gaming. GT-AC5300 also includes two ultra-fast USB 3.0 ports.

It's an evolution of the 2016 product lineup... RT-AC3100, RT-AC88U, RT-AC5300..

 

[sfx2000]

Based on the description, this looks to be a BCM4908, with BCM4366E wifi. 1 GB RAM, 256 MB flash.

And nice to see the die-shrink to 28nm, so it should run a bit cooler...

Run down on the Broadcom platform...

Some key features of BCM4908 processor include:

• Quad core 64-bit ARM processor @ 1.8 GHz
• Zero CPU Wi-Fi offload to free up CPU resources
• BroadStream iQoS acceleration
• Dedicated security processor to enable hardware VPN acceleration
• 2.5Gb Base-X Ethernet WAN/LAN port for supporting fast connectivity to multi-gigabit modem or a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device
• Peripherals – Integrated SATA III, two USB 3.0 ports and three PCIe Gen 2 ports
• Low power – 28nm processor technology and advanced power management for more than 50% percent power usage reduction compared to previous solutions
• Support for Broadcom’s tri-band (AC5300) 5G WiFi XStream 802.11ac MU-MIMO with:
  • 3x BCM4366 4×4 radios, each with an integrated CPU for host offload processing
  • Providing a total of seven CPU cores (“Septacore”) with more than 9.6 GHz of CPU horse power
• Hardware acceleration for routing and USB storage

4908 is not just a CPU update - with the shrink, looks like they did a nice bump on the integrated switch - 2.5GBe MII's, and the Runner is non-blocking at 5GB/Sec if the marketing is to be believed...

 

[RMerlin]

Providing a total of seven CPU cores (“Septacore”) with more than 9.6 GHz of CPU horse power

Anyone else here feel the need to cry at this one?

Please, someone hit the Broadcom marketing clown who came up with this with a large stick. This is beyond idiotic, especially from a hardware developer like Broadcom.

 

[sfx2000]

Folks should see a bit of a bump with OpenVPN/OpenSSL performance on the A53@1.8GHz...

John and I compared numbers from 68U (Dual A9) vs. RPi3 (Quad A53@1.2GHz) and numbers for OpenSSL were similar..

And A53 brings in some new processor features that were optional on the A9 - which can also help...

 

[sfx2000]

Anyone else here feel the need to cry at this one?

Please, someone hit the Broadcom marketing clown who came up with this with a large stick. This is beyond idiotic, especially from a hardware developer like Broadcom.

Marketeers... they're being truthful in that there's lots of cores, however, only the 4 in the 4908 are really useful and accessible..

 

[RMerlin]

Folks should see a bit of a bump with OpenVPN/OpenSSL performance on the A53@1.8GHz...

The big question is whether OpenSSL can leverage the hardware-accelerated support for AES. That could make a huge difference, as seen in Kong's experiments with OpenSSL and Marvel's HW acceleration.

Lack of ETA on the product release is also annoying, but that's not unusual for Asus, who tends to ship "when its ready". Anyone else beside me waited close to a year for the RT-N76 (who became the RT-N66U) to become available?

 

[wouterv]

The big question is whether OpenSSL can leverage the hardware-accelerated support for AES. That could make a huge difference, as seen in Kong's experiments with OpenSSL and Marvel's HW acceleration.

Lack of ETA on the product release is also annoying, but that's not unusual for Asus, who tends to ship "when its ready". Anyone else beside me waited close to a year for the RT-N76 (who became the RT-N66U) to become available?

All I did was murmur a bit and try to recall the specs of 6502 and Z80 CPU's and try to remember how fast a Videotext/Viditel/Minitel page loaded through my first home build 1200 Baud Download / 75 Baud Upload modem.

 

[netware5]

All I did was murmur a bit and try to recall the specs of 6502 and Z80 CPU's and try to remember how fast a Videotext/Viditel/Minitel page loaded through my first home build 1200 Baud Download / 75 Baud Upload modem.

We are dinosaurs, you just reminded me how I wrote my first codes for 6502 and 6800 ....

 

[thiggins]

What the hell is this??

The amount of buzzwords and marketing jimbo is simply off the charts. itself.

But look how much chatter this is getting. THAT'S why manfs do it.

 

[sfx2000]

But look how much chatter this is getting. THAT'S why manfs do it.

I find the device somewhat interesting as it's Broadcom's '5G' platform that was announced last year at CES, and since it's similar to Asus' RT-AC5300, it's provides a nice comparison with how Broadcom has done...

Hopefully Asus and Broadcom have taken the HW board support package forward as well into something a little bit more modern than 2004...

 

[sfx2000]

The big question is whether OpenSSL can leverage the hardware-accelerated support for AES. That could make a huge difference, as seen in Kong's experiments with OpenSSL and Marvel's HW acceleration.

The Marvell crypto has been a challenge for the *WRT community, as it's not very well documented, and while they sorted the Armada XP, the 385 was more of a challenge as they basically had to redo a lot of reverse engineering...

In closed source - it's d**n fast however...

 

[sfx2000]

We are dinosaurs, you just reminded me how I wrote my first codes for 6502 and 6800 ....

This should probably go in the greybeard thread...

I spent many late nights as a young teenager sorting 6502 assembler* - came in handy later on in life...

* some wise guy will likely ask... so yes, Apple ][

 

[FattysGoneWild]

Router competition is fierce! Jeebus! Are people like women that change purses every few months? They buy new routers on a quarterly basis? So many routers constantly coming out.

 

[butter_fry]

https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/ROG-Rapture-GT-AC5300/

Looks like we’re finally seeing an ASUS router with the BCM4908 Router SoC.

I couldn’t really care any less about most of the features of this Router+CPU, save for one thing.

Dedicated security processor to enable hardware VPN acceleration

In my opinion, and in the current uncertain internet environment, this type of connection speed vpn ability is long overdue. I'm using PIA + 68w and 68u both at 1400mhz, still with about 950mbit of my connection on the table unused. Removing latency from the CPU VPN to the accelerator would be worth it alone.

I’m interested in knowing if anyone has any ideas or input about the feature. I know it’s early, and just announced but is this the first router by anyone with this chip?

I'd probably not buy this 'lifestyle' router, with its certainly premium price. I'll wait till the 88u > 3100 type of product line is announced. But still, its nice to see consumer routers stepping up to the need for line speed encryption (if that is what it indeed delivers). My hope is it will be something that Merlin can incorporate into his code.

 

[sfx2000]

Router competition is fierce! Jeebus! Are people like women that change purses every few months? They buy new routers on a quarterly basis? So many routers constantly coming out.

Long tail in a mature market...

Vendors are trying hard to pick up new sales - hard thing as many AC1900 class devices are still very relevant...

 

[butter_fry]

Its telling that the product page says nothing about the Encryption accelerator feature. aside from that, the cpu speed would certainly help openVPN, but only incrementally. If the router mfgrs are looking for a reason to sell us the latest desktop antenna farm, then solving for slow encryption would be a huge one that would catch the eyes of many of the geeks and not-so geeky torrent crowd.

If this doesn't mark the beginning of the love for encryption, I'll probably figure out how to build a VPN machine from some old hardware. Asus please read as I see no need to upgrade my 68u's ever and will be relegated to being wireless APs.

We are very rapidly approaching a world where all our personal internet data should be encrypted, if not already there now.

 

[sfx2000]

We are very rapidly approaching a world where all our personal internet data should be encrypted, if not already there now.

There's a partial reason why I don't run Broadcom...

openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 700421 aes-256-cbc's in 0.33s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 676072 aes-256-cbc's in 0.27s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 558926 aes-256-cbc's in 0.25s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 329367 aes-256-cbc's in 0.14s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 67605 aes-256-cbc's in 0.05s
OpenSSL 1.0.1s-freebsd 1 Mar 2016
built on: date not available
options:bn(64,64) rc4(16x,int) des(idx,cisc,16,int) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(idx)
compiler: clang
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc 34153.86k 158239.48k 572340.22k 2398377.30k 10126997.21k​

 

[butter_fry]

There's a partial reason why I don't run Broadcom...

openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc
Doing aes-256-cbc for bla bla bla fast as hell...​

sigh.. yeah

CPU Model ARMv7 Processor rev 0 (v7l) - (Cores: 2)
CPU Frequency 1400 MHz


ASUSWRT-Merlin RT-AC68U 380.64-0 Fri Dec 16 17:24:35 UTC 2016
admin@home-router:/tmp/home/root# openssl speed -evp aes-256-cbc
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 16 size blocks: 5937767 aes-256-cbc's in 2.95s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 64 size blocks: 1691901 aes-256-cbc's in 2.97s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 256 size blocks: 439115 aes-256-cbc's in 2.98s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 1024 size blocks: 110774 aes-256-cbc's in 2.94s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on 8192 size blocks: 13883 aes-256-cbc's in 2.96s
OpenSSL 1.0.2j 26 Sep 2016
built on: reproducible build, date unspecified
options:bn(64,32) rc4(ptr,char) des(idx,cisc,16,long) aes(partial) idea(int) blowfish(ptr)
compiler: arm-brcm-linux-uclibcgnueabi-gcc -I. -I.. -I../include -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -O3 -Wall -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DAES_ASM -DBSAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM
The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed.
type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes
aes-256-cbc 32204.84k 36458.47k 37722.63k 38582.51k 38422.14k

 

[sfx2000]

sigh.. yeah

One can only hope that BRCM has enabled certain things in the cores and the BSP...

 

[butter_fry]

One can only hope that BRCM has enabled certain things in the cores and the BSP...

...because 1st world problems are real