Hi All,

New to ACRN and wondering what the best options currently are for Intel Core i7 hardware? The documentation lists two NUC7i7xxx boards, but these are now a few years old. The v2.3 release notes mention 11th Gen Intel Core processors, but NUC models with these don't appear to be available yet and I am also not sure if going with the very latest hardware would be wise, considering that we want to focus our efforts on the application, and not debugging and ACRN development. Perhaps there are currently available more recent NUC i7 boards, that would be suitable? Also doesn't have to be NUC and could be some other, similar SFF board that is suited to embedded use. E.g. UP Xtreme.

It's also not entirely clear to me what "supported" means in this context. For example, perhaps it is the case that other Intel Core boards may work, but are not officially supported. Similarly with usage scenarios in the Supported Hardware matrix — are these those which have simply been verified with each platform, or perhaps some boards may lack certain features to support a particular scenario?

Regards,

Andrew

ACRN is a great platform and understand that it is still maturing however within community there is certainly a need for a clear deployment instructions or some sort of matrix of what's supported. With platform/hardware variations out there not sure if it is possible to create such matrix. We have made investments on the recommended platform and now we have been spending cycles on ACRN debugging and not on our core application, still we have been making every effort to get the basic UOS working. Currently ACRN not being a out of box solution can certainly cause obstruction in adaption for many..

Hi Terry,

Many thanks for the clarification.

Do you happen to know if there is a distributor in Europe for the WL-10 board? I cannot seem to find anywhere to buy this.

Regarding "supported", it's still not clear to me what this means. I appreciate that the level of granularity is scenario rather than feature, but I cannot ascertain whether lack of support for a particular board and scenario means "will not work" or "we have not validated". The distinction is quite important.

Best,

Andrew

Hi Andrew, thanks very much for your interests of ACRN project. Yes ACRN is growing up very quickly, we enabled several HW platforms in: https://projectacrn.github.io/latest/reference/hardware.html

Started from Apollo Lake (NUC6CAYH/UP2) and Kaby Lake(NUC7i7BNH) with v1.0/…/6 releases for automotive usage, and enabled Whiskey Lake(WHL-IPC-I7) with v2.0/…/3 for Industrial scenario. Then started latest 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processors (codenamed Tiger Lake-UP3).  Actually we are also looking for mature/commercial TGL NUC or UP Xtreme(www.aaeon.com/) on market, but no available board and conclusion yet. So welcome any preference/suggestion from you and community : )

 

So for Industrial usage, Whiskey Lake and Maxtang WL-10 board is still preferred platform. If you do not have available Kaby Lake NUC7i7xxx, you may wait for sometime, when TGL NUC or UP Xtreme ready in market. We will also keep you updated and refresh Supported Hardware in ACRN project page.

 

For ‘supported’ platform, we did not break-down each feature on HW, but general separated user scenario, e.g., Apollo Lake/Kaby Lake only for SDC scenario, but Whiskey Lake for all scenarios: Safety VM, Logical Partition…

 

Best Regards

Terry

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Andrew Back
Sent: Wednesday, December 16, 2020 6:44 PM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: [acrn-users] Intel Core i7 board options.

 

Hi All,

New to ACRN and wondering what the best options currently are for Intel Core i7 hardware? The documentation lists two NUC7i7xxx boards, but these are now a few years old. The v2.3 release notes mention 11th Gen Intel Core processors, but NUC models with these don't appear to be available yet and I am also not sure if going with the very latest hardware would be wise, considering that we want to focus our efforts on the application, and not debugging and ACRN development. Perhaps there are currently available more recent NUC i7 boards, that would be suitable? Also doesn't have to be NUC and could be some other, similar SFF board that is suited to embedded use. E.g. UP Xtreme.

It's also not entirely clear to me what "supported" means in this context. For example, perhaps it is the case that other Intel Core boards may work, but are not officially supported. Similarly with usage scenarios in the Supported Hardware matrix — are these those which have simply been verified with each platform, or perhaps some boards may lack certain features to support a particular scenario?

Regards,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Back
http://abopen.com

-- 

Andrew Back

http://abopen.com

Hi Geoffroy,

Decided to go with a NUC7i7DNBE board.

We don't need graphics virtualisation, but will need to pass through USB 3.0 and possibly PCIe devices.

The application is software-defined radio, where we will need to have a VM with real-time performance which is hosting the DSP/PHY part of the stack, plus a second non-RT VM which hosts other applications. Any pointers as to good starting points and best fit existing usage scenarios etc. would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Andrew

Hi! I agree with you. It has been a challenge to decide what and to what level of granularity we describe what we validate, support and "Should Work". Let me take that comment back to the engineering team, I'm not too sure how to address it properly but I agree it's less than ideal at the moment.

The second part of your comment is really the out of the box experience, and there too it's not very straight-forward to install ACRN even on a board that's known to work. We have some ideas on how to make that easier, and with ACRN features maturing, this is climbing up the priority ladder... so hopefully we'll have something better there in the near future. If you have ideas yourself on how to make that easier, please feel free to share them here... and if you have code/scripts to help us, we'd also certainly welcome contributions in that area ;-)

Are you still having issues with your ACRN set-up by the way? If so, please tell us more about these and we'll try to help you!

Cheers!

Geoffroy

Hi Geoffroy,

Many thanks.

The DSP/PHY will be running as a Linux application, with an IP connection to another process running in the non-RT VM.

Are there embedded boards with processors that feature CAT support? And also which are presently supported by Acrn? Hopefully this won't be something we need, but would be good to know.

Any passthrough devices would be dedicated to a single VM, running a single transceiver process. Is there any tuning in particular for I/O? We can saturate USB 3.0 and need to make sure that this gives us the best performance possible, both in terms of throughput and latency.

Best,

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

 

It sounds like the best starting point would be to use the classical industrial scenario for you. It allows you to start a Real-Time VM (RTVM) once ACRN and its Service VM is up and running. This is the Getting Started Guide for it: https://projectacrn.github.io/latest/getting-started/rt_industry_ubuntu.html

 

Are you running the DSP/PHY part of the stack under a Linux environment? If so, the tutorial above includes instructions on how to bring up a Linux environment and run a PREEMPT_RT kernel in it. That part would have to be adjusted if you need something different of course.

 

That NUC is based on a Kaby Lake processor, which does not support CAT (Cache Allocation Technology). This is something that could be useful if you are not getting the real-time performance you need when other apps are running in separate VMs. In any case, do not hesitate to reach out again if you face any issues and/or want some help with the performance tuning! We also have some notes that you may want to read on things to watch out for for real-time apps: https://projectacrn.github.io/latest/tutorials/rtvm_workload_design_guideline.html

 

Cheers,

Geoffroy

 

 

From: acrn-users@... <acrn-users@...> On Behalf Of Andrew Back
Sent: Friday, December 18, 2020 11:36 AM
To: acrn-users@...
Subject: Re: [acrn-users] Intel Core i7 board options.

 

Hi Geoffroy,

Decided to go with a NUC7i7DNBE board.

We don't need graphics virtualisation, but will need to pass through USB 3.0 and possibly PCIe devices.

The application is software-defined radio, where we will need to have a VM with real-time performance which is hosting the DSP/PHY part of the stack, plus a second non-RT VM which hosts other applications. Any pointers as to good starting points and best fit existing usage scenarios etc. would be much appreciated.

Cheers,

Andrew

-- 
Andrew Back
http://abopen.com

On 18/12/2020 17:48, Geoffroy Van Cutsem wrote:

Hi! I agree with you. It has been a challenge to decide what and to what
level of granularity we describe what we validate, support and "Should
Work". Let me take that comment back to the engineering team, I'm not
too sure how to address it properly but I agree it's less than ideal at
the moment.

The second part of your comment is really the out of the box experience,
and there too it's not very straight-forward to install ACRN even on a
board that's known to work. We have some ideas on how to make that
easier, and with ACRN features maturing, this is climbing up the
priority ladder... so hopefully we'll have something better there in the
near future. If you have ideas yourself on how to make that easier,
please feel free to share them here... and if you have code/scripts to
help us, we'd also certainly welcome contributions in that area ;-)

Are you still having issues with your ACRN set-up by the way? If so,
please tell us more about these and we'll try to help you!

We've not made a start as yet and it will now likely be the new year
before we do. In addition to the Core i7 NUC, we'll also be evaluating
the UP2 Atom E3950, for use in a reduced performance configuration.

Thank you for the offer of help, it's much appreciated. I'll be in touch
should we run into any issues.

Best,

Andrew

--
Andrew Back
http://abopen.com