I'm making a high-end router IN PUBLIC. Here are the final specifications.

in my journey of building a custom embedded device namely a router a lot of you have been very vocal when it comes to what kind of features you want and today I'd like to lock it down so to speak from this video forward they are unlikely to change much if at all so let's discuss which features we decided to add based on your feedback and which one we decided to leave out if you're just here for the too long didn't read version here are the features and the CPU that supports them two 10 GB SFP plus ports 3 gbit RJ45 Jacks one of which may become a 2.5 GB Jack more on that towards the end of the video and finally three USB type-c ports each serving a different purpose one for power delivery second for what is called a uart and finally the third one as your standard USB port which is also known as a host Port we're not sure about the poe yet so we'll chalk that up as a maybe and leave it as the last feature to be implemented if we have enough time money and if it doesn't add up too much to the final cost of the device it will also have 8 GB of discrete Ram yes it is enough in fact it's more than enough for a device like this and apart from the ram it will also have 64 GB of discrete Nan flash along with a Micro SD slot should you wish to add more storage and finally we'll put an m.2 slot on the PCB itself because initially there won't be any Wi-Fi support but we don't want to completely close that door so to speak now let's talk about the CPU to drive all these features we've chosen an arm CPU called layerscape LS 1046a designed by a company called nxp I've been asked before why not just go with an Intel part such as the n100 so let's address this first and be done with it first if you check the arc page it says it has no embedded options a available this means that Intel gives absolutely no guarantees that this part will be produced for at least 7 years from the launch of the initial skus which for this particular part I think it was January 2023 imagine we spend the year designing this board around this CPU and then Intel decides to stop manufacturing it a year or two later not good but since I know Logistics aren't as interesting let's talk more about the Practical technical reasons so differences the n100 is a general purpose CPU and yes on paper if you just compare your standard specifications such as gigahertz ddr5 memory support and pcie lenses then it wins hands down it even has an integrated GPU and cost 25% less than our chosen CPU however we're not building a general purpose CPU we're making a router so A specialized device which in theory could be powered by a general purpose CPU in fact many of them are but as you'll hopefully soon learn throughout this video a network optimized CPU is a much better choice why let's look at the blog diagram for the layerscape first notice the networking elements colored orange you could say that this CPU has network cards built in so you don't need much extra hardware for it all you need is a $2 fi chip which converts digital signals to analog and they connector beat an RJ45 or an SFP Plus and this particular CPU as you can see here supports up to two 10 gbit 1 2.5 and 5 GB interfaces you see this parse classified distribute block without going too much into details this block is a part of what the folks at nxp called dpaa or data path acceleration architecture what you need to know at this point is that the dpaa is like a traffic police when packets arrive into the processor dpaa decides how to handle them in a manner of speaking for example packets coming from the same Source get sent to the same processor core because it already has all the necessary knowledge on how to process them in its cache and it's then much faster than if that packet would be processed by a randomly chosen core which happens in a general purpose CPU this particular chip also has a security engine packets get decrypted or encrypted on a hardware level which is also much faster but more importantly a much more efficient way of dealing with encrypted traffic I'll leave a link to the white paper down below but what you should know at this point is that the CPU is highly Network optimized compared to a general purpose one and since we're looking at the blog diagram I might as well share this fun fact do you know what the differences are between the microcontroller and the microprocessor this blue block called mmu mmu stands for memory management unit and as the name suggests it manages memory or put it differently Ram microprocessors need external memory in order to function whereas microcontrollers do not our micro processor also has what's called an IFC or integrated flash controller if youve ever built a PC you most likely used an m.2 SSD which has two major parts the first one is the actual nand flash you know the chip on which the data is stored and the second one is the controller that well controls that n flash by providing fun such as writing and reading of course monitoring read and write Cycles keeping track of bad blocks and correcting some errors on the fly it is the brain behind the storage you could say well that controller obviously adds cost to the device and it's a cause that we're luckily spared because in our case it already comes built into the CPU all we need to do when it comes to the actual PCB is Route traces from the CPU to The nand Flash and well that's pretty much it OB obviously I'm not trying to diminish the hard work that alash my co-founder will put into it and will'll definitely make many more in-depth videos once we get there but for this highlevel conceptual overview it's that simple unfortunately this CPU cannot boot directly from the Nan flash it needs some kind of storage attached to the quad SPI pins which is why we'll use a 64 megabyte nor flash chip which will hold either a ubot boot loader but I also intend to test UEFI as well because the official documentation says that it is possible obviously make sure to subscribe to the channel so you don't miss that you know what since we're talking about pins let's actually look at the CPU pin out at first it might look a bit intimidating uh but all you have to do is Quint your eyes a little and the picture actually becomes clearer the central quarter mostly has green and red pins or balls as they're called in our example and these are connected to ground and power respectively then we have this wave of blue balls on the right they all go to Ram purple ones on the top go to the N Flash and the bottom part is pretty much filled with pink dark pink skin pink and gray balls the latter two are what are called rgmii or reduced gigabit media independent interface or simply put two gbit ports the former two however so the pink and the dark ping balls represent two separate blocks of what is called as series I won't go much into details but for this video what you need to know is that this cice converts into either an array of ethernet ports PCI Lanes or a SATA bus then what we're left with are pretty much just some specialized balls for either SD card support which are these steel ones on the center left uh jtec which are these light olive ones towards the top and the USB balls here on the top left by the way we plan for each of these components to get a dedicated video when we come to actually picking the parts and routing them on the actual PCB and those videos will get much more in-depth so excuse the kind of sloppy approach I'm taking right now and yes we have the PCB Dimensions picked out as well we knew from the start that we'd like to use one of the standard dimensions not just for the thickness which is 1.6 mm but for the width and depth as well uh the standard we're going with is nano ATX which is the smaller cousin of the Mini ITX that you probably know from the PC World Nano ITX measures at 12x 12 CM which should give us enough surface real estate to be able to use all the features that I'm mentioning in this video why well because each feature requires either a connector a chip or sometimes even several of them connectors and chips that is plus all the support components such as resistors capacitors and inductors and obviously they all add up to the required surfaces area okay and now time for some good news I've talked about this project for the past couple of months without showing you anything concrete and hopefully I don't need to explain much as to why that is but I'll say it out loud anyway because someone in the comments called me a scammer it's because when starting a new company you first have to focus on well setting it up properly for the long run I've said this many times before and I'll keep repeating it as long as I need to a good plan is have the work done and currently we are in the planning stage and I'd rather turn every stone right now when it costs next to nothing than to make a huge mistake that would turn out to be a very expensive one sometime down the line so what is the good news well we're almost there when it comes to the company Logistics we've signed the contract with the lawyers I which I already mentioned in the previous video we have onboarded an accountant we have filed for incorporation in the state of Delaware and once that is done we're opening a bank account but but that's not actually what makes me super excited what does is the fact that we've successfully onboarded a design studio called Sito design I've mentioned them in one of my previous videos which you could check up here and why is that such a big deal to me well because two reasons the first they really know what they're doing I might have designed the first iteration of the router on my own but I'm no professional designer so while this proof of concept turned out to be pretty great if I do say so myself there's probably a 100 details I might have missed in the process details that I'm sure that people over at Sito design will address discuss and find solutions to in fact we already had a kickoff meeting which brings me to the second reason I'm happy to have them on board they agreed that I partially pay for their services in equity this basically means they'll own a small piece of the company in return for the work that they'll produce now some of you might be wondering why would you do that and the reasons actually aren't even that complicated if they they own some of the company then it's in their best interest to produce the highest quality possible because they have skin in the game so to speak uh by the way I'm not trying to say they wouldn't otherwise they absolutely would but you and I both know that the sense of ownership brings that extra 1% to the equation and second since we don't have to pay for the work well we do but just to cover the costs then this allows us to allocate more resources into the development of the hardware or to extend the runway runway in startup vocabulary is essentially how long a particular startup has before running out of money and for us extending it means we can hopefully develop product further than just the basic MVP and this approach can significantly increase our chances to raise a second round which we'll definitely need and since we're talking about the design I don't just mean the design of the device itself while it is a big part at least initially Sito will provide much more such as branding design of the Box it'll ship in and most likely even a web design for the website once we get there okay let's talk about deadlines or more broadly the timeline uh we spoke with alash my co-founder you'll meet him soon I promise and we both feel confident we can have an early prototype prepared by the end of September 2024 it might not have all the feature that we've set out to implement but it should turn on and transfer network data between at least two ports that'll be our MVP or minimum viable product ideally we hope it will run open wrt but for the MVP we'll also settle for a bare Linux distribution such as Debian or Unix drro such as FreeBSD Sito design has assured me that for what they need to do 7 months is more than enough so if we don't have a fully functional product at that point yet well at least we'll have a great looking one and that also counts for something right I mean at least I'll be able to take some gorgeous photos for all of you to admire by the way since we're talking about photos I do have a small photo studio with professional strobes and modifiers I use for my personal projects uh so if you want me to make a small video tour of it uh please let me know down in the comments below and we'll have a look together anyway last thing I should also mention is the actual start date I mean I've been working on this project for months now but up until these days it felt more like a hobby I've been pitching the idea making videos researching components and spent countless hours watching YouTube videos on PCB design but the maker in me constantly felt like nothing was actually being made that changes on 11th of March 2024 which is the upcoming Monday by then alash will be back from his well-deserved holidays we will hopefully have a company incorporated in Delaware and the bank account opened to receive the initial investment and even if we do not we'll start working on the PCB anyway and we'll sort out the legalities and Logistics throughout the rest of the month and yes I haven't for forgotten about some of you who have asked me why we decided to incorporate in Delaware we'll address that in the followup video to the previous one so make sure to click that subscribe button if you haven't yet okay recap time processor nxp layerscape LS 1046a 8 GB of discrete memory most likely Micron 64 GB of discrete storage also most likely Micron two 10 GB SFP plus ports 3 gbit RJ45 ports and three USB type BC ports one for USB power delivery one for uart and one as a host device we'll go with a 12x 12 CM Nano ITX PCB 1.6 mm thick most likely eight layers it will also feature a Micro SD card slot an m.2 slot and a jte header and despite the fact that we plan to cool it passively a fan header just in case the device will be initially powered by open wrrt but in the long run we aim to Port open sense to it it will look great and yes it will fit into a rack and finally the two maybe 1 GB Port might become a 2.5 GB one and one or more of the RJ45 ports may become Poe plus ports let the work begin

Channel: Tomaž Zaman

Views: 39,773

Keywords: cpu, pcb, router

Id: ZZ6dzoii_JE

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2024