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Hardware and Performance / [NIC] X550-AT2 802.3az/Energy-efficient Ethernet (EEE)
« on: February 22, 2022, 04:32:08 pm »
Hi
I'm successfully running a couple of machines using the X550-AT2 NIC Chip. Currently, I'm using this Board for an integrated Setup:
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPYC3101D4I-2T#Specifications
All is well, but the NIC gets extremely hot (90° C). Yes, 10GBase-T is not very efficient and according to Intel, uses up to 13 Watts of power that all has to go somewhere.
However, there should be a solution with 802.3az - The energy-efficient ethernet Standard. My switch does support it.
For some reason, even though the datasheet explicitly lists the registers for the X550, support got killed at some point due to rather esoteric NICs/Phys (55[2,3]):
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D21673
Since then, "thing's just gone, yo":
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/d5c0a7b6d3923d2a6967810d0aa3e148a39351c1/sys/dev/ixgbe/ixgbe_x550.c#L66
The eee_status / eee_enabled flags are gone from dev.ix.<num>.
However, even though Intel is not officially supporting EEE anymore on X550 (only on x710+), the registers in silicon probably did not yet vanish.
Is there a way to force the driver to pretty-please allow for EEE to enable? After all, the X550 is a rather often used cheap 10G chip and the overall powersavings could be substantial.
Best
cwriter
I'm successfully running a couple of machines using the X550-AT2 NIC Chip. Currently, I'm using this Board for an integrated Setup:
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPYC3101D4I-2T#Specifications
All is well, but the NIC gets extremely hot (90° C). Yes, 10GBase-T is not very efficient and according to Intel, uses up to 13 Watts of power that all has to go somewhere.
However, there should be a solution with 802.3az - The energy-efficient ethernet Standard. My switch does support it.
For some reason, even though the datasheet explicitly lists the registers for the X550, support got killed at some point due to rather esoteric NICs/Phys (55[2,3]):
https://reviews.freebsd.org/D21673
Since then, "thing's just gone, yo":
https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/d5c0a7b6d3923d2a6967810d0aa3e148a39351c1/sys/dev/ixgbe/ixgbe_x550.c#L66
The eee_status / eee_enabled flags are gone from dev.ix.<num>.
However, even though Intel is not officially supporting EEE anymore on X550 (only on x710+), the registers in silicon probably did not yet vanish.
Is there a way to force the driver to pretty-please allow for EEE to enable? After all, the X550 is a rather often used cheap 10G chip and the overall powersavings could be substantial.
Best
cwriter