How many CPU cores and RAM in a x86-64 based PC could be supported by an x86-64 lede image

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I've beening using openwrt-lede on various routers and
I'm planning to get a x86-64 PC to run openwrt-lede on.

I found some old information in https://wiki.openwrt.org/inbox/doc/openwrt_x86 saying that "Note that OpenWRT is targeted at low-end hardware and the build defaults may not be suit modern x86 hardware. For example, multi-processor support and >1GB RAM support may be missing. "

Is this note still alive?
Does this mean I have to build the image myself with some config modified before building instead of using the image from https://downloads.lede-project.org/releases/17.01.4/targets/x86/64/?
How many CPU cores and RAM in a x86-64 based PC could be supported or there is just no such restrictions?

Best Regard

2

As far as I know smp and large ram are not a problem, they work fine. It still is the case that openwrt isn't mainly intended for x86, BusyBox for example might be better replaced by bash and openssh and ntpd and a few others... But openwrt does work and has a convenient config system and firewall and Luci etc so it's not like it's a bad choice.

You might consider grabbing the full iproute2 and ebtables and a few other key items since space will not be an issue.

3

Dlakelan, Thank you very much!

4

Mainly for amusement, I've run it on a Xeon E3-1265L 4-core, 8-thread processor with 16 GB of RAM. The warnings are reasonable as the focus for many years has been single-core, constrained CPU and RAM systems with barely enough flash to hold the basics. While a reasonable amount of work has been done to tune the performance of multi-core ARM devices, the x86 support tends to be more "straight Linux". Not to say it's bad; it just hasn't gotten as much focus under OpenWRT (though plenty with the various Linux-based distros).

If you do decide to run on a multi-core device and have the RAM, I'd strongly suggest irqbalance. The recommendations to use the "full" versions of utility software that you use regularly are excellent as well.

5

Thanks, Jeff.
I'll definitly give irqbalance a try!

6

I've been using LEDE Reboot 17.01.4 as my main router on a 4 core Intel mini-PC with 2 GB RAM for 2 months now. All cores and memory above 1 GB are detected just fine:

root@LEDE:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor	: 0
vendor_id	: GenuineIntel
cpu family	: 6
model		: 76
model name	: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU  N3160  @ 1.60GHz
stepping	: 4
microcode	: 0x40a
cpu MHz		: 560.000
cache size	: 1024 KB
physical id	: 0
siblings	: 4
core id		: 0
cpu cores	: 4

root@LEDE:~# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1960560      75824    1884736       2484       2596      20752
-/+ buffers/cache:      52476    1908084
Swap:            0          0          0
7

Thanks for your info, Ralpho

Now I decided to buy a new linux box with 4-core CPU and 8G RAM!
I'm going to replace my cisco router with that one.

1 Like
8

Working for me too:

root@OpenWrt:~# cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 42
model name      : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2400 CPU @ 3.10GHz
stepping        : 7
microcode       : 0x14
cpu MHz         : 1596.661
cache size      : 6144 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 4
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 4



root@OpenWrt:~# free
                        total  

 3891588     
-/+ buffers/cache:         89964    3801624