MIMXRT1170-EVK Zephyr Network Performance

[jacob-wienecke-nxp]

MIMXRT1170-EVK Zephyr Network Performance

Overview

I recently had an opportunity to work with the zephyr zperf: Network Traffic Generator to achieve some performance metrics. I followed along with the documentation here: Zperf Documentation.

Summary

This table summarizes the bandwidth results using the tests detailed below:

Direction	TCP (Mbps)	UDP (Mbps)
Zephyr Server, PC Client	87.7	95.1
PC Server, Zephyr Client	73.6	79.8

PC Configuration

In testing, I used a windows machine with iperf-2.0.5 connected to the 100M ENET (J3) port of MIMXRT1170-EVK
Zephyr v3.6
PC configured with IP address: 192.0.2.2
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0

MIMXRT1170-EVK Configuration

Flashed the zperf example to run on cm7 core of RT1170:

1. 'west build -p always -b mimxrt1170_evk_cm7 samples/net/zperf'
2. 'west flash'

TCP Using Zephyr as Server and PC as Client

Serial Terminal Input

zperf tcp download

CMD Input:

iperf -V -c 192.0.2.1 -p 5001

Serial Terminal Output

Duration: 10.03 s
Rate: 87.69 Mbps

CMD Output

Interval: 0.0-10.0 sec
Transfer: 105 Mbytes
Bandwidth: 87.8 Mbits/sec

UDP Using Zephyr as Server and PC as Client

Serial Terminal Input

zperf udp download

CMD Input:

iperf -u -c 192.0.2.1 -b 100M -V

Serial Terminal Output

Duration: 10.45 s
Received packets: 84531
nb packets lost: 0
nb packets outorder: 0
jitter 1.05 ms
rate: 95.07 Mbps

CMD Output

Interval: 0.0 – 10.5 sec
Transfer: 119 MBytes
Bandwidth: 95.1 Mbits/sec
Jitter: 1.053 ms
Loss: 0/84531 (0%)

TCP Using Zephyr as Client and PC as Server

Serial Terminal Input

zperf tcp upload 192.0.2.2 5001 10 1K 1M

CMD Input:

iperf -s

Serial Terminal Output

Duration: 10.00 s
Packet Size: 1000 bytes
Rate: 1000 kbps
Num packets: 92,954
Num Errors: 0
Rate: 74.36 Mbps

CMD Output

Interval: 0.0-10.1 sec
Transfer: 88.6 Mbytes
Bandwidth: 73.6 Mbits/sec

UDP Using Zephyr as Client and PC as Server

Serial Terminal Input

zperf udp upload 192.0.2.2 5001 10 1K 100M

CMD Input:

iperf -s -u

Serial Terminal Output

Duration: 10.00 s
Packet Size: 1000 bytes
Rate: 10 000 kbps
Num packets: 99,778
Num Packets out of order: 0
Jitter: 198 us
Rate: 79.81 Mbps

CMD Output

Interval: 0.0-10.0 sec
Transfer: 95.2 Mbytes
Bandwidth: 79.8 Mbits/sec
Jitter 0.199 ms
Loss/Total Datagrams: 0/99778 (0%)

[Vijayakannan]

Hi @jacob-wienecke-nxp, Good to see the results.

I see this board (MIMXRT1170-EVKB) has,

• Ethernet (10/100/1000M) connector
• Ethernet (10/100M) connector

Have you tried similar experiment using 1000M connector with more than 100Mbps line rate?

[deribaucourt]

I've also been looking for Gbps Ethernet support, it doesn't look like the Zephyr driver currently supports it for this board.
eth_mcux.c:

static enum ethernet_hw_caps eth_mcux_get_capabilities(const struct device *dev)
{
	ARG_UNUSED(dev);

	return ETHERNET_HW_VLAN | ETHERNET_LINK_10BASE_T |
#if defined(CONFIG_PTP_CLOCK_MCUX)
		ETHERNET_PTP |
#endif
#if defined(CONFIG_NET_DSA)
		ETHERNET_DSA_MASTER_PORT |
#endif
#if defined(CONFIG_ETH_MCUX_HW_ACCELERATION)
		ETHERNET_HW_TX_CHKSUM_OFFLOAD |
		ETHERNET_HW_RX_CHKSUM_OFFLOAD |
#endif
		ETHERNET_AUTO_NEGOTIATION_SET |
		ETHERNET_LINK_100BASE_T;
}

[Vijayakannan]

I've also been looking for Gbps Ethernet support, it doesn't look like the Zephyr driver currently supports it for this board. eth_mcux.c:

static enum ethernet_hw_caps eth_mcux_get_capabilities(const struct device *dev)
{
	ARG_UNUSED(dev);

	return ETHERNET_HW_VLAN | ETHERNET_LINK_10BASE_T |
#if defined(CONFIG_PTP_CLOCK_MCUX)
		ETHERNET_PTP |
#endif
#if defined(CONFIG_NET_DSA)
		ETHERNET_DSA_MASTER_PORT |
#endif
#if defined(CONFIG_ETH_MCUX_HW_ACCELERATION)
		ETHERNET_HW_TX_CHKSUM_OFFLOAD |
		ETHERNET_HW_RX_CHKSUM_OFFLOAD |
#endif
		ETHERNET_AUTO_NEGOTIATION_SET |
		ETHERNET_LINK_100BASE_T;
}

Ok. I though mcux driver deprecated and the replacement is this
drivers/ethernet/nxp_enet/eth_nxp_enet.c

[jacob-wienecke-nxp]

NXP ENET_1G gigabit ethernet on mimxrt1170_evk, though I haven't tested it recently. Early on I was seeing some performance issues with this particular PR.

[hwmaier]

For those who compare these results with other boards, the zperf example runs the code on this NXP board from 0-wait state ITCM memory. Refer to mimxrt1170_evk_mimxrt1176_cm7_A.conf file. I am not sure how realistic this is, as most apps would not fit into that memory space on other boards.

[dleach02]

That is true. The QSPI on our boards, while cheap, have a tradeoff in performance. We are also doing experiments to determine the subset of code that, if moved to ITCM, will give you the optimum performance.