@ rizla - the Netgear DGND3700 has a Gigabit switch on it and it uses 6368..? or are you on about gigabit xDSL driver?
@ asbokid - you dunno any info on 6328 do you? speed? multi-core? just for comparison thats all
also, are these chipsets just designs licensed out that may be changed slightly by other manufacturers? bit like graphic cards etc... e.g. Speedtouch 6348 be different too Netgear 6348..?
Hi
Snadge,
Sorry, I've got no more info on the Broadcom 6328 SoC (System-on-Chip). If you have a device with that particular CPU in it, maybe you can get some info from the Linux kernel, via the proc filesystem..
This from an HG612..
# cat /proc/cpuinfo
system type : CHIP96368
processor : 0
cpu model : BCM6368 V3.1
BogoMIPS : 398.95
wait instruction : no
microsecond timers : yes
tlb_entries : 32
extra interrupt vector : no
hardware watchpoint : no
ASEs implemented :
VCED exceptions : not available
VCEI exceptions : not available
unaligned exceptions : 646681218
#
The BogoMIPS metric (the 'bogus' measure of million instructions per sec) is Linus Torvalds' joke at the meaningless of core speed measurements, although it's still useful for comparisons between CPUs.
The 6328 will almost certainly be a dual MIPS32 core. It should be possible to discover more about the CPU - e.g. the size of instruction and data caches - by studying the kernel logs from booting the device.
The Broadcom System on Chips are very highly integrated. From the diagram below of the 6368 we can see that the SoC integrates a DSL Analog Front End (AFE) and line driver, ethernet switch controller, USB host controller, various data bus controllers and bridges, and even power supply regulation circuitry.
The OEM, whether that's Huawei, Netgear, ZTE or whoever, only has to bolt on a PSU, an oscillator for clocking, some flash memory (a choice of serial or parallel), some volatile memory, and they have a working system. It's almost like Lego!
Broadcom supplies the OEMs with a Reference Design - these are board level designs - detailed schematics, perhaps even PCB artwork, with full pinouts for the CPU and details of the external components and requirements, and constraints, etc.
The OEM then designs a PCB to accommodate the Broadcom SoC and its support components, and to meet those specs. Even with a small team, that stage probably takes just a few weeks. And away they go, hopefully with a working router board.
Broadcom even supplies a ready-rolled cross-compiler toolchain for building a Linux kernel and drivers for all its SoCs like the 6368. Via a simple menu system, the toolchain is configured so that it builds a Linux kernel and device drivers to match the components that are on your development board, as well as the userspace binaries that will be flashed into the firmware.
So in answer to your question. Since the 6368 is so integrated, there's little scope for improving on the Reference Design. One router powered by a 6368 is likely to perform much the same as any other. There might be occasional updates to the CPU to correct silicon errors, and over time, improvements to the DSL hardware driver. And theoretically those updates could make one 6368 board perform better than another. But in practice not by much.
cheers, a
