# Honeycomb LX2



## cmoerz (Dec 31, 2021)

Today, I've gone down the rabbit hole on Solid Run's Honeycomb LX2.

For those who don't know it - it's an ARM based workstation, that looks very promising and reasonably priced.








						HoneyComb LX2 - Arm Workstation & Developer Platform | SolidRun
					

Cutting-edge LX2160A Mini ITX Arm Workstation tailor-made for native Arm development and powerful edge solution. Click to learn more about our HoneyComb LX2.




					www.solid-run.com
				




I'm uncertain though, how well FreeBSD will work on it? The accounts on the mailing list and documentation on Solid Run's website are spotty at best.

Does anyone have any experience with it and would be willing to share it?

does it work, i.e. with 13.0-RELEASE? 13.0-STABLE?
does it boot with UEFI?
what graphics cards work? that in particular seems to be rather difficult to assess and answer - apart from the ongoing insanity of graphics card prices
does the onboard Gbit LAN work?
Performance wise, it appears to be around 6x faster than a Raspberry Pi, very good at number crunching but not so good in the I/O and memory access performance department. Otherwise, it looks great all around - SATA ports, up to 64GB RAM, M2... all typical workstation stuff.


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## grahamperrin@ (Jan 1, 2022)

cmoerz said:


> does it boot with UEFI?



<https://developer.solid-run.com/knowledge-base/honeycomb-lx2k/#specifications> _work in progress_ but does this mean WIP in a Linux context? Or just WIP? I suspect the latter: 








cmoerz said:


> what graphics cards work?



<https://developer.solid-run.com/knowledge-base/honeycomb-clearfog-cx-installation-and-tips/#gpus> a couple of GPUs mentioned in a Linux context. 



cmoerz said:


> 13.0-RELEASE? 13.0-STABLE?



From the tables of available packages, I imagine that stable/13 will be better – for compatibility with drm-devel-kmod.

<https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-fbsd13-kmod/#packages>
<https://www.freshports.org/graphics/drm-devel-kmod/#packages>
<https://www.freshports.org/graphics/gpu-firmware-kmod/#packages>


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## Phishfry (Jan 1, 2022)

I actually prefer SolidRuns ITX offering here:





						ClearFog CN9130 Single Board Computer | Marvell CN9130 SBC | SolidRun
					

Versatile platforms designed for Marvell's CN913x SoCs - tailor-made for powerful networking and edge applications. Click to learn more about ClearFog CN9130.




					shop.solid-run.com
				






			https://www.nightmare.com/rushing/mbin//MacchiatoBIN_FreeBSD.html
		



			Comparing the OverDrive 1000 (A57) vs. MACCHIATObin Double Shot (A72) for buildworld and via a CPU/cache/RAM tradeoff-exploring benchmark
		


This does sound promising for the LX2


> What this means is that HoneyComb running our tianocore edk2 based firmware will boot and run on most Aarch64 operating systems out of the box.


This platform seems more expensive. How does it stand up in CPU benchmarking? Number of cores?

Macchiato is now 5 years old. So that is dated.


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## astyle (Jan 1, 2022)

cmoerz : According to https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/, 13-RELEASE is definitely supported on aarch64 (the Honeycomb LX2). I'd discourage trying to attach a graphics card, though - you probably can do that, but the connectors look rather awkward, I think you may end up buying an adapter to connect a GPU to your HoneyComb. I would imagine that IOT stuff has decent quality networking hardware. Just my 2 cents after looking at the board. I can imagine that those IOT boards are what's running those video ads by Nike on the Jumbotron in Times Square or the Sony stuff at Shibuya Crossing.


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## Phishfry (Jan 1, 2022)

It only has x8 PCIe so you would have to buy an appropriate VGA card. They do exist.
I am using NVidia GT710/GT730 x8 cards in a server.


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## cmoerz (Jan 1, 2022)

The honeycomb board is supposed to no longer be an IOT board - hence, I was looking at graphics cards as well. The CPU package has 16 cores and macchiato bin is somewhat around 4.5 times "slower", OverDrive about 3.75 times.

At least, according to this thread on the arm mailing list (obviously, take it with a grain of salt, please), which takes world+kernel compile times as measurement:


			Re: HoneyComb first-boot notes [buildworld buildkernel timing example for stable/13]
		


There seems to be some serious oumph in this package, even if it doesn't look it.

I couldn't find anything about that UEFI package. I watched a Youtube video, in which one of the devs said you put the UEFI firmware into the sd card slot. Couldn't find any UEFI details or downloads though, which makes me think it might not be ready for prime time yet.

Don't feel like fiddling with u-boot, device trees and all that stuff, that makes the RPI so much "fun" in regards to the boot configuration.

So, I think a VGA card should work. I'm just unsure whether just any regular joe card will do or whether it needs a special one, because there's a bunch of postings out there that point towards compatibility issues with the UEFI firmware. And not finding much else about that UEFI firmware bothers me enough to not consider getting one (yet?).


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## diizzy (Jan 1, 2022)

cmoerz
I'd suggest that you use the mailing-list for arm and/or #bsdmips on EFNet, I'd also like to document how to get this platform up and running on the wiki similar to the Rockchip page ( https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm/RockChip )


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## acheron (Jan 1, 2022)

I have one, I'll be able to share description tomorrow.


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## acheron (Jan 2, 2022)

cmoerz said:


> Today, I've gone down the rabbit hole on Solid Run's Honeycomb LX2.
> 
> For those who don't know it - it's an ARM based workstation, that looks very promising and reasonably priced.
> 
> ...


FreeBSD works fine on the Honeycomb.
It should work on 13.X, I only use -current but I don't see why it wouldn't work on 13.X
arm64 only supports booting with UEFI
Nvidia GPU are not supported, you'll need a "recent" AMD GPU (polaris architecture IIRC)
The onboard LAN doesn't work, same for the SFP+ slots. You'll have to put a usb ethernet adapter or an usb wlan adapter.
Warning, it only supports 1.2v RAM modules.


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## acheron (Jan 2, 2022)

astyle said:


> cmoerz : According to https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/, 13-RELEASE is definitely supported on aarch64 (the Honeycomb LX2). I'd discourage trying to attach a graphics card, though - you probably can do that, but the connectors look rather awkward, I think you may end up buying an adapter to connect a GPU to your HoneyComb. I would imagine that IOT stuff has decent quality networking hardware. Just my 2 cents after looking at the board. I can imagine that those IOT boards are what's running those video ads by Nike on the Jumbotron in Times Square or the Sony stuff at Shibuya Crossing.


I put a RX550 on my honeycomb without problem.


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## acheron (Jan 2, 2022)

cmoerz said:


> The honeycomb board is supposed to no longer be an IOT board - hence, I was looking at graphics cards as well. The CPU package has 16 cores and macchiato bin is somewhat around 4.5 times "slower", OverDrive about 3.75 times.
> 
> At least, according to this thread on the arm mailing list (obviously, take it with a grain of salt, please), which takes world+kernel compile times as measurement:
> 
> ...


The images are here: https://images.solid-run.com/LX2k/lx2160a_uefi


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## diizzy (Jan 2, 2022)

acheron
Can you put down exactly what you need to do to boot FreeBSD?


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## Phishfry (Jan 2, 2022)

Have you tried booting off an NVMe in this board?
The images page seems to have flexspi_nor or SD for medium.









						I got HoneyComb – Marcin Juszkiewicz
					

Finally some hardware with (almost) SBSA/SBBR compliance!




					marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl


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## acheron (Jan 3, 2022)

diizzy said:


> acheron
> Can you put down exactly what you need to do to boot FreeBSD?


`dd` the uefi img on a sdcard.
`dd` the FreeBSD memstick image on a usb flash drive.
The installation process is the same as an x86 box.


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## acheron (Jan 3, 2022)

Phishfry said:


> Have you tried booting off an NVMe in this board?
> The images page seems to have flexspi_nor or SD for medium.
> 
> 
> ...


Yes, the system is on a nvme drive, it works fine.


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## cmoerz (Jan 3, 2022)

Well, it all looks great on the surface; if you try to buy it on their website, they push a paypal account on you and the payment fails. I'm now in support hell with Paypal in an attempt to close the account.

So, as a word of caution to anybody considering buying it - I highly recommend waiting for another payment option. This is a major pita that does not seem to work.


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## astyle (Jan 3, 2022)

cmoerz said:


> Well, it all looks great on the surface; if you try to buy it on their website, they push a paypal account on you and the payment fails. I'm now in support hell with Paypal in an attempt to close the account.
> 
> So, as a word of caution to anybody considering buying it - I highly recommend waiting for another payment option. This is a major pita that does not seem to work.


If you need that brand of the board, you can try looking for a reseller, and may have to settle for second-hand.


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## Phishfry (Jan 3, 2022)

acheron said:


> `dd` the FreeBSD memstick image on a usb flash drive.


Is it safe to assume it is using the aarch64 FreeBSD memstick image?



			https://download.freebsd.org/ftp/releases/arm64/aarch64/ISO-IMAGES/13.0/FreeBSD-13.0-RELEASE-arm64-aarch64-memstick.img


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