This is probably as good a thread as any to ask which single-board ARM computer has the best performance/price ratio, preferably one that's more powerful than the Raspberry Pi and can do duty as an everyday system.
Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
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Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#42Interesting set of comments. Clearly the RasPi does what it does, for those who want that, really well. As embedded/single board computers go, it has been very successful. The flavor of comments about the Banana[sic] Pi are very similar to those made about PCs, especially in the earlier days, of the form "I want it to be more like ."
I have come to believe that this is really a form of saying "I want the computer I have at the price of this computer which can't do what I can do on the one I'm using." Sort of a having cake and eating it too sort of comment.
Looking at the various entrants in this space, the Pi, the Beaglebone Black, the Galileo, Etc it is clear to me that manufacturers are exploring this space. Its unfortunate that there isn't a lot of coherent feedback to them. I was talking to Carl Helmers last week (we were at the same conference) and mentioned that once again there is probably a need for a journal like the one BYTE magazine started out to be. A place where folks to deconstruct the various offerings that manufacturers were putting out there and having discussions about worked and what didn't work in that space. Unfortunately magazines are somewhat out of favor and there hasn't been a really solid tech site to fill that particular niche.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#43$74 after shipping? Newegg will sell you a motherboard with a dual-core x86 CPU for $50 ($32 after rebate). With a new AMD AM1 platform, you can get a four-core x86 and a motherboard for $69. Raspberry Pi is a nice thing for $35. For $75, much nicer alternatives exist.
Sure, but your dual-core x86 machine will be larger, likely require a fan, and eat quite a bit more electricity than the Banana Pi.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#44I actually don't want a faster version. What I want is a more energy efficient version (still ARM) with roughly the same performance that makes it feasible to run on batteries or solar. Does that exist?
I imagine a 800-1,000 Mhz Cortex A53 version would be 0.5-1W, if they decided to make one for next year. But not sure if that's their target market. They will probably keep power consumption about the same, and launch one at a higher clock speed, perhaps even as dual-core, to better run other distros on it (such as Ubuntu).
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#45For those more technical than I, is there actually any benefit in having the 1000Mbps NIC on a board with still a relatively slow processor? I fear the processor can't handle anywhere near that amount of throughout that NIC could support, so to me it looks like a feature for the sake of being different to the Pi.
At the minimum it is useful because it is connected to CPU/memory by something more meaningful than USB as is the case with Raspberry Pi. Also for many interesting workloads (essentially anything that involves scatter-gather DMA from some other peripheral, eg. routing, file/storage server) you don't need that much powerful CPU to saturate gigabit ethernet.
Thanks!
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#46I want a dual-core 1.4+ GHz ARM board with 2GB RAM (comparable to last years smartphones). Why is there no Raspberry Pi C announcement already? The type B is already a bit dated and who needs the "compute module"?
See my reply above. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7657271
They have already fragmented the type B model with releasing 256MB and later 512MB versions.
They should just release an type C model with faster CPU and GPU. The type B model is too slow for some "Full HD" resolution computation of the official Rpi-Cam as well it is too slow for most Linux distributions (even basic web browsing).
A ARM board version similar to Intel's first generation ATOM 320 (1.6 GHz dual core with HT) would be fine for "type C".
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#47Excellent. The more competitors to the Pi the better. I've been nothing but disappointed by mine - it's slow, convoluted and totally unreliable. I do expect the opposite for the money when you can get a generic android tablet for not much more.
there's many ways of measuring speed, but for a two watt computer i find the speed more than adequate. in addition if you wish to use it as a desktop the long awaited wayland port should mitigate gui performance issues. i can't see the competitors being less convoluted than a debian install. if your hardware is unreliable you should make a repro to make it fail(i ran a performance benchmark in a loop on one i had tro…
The thing is slow because the ARM core is tagged onto the side of the GPU. The chipset is designed for throwaway STB uses. The ARM core isny much faster than a 100MHz SPARC 20 I have. About 15% faster. The IO also sucks. For a general purpose computer it's painful.
I posted instructions on how to make it fail on the RPi forum. My thread was deleted.
The boot and video detection process is a total mess as well. Daring to suggest that is the case is frowned upon apparently as well as I was basically flamed for wanting to use composite video over HDMI. Bear in mind I didn't have an HDMI capable unit around and the thing is marketed as composite capable.
Also I was getting USB brownouts with a powered hub connected. My thread was deleted.
I've worked with embedded systems for a number of years and the RPi was a really low point in head bashing on wall. It's an awful platform.
Its in the bin where it belongs.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, I hadn't thought about this. My uncle's in need for a media center (he's already got the home theatre and the forty-something-inches LED T.V. and I was thinking of gettin'im a RPi with the rest of the fancy stuff but you totally would get waaaay better performance with a little bit more "expensive" board. The last time that I checked for this kind of solutions I was fancying some Zotac box but that one was…
The Intel NUCs are in a similar price range, especially once you take case, PSU, etc. into consideration. You can get them motherboard-only, but in the pre-built ones you just add RAM and Flash/HDD and you're done. The NUCs probably also win on overall power consumption, just check that you can use accelerated HD video decoding in the model you choose with the software you want to use.
There's Intel NUC cheap than 350$?
Also case and PSU aren't a problem, either you get a Pico PSU for 50$ with a cheap case, or you take a case that include a PSU. They are cheap and the fan are noisy but for under $60... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811154...
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
there's many ways of measuring speed, but for a two watt computer i find the speed more than adequate. in addition if you wish to use it as a desktop the long awaited wayland port should mitigate gui performance issues. i can't see the competitors being less convoluted than a debian install. if your hardware is unreliable you should make a repro to make it fail(i ran a performance benchmark in a loop on one i had tro…
The thing is slow because the ARM core is tagged onto the side of the GPU. The chipset is designed for throwaway STB uses. The ARM core isny much faster than a 100MHz SPARC 20 I have. About 15% faster. The IO also sucks. For a general purpose computer it's painful. I posted instructions on how to make it fail on the RPi forum. My thread was deleted. The boot and video detection process is a total mess as well. Daring…
I am not sure what 'throwaway STB' means - something to do with phones? How many watts does your SPARC consume? I think the rpi makes a better stab at being a general purpose computer than an android tablet, and I think that the wayland port should improve it further. However I agree it's no replacement for a power hungry intel box.
Post the instructions here, I will test on mine to see whether it's a general problem or just your box - there have been faulty ones shipped, but it's a tiny percentage of the total.
Having threads deleted seems to be a common theme on popular forums, it doesn't usually signal a cover up - the moderators can take exception to your tone and then you have no recourse.
When my rpi posts it seems to look for a hdmi cable, if none is present it outputs to the yellow composite - how does yours differ?
I can't understand if you mean brownouts in terms of power or in terms of connectivity - what was dropping out?
I can't say I have any experience with embedded systems but typically when people say that they aren't referring to computers that the rpi is comparable to - e.g. hdmi out, usb, ethernet. What were you doing with the embedded systems that you couldn't do with a pi?
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#50I actually don't want a faster version. What I want is a more energy efficient version (still ARM) with roughly the same performance that makes it feasible to run on batteries or solar. Does that exist?
Why does it seem to be so difficult to run a Pi off of batteries? It draws less power than many phones. I was boggled that the Raspberry Pi AdaFruit store, which has dozens of different Pi-compatible displays, keyboards, cases, and exotic sensors and output devices, doesn't have a single external battery pack.
it doesn't seem to be difficult:
check out this thread or google for hamish cunningham.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=25674