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Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

theregister.co.uk

31–40 of 213 posts

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#32

While a bit more expensive, I purchased a Hummingboard [1] instead of a Pi, and the performance was great! I had a NodeJS/Postgresql app running on it for kicks. I was surprised at how quick it was. [1] http://www.solid-run.com/products/hummingboard/linux-sbc-spe...

> While a bit more expensive

Actually at least twice as expensive (starts at $70 compared to the RPi's $35).

And with the new RPi announced here, it's basically twice the price for quarter/half the CPU power of the Pi (single/dual core vs 4 core RPi).

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#33
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broadcom is still Broadcom.

It doesn't look like BCM is intending to release any more datasheets/programming information either, which is not surprising. There will probably never be any detailed information released, officially or otherwise, on any BCM SoCs, even after they're long EOL'd. As far as openness is concerned the RPi is basically a smartphone/tablet SoC devboard, with most of the hardware proprietary - while its Chinese competitors…

bunnie describes the culture in Shenzen that allows for those leaked datasheets as "gongkai". He did a really awesome talk about it at [31c3]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msrTR3hNDQM

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#36
Wonder if they fixed USB problems (dma/internal bus bottlenecking or something). Info about quad core CPU is a bit sketchy, either its one of Cortex cores, or BCM tweaked ARM11/bumped L1 cache to max 64KB value and/or added proper L2 cache.

So many unknowns.

Edit:

Milhouse, Team-Kodi Member: "ARMv7 and NEON instructions" http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=217040&pid=1911780#p....

WOOOHOOO now we are cooking, Broadcom is back in business, first hiring real flesh and blood open source GPU drivers developer, now this. Next thing you know they will open up DSI port specification or something :o

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#38

Am I weird for wanting to use this for really simple web hosting?

Nope. The Pi makes a lot of sense for a simple web server with a robust SQL/NOSQL database backend running with Node/Go. If you have a good internet connection with a good upload speed, you can easily run a server able to take a couple of hundred hits a minute. It is certainly a better option than using the cloud for prototyping, where a wrong for loop can instantiate loads of instances and bill you a hell lot.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the same: Broadcom is still the non-datasheet-releasing, our-chips-implementing-standard-phy-spec functionality are subject to manhattan-project secrecy, assholes.

Why are they required to release those datasheets?

They're not required, but (thankfully) we're not required to use hardware from vendors that don't do that.

Re: Turbocharged Raspberry Pi 2 unleashed

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the same: Broadcom is still the non-datasheet-releasing, our-chips-implementing-standard-phy-spec functionality are subject to manhattan-project secrecy, assholes.

Why are they required to release those datasheets?

They're not, but it's been common practice in their industry for decades, and it's generally seen as beneficial to OEMs and users to have access to datasheets before purchase. This is why it's also commonplace for most chip manufacturers to offer free samples, even of chips upwards of $20 list price. Most of them even publish enough information to develop hardware and software to interact with these chips even without one on hand.

That Broadcom doesn't do this is very atypical.

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