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Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

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Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#31

Post by ambrop7 »

justincormack wrote: post #29
morsch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SATA port also means it's viable as a small NAS solution. Shame it doesn't come with gigabit Ethernet.

IO performance on these CPUs is fairly poor, so gigabit is unlikely to actually be worthwhile.

On my TS-7800 [1] which has GigE and a 500MHz (!) CPU, Samba outperforms the Raspberry Pi (15MB/s vs 7MB/s). Note that on the RPi not even the whole 100Mb link is utilized despite the CPU being slightly faster in general (yes, I did some benchmarks) - and the CPU on the TS-7800 was actually designed for storage applications. So there may be something on to your claim, and it would appear that CPUs that include graphics and stuff are not that good at I/O.

[1] http://www.embeddedarm.com/products/board-detail.php?product...

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#32

Post by nitrogen »

Nursie wrote: post #5

This is kinda cool actually. I had been looking at the ODROID-X (hardkernel.com) and various other single-board machines for a while. Whilst this isn't particularly powerful (ODROID is quad core exynos), it does have an advantage I haven't seen anywhere else - SATA. Does anyone know of any other boards that have a SATA connector?

The Marvell-based stuff (e.g. SheevaPlug, DreamPlug, D2Plug, OpenRD, CuBox) mostly has SATA (not SheevaPlug) and gigabit Ethernet (though for some reason the GuruPlug Display only has 100mbit). It just tends to be a bit pricier, and mostly lacks an FPU or GPU.

I look forward to the day when I can get a Cortex A9 or A15 board with a USB host good for the full 480mbit/s, SATA, and gigabit Ethernet.

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#33

Post by throwaway1979 »

EwanToo wrote: post #4

One interesting thing about the Cubieboard is the SATA port, otherwise it's very similar to a lot of other ARM boards out there (e.g. Beagleboard, Pandaboard, etc). This makes it much easier to stick a low power SSD on the device, rather than rely on a hugely slow SD card. What I'm looking forward to next are Cortex A15 boards, the first CPUs are shipping (In the new Chromebook), so hopefully we'll start seeing them…

I didn't realize there was a significant speed difference between SD and SSD technology! After some googling, I found a good video that gives the relevant figures:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fxAQv_KDV0

In short, the class 10 SD card I got for my Raspberry Pi is rated for 10MB/s. An SSD drive can do 1GB/S (I imagine the numbers vary for reads vs writes). Also, SD cards seem to be able to take a lot fewer writes per block before they wear out.

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#34

Post by nitrogen »

ambrop7 wrote: post #31
justincormack wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IO performance on these CPUs is fairly poor, so gigabit is unlikely to actually be worthwhile.

On my TS-7800 [1] which has GigE and a 500MHz (!) CPU, Samba outperforms the Raspberry Pi (15MB/s vs 7MB/s). Note that on the RPi not even the whole 100Mb link is utilized despite the CPU being slightly faster in general (yes, I did some benchmarks) - and the CPU on the TS-7800 was actually designed for storage applications. So there may be something on to your claim, and it would appear that CPUs that include graphi…

...it would appear that CPUs that include graphics and stuff are not that good at I/O.

I made the same observation on my blog[0]. It's a shame that decent I/O and fast CPUs/GPUs are rarely if ever combined in ARM systems. What good is a quad core CPU if you can't get any data to it?

[0] http://nitrogen.posterous.com/the-ideal-arm-platform

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#35

Post by dredge »

ambrop7 wrote: post #31
justincormack wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IO performance on these CPUs is fairly poor, so gigabit is unlikely to actually be worthwhile.

On my TS-7800 [1] which has GigE and a 500MHz (!) CPU, Samba outperforms the Raspberry Pi (15MB/s vs 7MB/s). Note that on the RPi not even the whole 100Mb link is utilized despite the CPU being slightly faster in general (yes, I did some benchmarks) - and the CPU on the TS-7800 was actually designed for storage applications. So there may be something on to your claim, and it would appear that CPUs that include graphi…

You may already know this, but the Ethernet controller on the Pi is actually a USB device, built into the LAN9512 [0] USB controller/hub.

The TS-7800 has a dedicated Ethernet controller, which presumably explains some of the difference.

[0] http://www.smsc.com/index.php?tid=300&pid=135

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#36

Post by Nursie »

justincormack wrote: post #30
Nursie wrote: post #5

This is kinda cool actually. I had been looking at the ODROID-X (hardkernel.com) and various other single-board machines for a while. Whilst this isn't particularly powerful (ODROID is quad core exynos), it does have an advantage I haven't seen anywhere else - SATA. Does anyone know of any other boards that have a SATA connector?

The cubox does http://www.solid-run.com/products/cubox and a few others.

Hmm, looks good (and tiny) but seems slow. Certainly has a lot of interfaces! And mainline linux support which is a bonus.

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#38

Post by Nursie »

nitrogen wrote: post #32
Nursie wrote: post #5

This is kinda cool actually. I had been looking at the ODROID-X (hardkernel.com) and various other single-board machines for a while. Whilst this isn't particularly powerful (ODROID is quad core exynos), it does have an advantage I haven't seen anywhere else - SATA. Does anyone know of any other boards that have a SATA connector?

The Marvell-based stuff (e.g. SheevaPlug, DreamPlug, D2Plug, OpenRD, CuBox) mostly has SATA (not SheevaPlug) and gigabit Ethernet (though for some reason the GuruPlug Display only has 100mbit). It just tends to be a bit pricier, and mostly lacks an FPU or GPU. I look forward to the day when I can get a Cortex A9 or A15 board with a USB host good for the full 480mbit/s, SATA, and gigabit Ethernet.

I had a sheevaplug about three years ago. I was hoping things had moved on a bit since then...

I also look forward to that day. We seem to be at the stage right now that we can have some but not all of those things. Soon, soon...

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