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Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

jeffgeerling.com

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Re: Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

#61

Post by 3np »

marcodiego wrote: post #52
alias_neo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there is a blog post in this somewhere, that I could write. I have a bunch of Pi 4s (4GB). I just put one in an Argon M.2 case and was wondering what to do with it. I have a "gut feel" for how my workstation should behave, I am a (backend) software engineer by profession, tend to work my day job on an i7 laptop (XPS 15, Ubuntu) but at home I'm on Ryzen 7 1800X (Manjaro) and Ryzen 9 3900X (Debian). Is ther…

You can try subjective benchmarks. These ARM SBC's are as powerful as workstations from the 90's, so try to use them with as demanding software as what was run on a workstation from the 90's. Trying to replicate this would certainly do a great blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27796821

It's comparable to a brand new Intel workstation in 2010.

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Rockchip-RK3399-vs-Inte...

For most people trying this, the SD card is the bottleneck and there are options. The mentioned Rpi2 had USB 2.0 shared with storage and network. The 4B has USB 3.0 and dedicated lanes for GBE and storage.

Ryzen 3700 RPi 4B RPi 2

Re: Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

#62

Post by Ruthalas »

hinkley wrote: post #56
rblatz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably easier to buy a regular case and then fit the raspberry pi into it.

We should be meeting in the middle and creating SBCs whose bolt holes spacing is identical to some other device standard. For instance 2.5” HDDs, or 3.5-2.5 adapters. Then you can find trays and enclosures and caddies that can be modified slightly to purpose. Expanding holes in sheet metal is easy. Tapping holes, welding captive nuts, and bending are a lot trickier.

This would be excellent. That's a great idea.

Re: Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

#63

Post by NewJazz »

3np wrote: post #58
alias_neo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there is a blog post in this somewhere, that I could write. I have a bunch of Pi 4s (4GB). I just put one in an Argon M.2 case and was wondering what to do with it. I have a "gut feel" for how my workstation should behave, I am a (backend) software engineer by profession, tend to work my day job on an i7 laptop (XPS 15, Ubuntu) but at home I'm on Ryzen 7 1800X (Manjaro) and Ryzen 9 3900X (Debian). Is ther…

One significant bottleneck in a common desktop Rpi would be the SD card. You can improve a lot by putting the root filesystem on SATA-over-USB or use the CM with an appropriate board. If you'd have been in the market for a new board, I would have recommended something that exposes PCIe, or at least SATA. The best non-SoM option There is also Quartz64 and Rock 3A (max 8GB RAM, PCIe3). But it's going to take a while un…

But it's going to take a while until community and mainline kernel support make the RK3566/RK3568 ready for a casual user.

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64_Development#Upstreamin...

TL;DR

Video output just recently (this week) got ported to mainline Linux, but it is still a bit rough. Only works on 1080p60fps monitors.

Everything else major for the kernel has been mainlined or is in review.

U-boot is still only downstream rockchip with closed source memory initialization (boot blobs).

Re: Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

#64

Post by dekhn »

tambourine_man wrote: post #31

I have no experience building PCs, but during the last decade or so I've been running RPis with 6-8 disks attached. It's great software and noise wise, but the cases were made by me with MDF (and I have no idea what I'm doing), so it's not as solid as I'd like them to be. Every time I search for rackmount or 3D printed cases I'm floored by the prices, which seem completely out of proportion. Any tips on cheep/custom…

I absolutely love laser-cut acrylic with tapped holes accepting m3 screws or standoffs.

For the MDF, it's mostly practice and time/care. It took me quite some time to master making square wooden boxes that stand up to abuse and nowadays I could design in Fusion and rip out a case on my CNC machine pretty fast (Next project is to encase an entire RPi in clear epoxy: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/epoxy-pi-resin-io/

Re: Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

#65

Post by sokoloff »

hinkley wrote: post #56
rblatz wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably easier to buy a regular case and then fit the raspberry pi into it.

We should be meeting in the middle and creating SBCs whose bolt holes spacing is identical to some other device standard. For instance 2.5” HDDs, or 3.5-2.5 adapters. Then you can find trays and enclosures and caddies that can be modified slightly to purpose. Expanding holes in sheet metal is easy. Tapping holes, welding captive nuts, and bending are a lot trickier.

For something as lightly loaded as a home computer, rivnuts are pretty darn easy and cheap way to add threads to sheet metal.

Brass standoffs with a nut on the back are also readily available and cheap.

Re: Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

#66

Post by tambourine_man »

jrockway wrote: post #54
tambourine_man wrote: post #31

I have no experience building PCs, but during the last decade or so I've been running RPis with 6-8 disks attached. It's great software and noise wise, but the cases were made by me with MDF (and I have no idea what I'm doing), so it's not as solid as I'd like them to be. Every time I search for rackmount or 3D printed cases I'm floored by the prices, which seem completely out of proportion. Any tips on cheep/custom…

I agree with the advice that you should just use an ATX case. They are a commodity and there are a billion great ones. You'll have to remove the motherboard plate and drill 4 holes for M2.5 standoffs; the full Raspberry Pi dimensions are on the product page, so you can easily print out a 1:1 template, get the right drill bit, and go. No fancy equipment is necessary to drill a small hole in sheet metal, and the result…

That's what I was afraid, you're convincing me of buying a 3D printer :)

They are still a bit expensive, but are so much fun that they maybe worth it.

Re: Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

#67

Post by sandreas »

cjbconnor wrote: post #55
sandreas wrote: post #27

Things that are on my wishlist: - Compute-Module should have a unified interface, that is not about to change for the next 3 generations of compute modules - Someone create a "notebook" case having a board with mount for exactly this interface - Case should have a decent keyboard and display without being to big - How about having GPIO pins hidden I would love to have an "upgradable" Notebook with arm architecture...

Have you seen the MNT Reform? There's a pi compute module adapter being built for it.

Yeah, quite bulky :-) But interesting approach.

Re: Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

#68

Post by Teknoman117 »

salawat wrote: post #60
Teknoman117 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other neat thing is that peer-to-peer PCIe transactions do not have to go through the root complex (the Pi in this case). Say you have a GPU and an NVMe drive or video capture card plugged into a PCIe switch, which is then plugged into the Pi. If your software supports having these devices directly communicate, they can do so as fast as their PCIe links support doing, even though there’s only the tiny link to the…

Don't you mean the CPU can only full-duplex with a few GPU's at a time? And are you sure that GPU's are actually talking with each other? Forgive me if I'm woefully out of date/having a massive brainfart, but last I heard, GPU's got CPU-less DMA a few years ago allowing access to system memory, but programming/setting up the pipelines/cleanup/repriming/output consolidation was still solely a CPU-centric work stream.…

Yes, GPUs are able to directly pass messages and bulk data to each other these days. It's completely supported in CUDA, OpenCL, Vulkan, DirectX 12, etc. DirectX calls it "Explicit Multi GPU".

It's been around since GPUs transitioned to PCIe, it's just that both AMD and NVIDIA just locked it to the "professional" GPUs, or only used it under the hood of some other feature. AMD GPUs have used PCIe peer to peer copies for CrossFireX since the GCN Radeon GPUs (R9 290X and friends), that's why they don't need an external bridge.

There's DirectGMA (AMD) and GPUDirect (NVIDIA) which allows PCIe drivers for other devices to directly copy to and from GPU VRAM.

Other than driver support, nothing prevents PCs from having GPUs communicate directly with storage devices. The GPU would need to expose some of it's VRAM over PCIe (using a BAR window). The OS and the GPU driver would need to create some NVMe submission and completion queues either in system or VRAM that the GPU can be considered to own. You'd then issue NVMe operations where the backing pages point into the VRAM. The resizable bar support of the current Radeon and GeForce GPUs is a major step in this direction, although again, resizable bars were part of the original PCIe specification and has been available on server hardware since ~2008.

Re: Mini-ITX Seaberry Adds 11 PCIe Slots to a Raspberry Pi

#69

Post by jrockway »

tambourine_man wrote: post #66
jrockway wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the advice that you should just use an ATX case. They are a commodity and there are a billion great ones. You'll have to remove the motherboard plate and drill 4 holes for M2.5 standoffs; the full Raspberry Pi dimensions are on the product page, so you can easily print out a 1:1 template, get the right drill bit, and go. No fancy equipment is necessary to drill a small hole in sheet metal, and the result…

That's what I was afraid, you're convincing me of buying a 3D printer :) They are still a bit expensive, but are so much fun that they maybe worth it.

You'll like it. Don't cheap out too much. I think the polish that careful manufacturers like Prusa add is worth paying for. I started with a Tiertime printer and it made me so unhappy that I bought a Prusa i3 a month later. Skip that step and go right to the good stuff. The best step for me was that I got the kit, so I put every part together myself. When something breaks, I know exactly how it's put together. (I have broken something by being an idiot and ... printed a replacement part and was back up and running the same day.)

The Prusa Mini is very reasonably priced, but I haven't used it and I'm not sure the build area is enough for what you have in mind.

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