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Raspberry Pi 5

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Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#71

I'm happy that they're upgrading the pi, but it's not exactly lightweight computing in terms of power (they recommend a 27W PSU) or performance/watt (see: your cell phone) To me the charm of the raspi ecosystem was always in giving you a very low power, "always on, almost no power draw" linux environment. Oh well, I guess there's always the older versions or the zero for that.

Did you read the blog post? :)

"Raspberry Pi 5 consumes significantly less power, and runs significantly cooler, than Raspberry Pi 4 when running an identical workload. However, the much higher performance ceiling means that for the most intensive workloads, and in particular for pathological “power virus” workloads, peak power consumption increases to around 12W, versus 8W for Raspberry Pi 4."

Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#72
post #45

I'm tired of information being vague, under-specified, or only available under NDA (if you're lucky). I'm not stupid enough to hop on this ride again. Are there any fully open (in terms of schematics, firmware) RISCV rpi-"compatibles" out there? I'd be happy to pay triple the price of this thing for a power-efficient linux-capable sbc that is open.

Beaglebone (from Texas Instruments) is more open, but still not as open as you'd probably like. Still, its a better balance than what Rasp. Pi organization has (more documents are available on AM335x, open-hardware for Beaglebone Green and reference designs, full chip specifications and the like). Beaglebone isn't really "more expensive", as much as its just "lower specs at the same price" though.

The "most open" are MPU chips and their associated "System on Module" boards. This isn't quite a SBC, but its easier to use than a BGA. These SoMs are very poor from price/performance perspectives, but instead serve as reference designs and/or prototypes to the $8 or $9 chips. The overall expectation is that you're "supposed" to be building your own PCBs eventually, so the SoM are kind of just a prototyping aid.

Most SoM provide 100+ pins from the chip as well, meaning you absolutely have to build a PCB to use them. However, 2-layer boards solder very easily to a SoM with castilliated edges (even with a hand-soldering iron)... albeit with a bit of flux and technique and practice. Its just the easiest way to deliver the most-pins of customization in the smallest space. So a relative beginer should be able to boot an SoM. The most difficult routing and Power-Delivery-Network details are already solved on an SoM, you just gotta apply power and build out the final interfaces / connectors.

Take the ATSAMA5D27-SOM1, 104-pins in a 40x40mm form factor. $50 from Mouser for 500Mhz and 128MB RAM (though fully open source and fully documented at linux4sam, and processor manual, U-boot process and everything). But the underlying SiP (MPU + DDR2 RAM) is like $15... while the MPU alone is like $8 and 128MB of DDR2 RAM is only like $3.50 in practice. Since in mass-production, you'd probably have a custom PCB anyway, that's the most expected use case. https://www.linux4sam.org/bin/view/Linux4SAM . I'd say that Microchip / Atmel's MPUs seem to be the best documented that I've found, but are unfortunately the lowest specs. Still, they also have some of the lowest power-consumption (like 200 mW or something), so really they're in a low-power class of their own. Still Linux though.

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STM32MP1 is the MPU from ST Micro. Like the Microchip SAM-MPU series, the STM32MP1 is available in SOM, SiP, and "raw" MPU form. Except the SOMs are like $100+, the SiP is like $50+, while MPU is $10ish.

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I know NXP has a huge line of MPUs. I haven't researched them yet though.

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I think all the hardware designers at this level just "assume" that their customers, if they care about "open source", are probably making their own PCBs.

If someone "just" wants a SBC (like the Rasp. Pi), there's not much point in publishing a ton of documents. People can just boot the Rasp. Pi and start messing with Linux.

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I got no experience with this yet. I'm just curious and am thinking of a simple MPU layout project ever since I discovered that OSHPark has 6-layer boards and KiCAD supports BGAs in practice. Overall, these lower-power lower-end MPUs fill a different niche than a Rasp. Pi ever would. But I feel like there's enough overlap that these might scratch your "open source" and "fully documented" itches.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#73

TBH the thing I hate most about this category of SBC is the reliance on SD cards. They are both too unreliable to trust and so slow that they often bottleneck the SBC. Buying them is often a crap shoot too, I've purchased cards batches of cards from the supposed reputable manufacturers that were all over the board when benchmarked, and rarely did they hit the claimed speed spec. I would love if there was an alternati…

Did you read the blog post? :)

"One of the most exciting additions to the Raspberry Pi 5 feature set is the single-lane PCI Express 2.0 interface. Intended to support fast peripherals, it is exposed on a 16-pin, 0.5mm pitch FPC connector on the left-hand side of the board.

From early 2024, we will be offering a pair of mechanical adapter boards which convert between this connector and a subset of the M.2 standard, allowing users to attach NVMe SSDs and other M.2-format accessories."

Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#74

They say that the silicon was "designed in-house" for the best possible performance. What does that mean, exactly? Does it have semi-custom ARM cores? That seems unlikely to me.

The copy feels like they hired ex Apple marketing guys to produce that launch page.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#75
At the moment the product page is just a list of specs, but the blog post goes into much more detail, including describing the new RP1 I/O controller:

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/

On pre-ordering:

> We’re also giving every print subscriber to The MagPi and HackSpace magazines a single-use code, giving them priority access to Raspberry Pi 5 hardware.

A subscription is US$43 and up, and gets you a priority code to use at PiShop or The Pi Hut. You pay full price for the RPi 5, but it ships to you first.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#76
post #34

I would love to see a more side by side comparison of specs. 2-3x times the speed pretty good though. The raspi 4 was just on the cusp of being usable as a main computer, I wonder how good this will be.

Pi5 is already on Geekbench. Speed seemed to be on the ballpark of a mobile Intel i5 dual core 4xxx IIRC.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#77
Interestingly the Pi 5 has moved most I/O like Ethernet, USB, MIPI and GPIO into a custom I/O controller chip called the RP1. It talks to the main CPU over 4-lane PCIe. They also have a custom PMIC (Dialog DA9091) with a built-in RTC and support for external backup battery. Everything else seems pretty standard.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#78
post #3

anyone could tell me how did you use raspberry pi?

Home server/media centre, serving :

* Squeezebox music system

* Plex video library

* Homeassistant home automation

* Retropie gaming

* PiHole ad blocker (I have a second older pi running just this for redundancy)

* Running a couple of minor web services and scripts on cron jobs.

Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#79
post #4

Price? That's what makes raspi different, after all.

$60 and $80 according to https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/

I don't mean the price but the _price_

I'm kinda tired on not being able to buy a PI because the production is so limited...

Re: Raspberry Pi 5

#80
post #55

This is exciting. I wish this would work without a fan, just with a good cooling system. I say this because I love the idea of a full linux computer without a fan. I'm loving the Apple silicon machines at the moment for this. Perfect silent computing. I wish it came as well in a larger board, with proper HDMI ports. There is a market for silent linux machines, I think! What would be your dream linux fan-less setup?

The other day, I found myself in the interesting state of needing an x86 binary, but not having any x86 machines readily available. My (i)phone, laptop - apple silicon macbook, home server - raspberry pi, all run ARM! Previously, that would have been limited to just my phone, but, ah, time marches on
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