News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development • Hacker News Board

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#71

Post by utternerd » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:13 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #58

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #2

> " ...: It sounds like the key feature will be 'more': a faster CPU and faster IO, rather than new features. " Raspberry Pi Holdings is a embedded systems manufacturer for pity's sake; we don't need more from them, we need less. [EDIT] A faster Raspberry Pi 6 is encroaching on the territory of the Intel N150 and its successors and mainstream Linux distributions and that is a battle they would lose in terms of price…

Is there some serious astroturfing going on with the N100/N150, or am I just jaded? I have a bunch of old intel atom boards laying around. The Intel Compute Stick (TM) burnt out its flash root drive in a few months. The C2000 board I had burnt out the clock pin to drive the bios. I have a Clover Trail with a PowerVR GPU (I thought I was getting an intel GPU because it was branded Intel Graphics or similar, but nope!)…

I've been running an N100 for 3 years with a 5 bay external enclosure over USB 3.2 Gen 2 and ZFS, and have not had any issues. It is pretty phenomenal, pulls about the same power, and costs around the same as an RPi 5 but provides substantially more compute and throughput.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#72

Post by michaelt » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #63

wrxd wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still true that people, out of convenience and familiarity, used Raspberry Pi for tasks where a microcontrollers would have been perfectly adequate

This just clarified something for me. I've always been annoyed when I see a Pi with nothing connected to its GPIO header; why not just use a cheap thin client? Or an old laptop, for that matter? But that's missing the point. Here's the point: Pre-Beagleboard-and-Pi, if you wanted an programmable thing to work with GPIO, you used an Arduino or a BASIC Stamp, or just a plain old PIC. But they wouldn't run a real OS. Pr…

Then the esp8266 came along, offering wifi and gpios and an arduino-like programming experience at a price point of literally $1

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#73

Post by Aurornis » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #67

Aurornis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Raspberry Pi is not a good general purpose computer, but some of these criticisms are starting to feel like a pile-on with partially incorrect information. > the latest pi needs considerations of cooling solutions FYI you can run the Raspberry Pi 5 without a fan or even a heatsink. It will safely throttle itself if it gets too hot. If you're trying to get maximum performance out of it all the time, you w…

> Powering something off of any old USB port means it would have to fit within the 5V 500mA basic specification, which the Raspberry Pi 3 exceeded long ago. Theoretically, devices like the iPhone have lower power consumption than that and loads of performance features like recording 4k 120fps video. Of course, an iPhone costs much more than a RPi, and has much better economies of scale, so they’re not truly comparabl…

> Theoretically, devices like the iPhone have lower power consumption than that and loads of performance features like recording 4k 120fps video.

iPhones use cutting edge (expensive) manufacturing processes for their chips.

They also have batteries inside to cover the power demands while doing intense work like recording 4K 120fps video.

I don't understand what point you're trying to make. The Raspberry Pi is not in the same class of device as an iPhone.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#74

Post by ozim » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

mrlambchop wrote: post #15

peteforde wrote: post #11

Pi's refusal to drop a USB-C on Pico due to cost increases is a terrible call IMO. I seriously cannot fathom being someone doing development who wouldn't pay $0.50 extra to purge the last micro USB from their desktop.

A very small point, but pulling from a feather form factor BOM to compare. $0.12 for microUSB female connector (rated 1A) $0.26 for a USB-C female (rated 3A). Needs 2 x resistors ( I think the power capabilities are the biggest item. If you want to pull higher current from a laptop for development or supply from a wall, you have to switch to USB-C. I don't think either of these prices are that aggressive - pretty sur…

But then you loose market share to ESP32 where people just get USB C on their own.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#75

Post by margalabargala » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:18 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #44

margalabargala wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FYI you can run the Raspberry Pi 5 without a fan or even a heatsink. It will safely throttle itself if it gets too hot. What's the point of doing so though? If you're doing this, you're obviously using the wrong device. If all you need is to run some python scripts in a Linux environment, you should use a Pi 3 or Pi 0w2. Agree with your other points.

Having the burst performance is helpful. Most light workloads are very bursty. When you type a command or click on something you want latency to be low. Having the overhead to get it done quickly at the full clockspeed is good if you are latency sensitive. Throttling has become a bad word. Some feel compelled to avoid it at all costs, doing things like buying big coolers and running synthetic benchmarks to avoid it.…

If you're consistently doing bursty loads that throttle, the thermal cycles are going to do some damage to your chip and it'll fail sooner than if you ran it cooler.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#76

Post by hedora » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:28 PM UTC

wao0uuno wrote: post #62

exe34 wrote: post #21

The only way I'll buy another raspberry pi is if they come with a power supply that's guaranteed to work with them. I got tired of the random reboots in the night and replaced my media center/NAS with an old Nuc.

Official power supply is sold separately. Pis work fine with unofficial USB-PD power supplies but will limit maximum current for USB devices. I have two Pi 5's and one 4 and they all are perfectly stable when powered with an old Lenovo laptop charger.

It's still a huge pain point. I keep a magic "correctly sized, but provides clean power" USB charger with my Pi in a drawer, because I know that, if I lose that charger, I'm buying a replacement. It's unclear to me why they're so borderline. Maybe USB-C would help?

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#77

Post by michaelt » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:30 PM UTC

wolpoli wrote: post #43

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #2

> " ...: It sounds like the key feature will be 'more': a faster CPU and faster IO, rather than new features. " Raspberry Pi Holdings is a embedded systems manufacturer for pity's sake; we don't need more from them, we need less. [EDIT] A faster Raspberry Pi 6 is encroaching on the territory of the Intel N150 and its successors and mainstream Linux distributions and that is a battle they would lose in terms of price…

Raspberry Pi isn't in direct competition with N150's. Their niche is the industrial/embedded space. For that market, power consumption doesn't matter. What matters is that each model is guaranteed to be available till a specific date.

Among the people making things like a DIY NAS, who want fast USB, lots of cores and RAM, small-ish, not-too-bad power consumption, running Linux; and not caring much about GPIOs or passive cooling, it’s in competition with the N150

Among people who want GPIOs and network connectivity, a low price and an open, microcontroller like experience, not caring much about USB speeds and lots of cores and running Linux and suchlike, it’s in competition with the esp8266 & esp32. And the previous generations of RPi.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#78

Post by leidenfrost » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

wolpoli wrote: post #43

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #2

> " ...: It sounds like the key feature will be 'more': a faster CPU and faster IO, rather than new features. " Raspberry Pi Holdings is a embedded systems manufacturer for pity's sake; we don't need more from them, we need less. [EDIT] A faster Raspberry Pi 6 is encroaching on the territory of the Intel N150 and its successors and mainstream Linux distributions and that is a battle they would lose in terms of price…

Raspberry Pi isn't in direct competition with N150's. Their niche is the industrial/embedded space. For that market, power consumption doesn't matter. What matters is that each model is guaranteed to be available till a specific date.

IMHO people expected a Pi that offered similar performance as a Mac M1 but with Linux as first class citizen

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#79

Post by kllrnohj » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:45 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #67

Aurornis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Raspberry Pi is not a good general purpose computer, but some of these criticisms are starting to feel like a pile-on with partially incorrect information. > the latest pi needs considerations of cooling solutions FYI you can run the Raspberry Pi 5 without a fan or even a heatsink. It will safely throttle itself if it gets too hot. If you're trying to get maximum performance out of it all the time, you w…

> Powering something off of any old USB port means it would have to fit within the 5V 500mA basic specification, which the Raspberry Pi 3 exceeded long ago. Theoretically, devices like the iPhone have lower power consumption than that and loads of performance features like recording 4k 120fps video. Of course, an iPhone costs much more than a RPi, and has much better economies of scale, so they’re not truly comparabl…

An iPhone will absolutely draw more than 2.5w under load.

Re: News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

#80

Post by adrian_b » Thu, May 28, 2026, 9:53 PM UTC

hedora wrote: post #66

tredre3 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I looked into using an N150 for a NAS [...] Lo-and-behold, they all have crazy PCIe / memory subsystem data corruption issues. Source? I've never had a single problem with PCIE on N100/N150/N200. I have had a ton of issues with drive corruption on the pi, both via USB3 and PCIE.

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.4-Lands-PCID-INVLPG https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=48343.0

All CPUs from all vendors have tons of bugs like this, which are mitigated in the operating system kernels, e.g. in the Linux kernel.

I am pretty certain that the Linux kernel must also contain specific code for various quirks of all Arm CPUs that have been used in the various Raspberry Pi models.

Intel had indeed several bugs that were more ugly than usual in their recent CPU models, like also MONITOR not working correctly in Lunar Lake, but even so, Intel still has better documentation for their CPU bugs than most vendors of Arm-based CPUs.

In any case, the bug that you linked was solved in the kernel years ago and it affects a privileged instruction that cannot be used in user programs. It does not have any direct relationship with memory and PCIe corruption. Memory corruption can occur inside the operating kernel only in certain circumstances, when the kernel changes the mapping of global memory pages and then writes the new pages, but the writes go to the old pages. However, this could happen only until 3 years ago, before the bug was known.