3 ms·

Doesn't really need to be terribly efficient, good enough will do for the price. One issue is that there's only one USB port on the board, and the external por

Doesn't really need to be terribly efficient, good enough will do for the price. One issue is that there's only one USB port on the board, and the external ports and the ethernet port are connected through a hub. So when you connect an external harddrive and try to transfer data over the network you end up with < 10 MB/s transfer speeds. If Broadcomm decided to use DMA for their USB that would of course be ideal, but I don't know if they have any suitable products like that. Of course 4K and h.265 video decoding would be welcome too for a lot of users.

Const-me 10y ago
Apparently, Raspberry markets their products as affordable but still useful. The features you’re asking for are currently way too expensive for that market. Single-board computers with USB 3.0 and capable of 4K playback are available, but they cost $200 or more: Nvidia Jetson TK1, Inforce 6540, etc.
- justin66 10y ago
  But that just begs the question: does Broadcom have any parts on the shelf such that, if they tweaked them and sold them to the RPi project at cost, they'd fulfill those requirements? Broadcom and the RPi project can do some things in conjunction that Nvidia, for example, cannot.
  - Const-me 10y ago
    Looks like the answer is yes, this chips are sold for $20: https://www.broadcom.com/products/broadband/set-top-box/bcm7251 https://www.broadcom.com/products/broadband/set-top-box/bcm7... However I’m not much into the hardware design, I only write some embedded software for those things. Might be reasons why it’s still too expensive: if the chip requires too many layers in the PCB, too many external components (like RAM), too much electrical power so it needs better PSU and some cooling, and so on.
khedoros1 10y ago
> One issue is that there's only one USB port on the board, and the external ports and the ethernet port are connected through a hub. More than that: it's not even a USB host port. The silicon is some Synopsys IP called "DesignWare USB 2.0 OTG Controller". The driver implements host mode emulation.
brokenmachine 10y ago
Can rpi not do h265 decoding already? I thought Kodi was popular on the rpi. I was thinking about setting one up as a media player, but not if it can't do h265.

Const-me 10y ago

Apparently, Raspberry markets their products as affordable but still useful. The features you’re asking for are currently way too expensive for that market. Single-board computers with USB 3.0 and capable of 4K playback are available, but they cost $200 or more: Nvidia Jetson TK1, Inforce 6540, etc.

justin66 10y ago
But that just begs the question: does Broadcom have any parts on the shelf such that, if they tweaked them and sold them to the RPi project at cost, they'd fulfill those requirements? Broadcom and the RPi project can do some things in conjunction that Nvidia, for example, cannot.
- Const-me 10y ago
  Looks like the answer is yes, this chips are sold for $20: https://www.broadcom.com/products/broadband/set-top-box/bcm7251 https://www.broadcom.com/products/broadband/set-top-box/bcm7... However I’m not much into the hardware design, I only write some embedded software for those things. Might be reasons why it’s still too expensive: if the chip requires too many layers in the PCB, too many external components (like RAM), too much electrical power so it needs better PSU and some cooling, and so on.

khedoros1 10y ago

> One issue is that there's only one USB port on the board, and the external ports and the ethernet port are connected through a hub. More than that: it's not even a USB host port. The silicon is some Synopsys IP called "DesignWare USB 2.0 OTG Controller". The driver implements host mode emulation.

brokenmachine 10y ago

Can rpi not do h265 decoding already? I thought Kodi was popular on the rpi. I was thinking about setting one up as a media player, but not if it can't do h265.