5 ms·

Hurry up and announce a Raspberry Pi 4 already! I want to give you more money

by ChrisRR 8y ago

FerretFred 8y ago
Same here, but only if it doesn't need > 3.5 amp PSU.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  It can require that, but only when it uses USB3.0-PD.
  - bsder 8y ago
    That's not entirely correct. It seems like the issue is current spikes, and those can occur under far more conditions (HDMI, external USB devices, etc.). I suspect that beefing up the power system filtering would reduce the power supply maximum current requirements quite dramatically.
    - dcbadacd 8y ago
      What I meant is that I'm annoyed by the lack of compatibility with standards that could provide the required amount of power to a rPi, the current microUSB implementation is awful and shouldn't be repeated.
      - bsder 8y ago
        Ah. My comment was more along the lines of "If they redid the power system with better filtering, they could make it work with 5V, 500mA and operate on standard USB." However, Broadcom won't give us plebians access to the documentation, perhaps I'm being too optimistic, and this really is the best they can do. The Beaglebone Black guys seem to work inside a 5V 500mA envelope quite well. At the very least, they don't seem to have anywhere near the issues that the RPi folks seem to.
- mustardo 8y ago
  3.5A @ 240v or 5v? Watt is "power" current is largely meaningless without voltage
  - snazz 8y ago
    At 5V. 17.5 watts (absolute maximum), not 840 or 420 watts.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Are there any SBCs that run on 240v!? The RPi is 5v. Unless you're deliberately ignoring the whole context of the conversation just to be pedantic.
danaos 8y ago
The rpi foundation are in trouble. The current SoC is old, limited at 1GB maximum RAM, and the GPU core is dated from 2011, 8 years ago. In my opinion they should severe ties with Broadloom and open up to global competition.
- dcbadacd 8y ago
  There's also no crypto core and 64bit userland support (that could allow actually secure ASLR).
- fsloth 8y ago
  There is inherent value in having a stable, battle tested platform. The fact that the same chip has been sold for general public for the last 8 years is to me rather appealing than a turn off. Given the complexity of the modern software stack, there have been a zillion bugs that have ruined someone elses day and have been hopefully fixed. Although, I have no idea of the support quality of the Pi foundation since I have not used their products. The platform is sufficiently beefy to run lot of non-trivial applications. It's not like those applications have magically increased in complexity. We've just been brainwashed in the consumer space to always demand bigger numbers so that the vendors have something new to sell. There is really no need for a certain category of desktop applications to get any slower with time, or, to be able to provide any more value regardless how fast they are run if the interactivity level is already so fast that improvements would be undetectable by humans. Note: this is not an argument that the current Pi "is fast enough for everything". I'm saying it's fast enough for some things, and the mature software stack is considerable added value.
  - snazz 8y ago
    I agree with this sentiment, but I do think that the RPi Foundation is going to have a hard time improving from their current state without breaking backwards compatibility, because they made some decisions early on that no longer make much sense today. The big ones, in my opinion, are the write-limited, slow SD card interface, the microUSB power connector, the 1GB maximum RAM, Ethernet that shares bandwidth with USB, and ever-increasing power requirements. I think the Pi Foundation wants to churn out more new units by increasing the CPU speed, but with the super slow SD interface and the capped-out RAM, performance hasn’t made significant improvements in a long time. I also think it was a bad decision to not focus on open-source software with the Pi. They have been including proprietary user space applications forever (Mathematica, for instance), the GPU boots a proprietary ThreadX operating system that has DMA and complete CPU control, and the thing requires lots of binary blobs to boot. The education aspect (particularly as a low-level programming platform) would have been made more accessible without such an opaque boot process.
benj111 8y ago
Is this enough to keep you going? https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/raspberry-pi-4-everything-we-know,news-59876.html https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/raspberry-pi-4-everything-we-...
adrianN 8y ago
Is there a computer in the Raspberry Pi price range that has >=4gb RAM and can play full HD movies? The 1GB limit is basically what's keeping me from using a Pi as my main computer.
- swebs 8y ago
  >and can play full HD movies Can you be more specific? "Full HD" usually refers to 1080p, which all Raspberry Pi models can easily handle for h264 video due to their hardware decoder. The Raspberry Pi 3 can handle most other formats through software just fine, though it may struggle with more intense formats like 10 bit h265. For that, an Odroid C2 may be what you're looking for. They advertise: >H.265 4K/60FPS and H.264 4K/30FPS capable VPU
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Yeah, I'm looking for something that has some hardware support for h264 and a sufficient amount of RAM that is not too expensive and only uses a few Watts.
    - Intermernet 8y ago
      Pretty much all RPis can handle this, depending on your definition of "sufficient amount of RAM".
- lazyjones 8y ago
  ROCK64 is currently your best bet AFAIK. https://www.hackerboards.com/compare/192,295,259/ https://www.hackerboards.com/compare/192,295,259/
- driverdan 8y ago
  Check out ODROID: https://www.hardkernel.com/ https://www.hardkernel.com/ It doesn't have that much RAM but they have models with 8 core CPUs, USB3, and one with SATA. They're around $50.

Hurry up and announce a Raspberry Pi 4 already! I want to give you more money

FerretFred 8y ago

Same here, but only if it doesn't need > 3.5 amp PSU.

dcbadacd 8y ago
It can require that, but only when it uses USB3.0-PD.
- bsder 8y ago
  That's not entirely correct. It seems like the issue is current spikes, and those can occur under far more conditions (HDMI, external USB devices, etc.). I suspect that beefing up the power system filtering would reduce the power supply maximum current requirements quite dramatically.
  - dcbadacd 8y ago
    What I meant is that I'm annoyed by the lack of compatibility with standards that could provide the required amount of power to a rPi, the current microUSB implementation is awful and shouldn't be repeated.
    - bsder 8y ago
      Ah. My comment was more along the lines of "If they redid the power system with better filtering, they could make it work with 5V, 500mA and operate on standard USB." However, Broadcom won't give us plebians access to the documentation, perhaps I'm being too optimistic, and this really is the best they can do. The Beaglebone Black guys seem to work inside a 5V 500mA envelope quite well. At the very least, they don't seem to have anywhere near the issues that the RPi folks seem to.
mustardo 8y ago
3.5A @ 240v or 5v? Watt is "power" current is largely meaningless without voltage
- snazz 8y ago
  At 5V. 17.5 watts (absolute maximum), not 840 or 420 watts.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Are there any SBCs that run on 240v!? The RPi is 5v. Unless you're deliberately ignoring the whole context of the conversation just to be pedantic.

danaos 8y ago

The rpi foundation are in trouble. The current SoC is old, limited at 1GB maximum RAM, and the GPU core is dated from 2011, 8 years ago. In my opinion they should severe ties with Broadloom and open up to global competition.

dcbadacd 8y ago
There's also no crypto core and 64bit userland support (that could allow actually secure ASLR).
fsloth 8y ago
There is inherent value in having a stable, battle tested platform. The fact that the same chip has been sold for general public for the last 8 years is to me rather appealing than a turn off. Given the complexity of the modern software stack, there have been a zillion bugs that have ruined someone elses day and have been hopefully fixed. Although, I have no idea of the support quality of the Pi foundation since I have not used their products. The platform is sufficiently beefy to run lot of non-trivial applications. It's not like those applications have magically increased in complexity. We've just been brainwashed in the consumer space to always demand bigger numbers so that the vendors have something new to sell. There is really no need for a certain category of desktop applications to get any slower with time, or, to be able to provide any more value regardless how fast they are run if the interactivity level is already so fast that improvements would be undetectable by humans. Note: this is not an argument that the current Pi "is fast enough for everything". I'm saying it's fast enough for some things, and the mature software stack is considerable added value.
- snazz 8y ago
  I agree with this sentiment, but I do think that the RPi Foundation is going to have a hard time improving from their current state without breaking backwards compatibility, because they made some decisions early on that no longer make much sense today. The big ones, in my opinion, are the write-limited, slow SD card interface, the microUSB power connector, the 1GB maximum RAM, Ethernet that shares bandwidth with USB, and ever-increasing power requirements. I think the Pi Foundation wants to churn out more new units by increasing the CPU speed, but with the super slow SD interface and the capped-out RAM, performance hasn’t made significant improvements in a long time. I also think it was a bad decision to not focus on open-source software with the Pi. They have been including proprietary user space applications forever (Mathematica, for instance), the GPU boots a proprietary ThreadX operating system that has DMA and complete CPU control, and the thing requires lots of binary blobs to boot. The education aspect (particularly as a low-level programming platform) would have been made more accessible without such an opaque boot process.

benj111 8y ago

Is this enough to keep you going? https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/raspberry-pi-4-everything-we-know,news-59876.html https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/raspberry-pi-4-everything-we-...

adrianN 8y ago

Is there a computer in the Raspberry Pi price range that has >=4gb RAM and can play full HD movies? The 1GB limit is basically what's keeping me from using a Pi as my main computer.

swebs 8y ago
>and can play full HD movies Can you be more specific? "Full HD" usually refers to 1080p, which all Raspberry Pi models can easily handle for h264 video due to their hardware decoder. The Raspberry Pi 3 can handle most other formats through software just fine, though it may struggle with more intense formats like 10 bit h265. For that, an Odroid C2 may be what you're looking for. They advertise: >H.265 4K/60FPS and H.264 4K/30FPS capable VPU
- adrianN 8y ago
  Yeah, I'm looking for something that has some hardware support for h264 and a sufficient amount of RAM that is not too expensive and only uses a few Watts.
  - Intermernet 8y ago
    Pretty much all RPis can handle this, depending on your definition of "sufficient amount of RAM".
lazyjones 8y ago
ROCK64 is currently your best bet AFAIK. https://www.hackerboards.com/compare/192,295,259/ https://www.hackerboards.com/compare/192,295,259/
driverdan 8y ago
Check out ODROID: https://www.hardkernel.com/ https://www.hardkernel.com/ It doesn't have that much RAM but they have models with 8 core CPUs, USB3, and one with SATA. They're around $50.