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Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 on sale now from $25
- geerlingguy 6y agoThere's a summary of all the new info along with a price list here: https://static.raspberrypi.org/files/product-briefs/2010016+Product+Brief+RPi+CM4.pdf https://static.raspberrypi.org/files/product-briefs/2010016+... — $25 for the base model with 1GB of RAM, no WiFi/Bluetooth, and no eMMC, up to $90 for the high-end model with 8GB of RAM, WiFi/Bluetooth, and 32GB eMMC. All the models now have built-in gigabit ethernet, and a new board-to-board connector that means the CM4 is not compatible with the CM-CM3+ DIMM form factor. See the announcement post for all the details, but I was lucky to be able to work with the CM4 for a few weeks, and I posted my impressions here: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-compute-module-4-review https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-compute-...
- jaclaz 6y agoThank you very much for your article, I read the hackaday one linked to on another thrread, twice, and could not understand what this stuff is about, while reading just a few lines of your impression I instantly got the essence.
- Legogris 6y agoThis looks pretty compelling - the only thing that bothers me a bit is that the eMMC seems to be soldered and not replaceable, giving it a much more limited lifespan, depending on how durable these eMMC modules are. (Oh and BTW I had completely forgotten but cheers for the follow-up on TRIM/UASP for USB the other week :))
- exged 6y agoThe "lite" versions don't have eMMC, so you would be free to put an SD card slot or similar on the carrier board.
- rwmj 6y agoHave you found reliability problems with eMMC? I've found it to be a lot more reliable than SD cards, faster too. Of course with 1 Gb networking you can move the heavy lifting storage for containers and VMs to something like Ceph and only use the eMMC for OS root disks and local storage. For my Turing Pi, when it's delivered, I'm hoping to start with a small Kubernetes install for testing. Then when the TPi 2 is released next year, build a second one with CM4 modules for more involved Kubernetes testing/development while putting Ceph on the old one. (To head off inevitable comment: no I'm not expecting this to perform well, and it's not for production work, it's purely for experimentation with clusters)
- Legogris 6y agoI've only tried one model so far (Samsung via Odroid) and yes, so far the reputation seems to hold that it's faster and more reliable than the supposedly best SD cards on the consumer market (and cheaper too!). But the underlying technology is the same and with several boards I'd expect to have at least some failures over the course of a year or so of continuous use.
- imtringued 6y agoThe fact that they are soldered and not replaceable forces manufacturers to actually build quality storage. You can get away with bad SD cards but if the entire device is bricked then you will demand a complete replacement.
- CobaltFire 6y agoThanks for the info! Looks like a really awesome little board that's going to allow all KINDS of interesting use cases. I really hope to see a new TuringPi cluster; doubly so with ESXi now being available! One note about your article: Due to the nature of PCIe, ANY GPU will happily run on the 1 lane presented here. The limitation will be data transfer, which primarily shows up in texture loading. Tom's Hardware did an article [0] a decade ago comparing lanes to performance. This is also why some x16 connectors will be listed as "electrically" x8; they only have 8 lanes exposed. However, you will have issues with the power delivery; PCIe GPU's are allowed to pull up to 75 watts from the slot itself before going to direct connectors. There are ways to fix this; I ran a mPCIe (WiFi) to external PCIe adapter for a couple years on an old laptop with a GPU just fine. Another use case (and likely more relevant) would be plugging in an HBA for a NAS. Upgrading the NIC to something multi-gig sounds interesting, but that PCIe x1 is not going to be any faster than the built-in GBe except in edge cases. I'm actually really curious to see what people do with this. [0] https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-geforce-gtx-480-x16-x8-x4,2696.html https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pcie-geforce-gtx-480-x1...
- geerlingguy 6y agoGood to know; I'm honestly a little out of my element with GPUs because it's been a while since I've even thought much of them (I don't do much gaming and don't do many GPU-based workloads... the built in GPU is always fine for me!). For the NIC, it's cool to see we'd be able to get two or maybe three gigabit interfaces on the same Pi, could be interesting for a variety of different networking devices, coupled with the faster SoC in the Pi 4.
- CobaltFire 6y agoI wanted to correct myself; with 500MBps bidirectional, that single PCIe lane could run a 5GbE at full saturation, or a 10GbE at a pretty solid fraction. That changes the use case a bit; the Aquantia multi-gig cards have drivers for ESXi. You could then run an eMMC boot for the hypervisor and run everything via the higher speed adapter, saving the GbE for management/migration.
- bullen 6y agoHow does this handle the heat?
- Zenst 6y agoIf only they had a eMMC socket instead - would cut down on production costs for the various models, help suppliers who would have less flavours to stock and add flexability to change the eMMC memory, or not. 32 flavours/models seems like choice-saturation. If they still make all 32 flavours a year from now, I'll be supprised.
- coder543 6y ago> If they still make all 32 flavours a year from now, I'll be supprised. They guarantee 7 years of availability for Compute Modules, including this one, so... prepare to be surprised. They had plenty of time over the last 16 months since the launch of Pi 4 to decide how many SKUs to make for the Compute Module. This certainly wasn't done on a whim by some inexperienced team, which is what your post seems to imply. They've been doing this for years, and they realize the commitment they're making.
- Zenst 6y agoMy postulation was based upon how they dropped the 1GB model of the Pi4 as it did not sell as well as the other models and was able to furfill it's role with lowering the price of the 2GB model, which happened about a year after the initial release. It is perfectly viable for them to shift to socketed eMMC and still accommodate all available flavours. But then how they sell will set that and if out say 99% of sales are for only 5 models and a socketed eMMC consolidate the offerings whilst still providing exact compatibility with the initial guaranteed offerings, then I still would not rule out such a change a year on, once they see what flavours do sell. That was the basis of my comment - nothing more, nothing less.
- coder543 6y agoThe embedded market isn't anything like the direct to consumer market. D2C allows for fine tuning like that in a way the embedded market simply doesn't. If they change the product at all, downstream companies may have to get their products entirely re-certified, which can be an expensive and time consuming process. Those companies rely on having a stable supply of exactly the compute module that they designed their product around. Every detail matters. These SKUs are fixed in stone. If they discontinue or modify them at all before the specified 7 year date, that would substantially damage their relationship with downstream companies. They have upheld their previous commitments, so I don't expect them to start breaking commitments now.
- boris 6y agoNice review, thanks. One thing in it that I believe is incorrect (or confusing) is PoE support: I don't believe it is built into the IO board but rather the board is compatible with the PoE hat.
- type0 6y agoBtw, thank you for your blog reviews and videos. Compute Module 4 + IO Board looks like a winner setup for a small multimedia box
- freshrap6 6y agoI guess this means no Pi4 in the Turning Pi...
- rwmj 6y agoThere's supposed to be a new version of the Turing Pi next year which will support it.
- geerlingguy 6y agoIndeed; it will be a bit of a different design (though still in a Mini ITX form factor), especially considering the much-expanded IO capabilities from the exposed PCIe lane, but I spoke to Turing Machines and they said they're already working on a V2 for the Compute Module 4.
- nsky-world 6y agoThe Turing Pi 2 will be announced soon
- stevefan1999 6y agoHowever, I find it difficult for Turing Pi to exploit the PCI-e connectivity. It's very absurd to break it out for each of them modules to get an independent PCI-e slot. This could raise the layout of the board significantly. Yet the speed they currently offer (PCI-e x1 Gen2) isn't fast enough for RDMA to effectively "chain" the compute modules. So I would see that they would have some sacrifice (e.g. fallback to the smaller and more cliche mini-PCIe like most recent fresh IOT boards out there), or even remove PCI-e expansion but offer something else (e.g. embedded SATA host/multi-NICs where only the master node could control, then the rest of the children will have to rely on RDMA, despite it will be slow and painful). It's not quite economical for Turing Pi to implement NUMA-like architecture so I would rule this out.
- exged 6y agoTuring Pi is mostly useful for educational purposes. For anything performance critical, a cheap 8-core x86 box will run circles around 7 Raspberry Pis in pretty much every way, no matter how they are networked.
- gsreenivas 6y agowould have loved to see a secure element in this iteration/design to enhance the security of the hardware platform
- zaarn 6y agoNow I can finally start working on my new pi k8s cluster project. I've been waiting for this release, the proper gigabit support is especially appreciated. I wonder what i could use the pcie port for, can#t think of anything immediately...
- geerlingguy 6y agoIn my blog post (linked elsewhere in a top level comment) I noted that NVMe over the PCIe interface gives ~70 MB/sec random write performance, and ~300 MB/sec sequential read; it is twice as fast as the same drive over USB 3.0 for random IO, and that makes it a good option for persistent volumes, Ceph, NFS, etc.
- zaarn 6y agoHmm, yeah, it would make a great way to build a ceph cluster. Dreaming up a bit of a glass palace, I'd imagine you could fit a cluster of 3x4 CM4s without much extra and 1x4 CM4s with NVMe connectors into a 1U server chassis after some angle grinding. Possibly even two layers above eachother. That would be quite a computer cluster to have to play with at the homelab.
- youngtaff 6y agoHopefully someone will come out with a compact POE board for it - I only need ethernet and USB Really want something similar to the Ubiquiti CloudKey form factor (though ports could be on same edge)
- rbanffy 6y agoNow I want a cluster board with space for 7 modules and an external network interface like the Pine 64 one.
- rwmj 6y agoThat will be the Turing Pi 2, expected next year.
- rbanffy 6y agoThen all we'll need will be to add 32 LEDs across to show board CPU activity, stack them in two groups of 16 (with a network switch in the middle) and put it all inside beautiful a black cube with a translucent red acrylic side and we'll have a poor person's Connection Machine CM-2a.
- m000 6y agoCM4 looks like the perfect cheap upgrade for old home NAS boxes. I wonder if there are/will be any IO boards with an integrated SATA controller.
- Matsta 6y agoThe Odroid HC4 also came out today which has a PCIe to SATA controller onboard which looks like a near-perfect NAS box: https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?t=40609 https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?t=40609
- matt-attack 6y agoCan someone ELI5 how to actually take advantage of this? Like if I just compile a simple C program is it going to magically run faster? How about running some shell scripts or running random python code? Or do I need to write code with a specific SDK to take advantage?
- coder543 6y ago> is it going to magically run faster? Faster than what? The previous Compute Module 3+? Absolutely.
- hadlock 6y agoCompute modules are used for all sorts of things, from tiny research compute clusters, to embedded control boards for all sorts of things, like semi-custom digital sinage, remote control submarines, kiosks, "smart" vending machines etc etc. By guaranteeing availability for 8 years, that allows companies to design, spin up production, build and support their own products, with a compute module as the "brain" for one full business cycle, pretty much however you measure a business cycle. Other examples of raspberry pi compute module devices, custom drones, ad-hoc ventilator brains, custom network hardware, custom "IoT" devices etc etc. Without all the inconveniently large consumer-sized ports on the compute module, these devices are well suited for all sorts of low to mid volume B2B products. Raspberry Pi Foundation has built quite a reputation of being a very solid SBC supplier in the commercial realm.
- AtlasBarfed 6y agoDo these vendors really push the optimization envelope? It's too bad there isn't something like a game console (for profit) wrapped around this thing, that would really kickstart hardcore optimization. Much like the game consoles of old (ps-one, nes, snes, genesis), the devs would squeeze every last bit of performance out of those platforms, but there wasn't a non-gaming computing userbase to take advantage of those optimizations. I had heard the cell in the PS2 was used in some supercomputers, but that might have been the Cell whitepaper presenting unrealistic flops and someone on the Folding.Home taking the hype at face value.
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- CobaltFire 6y agoAny possibility of you checking to see if ESXi will load off of the eMMC those have? I know some eMMC has issues (i.e. LattePanda); it would be good to know if this is one of those cases.