13 ms·
The Raspberry Pi can boot off NVMe SSDs now
- pytlicek 6y agoAwesome news! Can't wait to test it out :)
- thetinguy 6y agoCan you add a usb 3 boot drive to your benchmarks?
- _joel 6y agoIt's in the video, 10% quicker boot of Chromium vs. via USB3 and much faster file copy
- cosmotic 6y agoPreferably all 3: USB3 bridged NVMe, USB3 bridged SATA, and USB3 flash
- geerlingguy 6y agoI've done all three a number of times... just never synthesized all the results. I did update the post with a benchmark I forgot to include—NVMe direct is 10% faster than the NVMe-to-USB 3.0-to-Pi adapter, so there is definite and easily-measurable overhead loss in the protocol translations. Plus the potential (I don't know... but some people say it could happen) for different weird issues to present themselves when going from PCI to USB to PCI again.
- cat199 6y agowould be good to see a real fs benchmark too - os boot & chromium launch have tons of other stuff going on which obscures the actual io speed.
- geerlingguy 6y agoI mention in the video the fio and iozone benchmarks I did on my previous 'tiny nvme raid' video.
- bjt2n3904 6y agoAnd it still crawls to boot. I don't know why, but my suspicion is that the Broadcom hardware is seriously gimped by being closed source. Seriously, just open source stuff already, and let us do the development for you!
- jsheard 6y agoI wouldn't be surprised if the Pi Foundation is in the process of transitioning away from Broadcom hardware They're already testing the waters of in-house silicon with the RP2040, an in-house Linux SoC would be the next step
- varispeed 6y agoIs RP2040 completely open though?
- jsheard 6y agoAs far as I know the RP2040 has no secrets, everything is documented in public: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/rp2040/rp2040-datasheet.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.org/rp2040/rp2040-datasheet.p... Realistically a Pi Linux SoC would probably be more open than Broadcom hardware, but not completely open. IP blocks they license from 3rd parties (e.g. the GPU) may still have NDA strings attached, and the wireless firmware would still need to be an untinkerable black box to get regulatory approval. It would still be a step up from Broadcom who won't give you anything until you sign an NDA and commit to buying 10 million units and offer up your firstborn child.
- LockAndLol 6y agoIs there no open-source alternative to broadcom?
- wmf 6y agoLots of other boards use Allwinner SoCs. I don't know if the RPi Foundation can escape their special relationship with Broadcom.
- gkfasdfasdf 6y agoCan somebody please just make a NUC-type device that I can purchase as a unit with the following included: Rasberry PI 8GB + WiFi + Bluetooth NVMe >= 128gb Power supply appropriate for PI+NVMe (3.5A perhaps?) Case with appropriate cooling Ubuntu >= 20.04 I would pay up to $200 USD for such a product. Why not an intel NUC? Because I want to leave this on 24/7 and run various cron jobs etc, so I want the low-power ARM chip. Yes I can build it myself, but shopping for, gathering all the parts etc is time consuming and I'd rather be writing my apps etc to run on the device instead... EDIT: formatting
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoJust need a case for the Tofu: https://youtu.be/m-QSQ24_8LY https://youtu.be/m-QSQ24_8LY Idk about Ubuntu though. Raspberry Pi OS is based off of Debian and optimized for the pi. Edit: Ah I was unfamiliar but of course there is an Ubuntu release for the pi. https://ubuntu.com/download/raspberry-pi https://ubuntu.com/download/raspberry-pi Edit2: Ah I jumped straight to the Tofu board but I didn’t see that TFA features another nice board for this purpose.
- gkfasdfasdf 6y agoIn my experience Rasbian packages are very old, makes certain dev tasks harder.
- TaylorAlexander 6y agoYep that’s fair. I had that trouble with Debian on my own systems and I tend to use Ubuntu on them now.
- gambiting 6y ago>>Because I want to leave this on 24/7 and run various cron jobs etc, so I want the low-power ARM chip. But the Pi4 can use as much as 15W, it has left the realm of "low powered" devices long time ago. I have a very old(2013) HP workstation that I use as a NAS, with a 2nd gen i5, and when running it uses 20W of power, measured by myself.
- imwillofficial 6y agoRPi is becoming more and more valuable with each passing year. We live in such wonderful times to have access to such exciting technology.
- rsync 6y agoI have been following all of these jeffgeerling.com posts - very interesting and informative and I appreciate all of this work he is doing. However, I continue to be frustrated in actually procuring a compute module 4 of my own. All of the suppliers are either out of stock or require an order of 200+. I recently placed an order for 2x CM4008032 from Digi-Key but it is on back order and who knows when it will actually ship. Am I the only one having these problems procuring CM4 ?
- adolph 6y agoIf you have a local MicroCenter they often have rare-ish units. My local store has 1/32s in stock: https://www.microcenter.com/product/631005/mcm-electronics-raspberry-pi-compute-module-4 https://www.microcenter.com/product/631005/mcm-electronics-r...
- geerlingguy 6y agoI was able to get one 1GB RAM / 32GB eMMC (no wireless) module last week at Micro Center. And there are a few online retailers with such combos available, but only 1GB RAM. I have had two open orders for 4 GB CM4 Lite modules (I like the Lite model because I don't need the eMMC for most projects) since October / launch day :(
- cjdaly 6y agodigikey has some in stock now. like this 4GB / 16GB: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC0293/13530934 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/raspberry-pi/SC02... ... search for "pi compute module 4" in digikey. I see 5 different ones in stock now. Also, Adafruit has this one in stock: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4791 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4791
- cjdaly 6y ago... another place I have order from in the past that has some in stock: https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-compute-module-cm4.html https://www.canakit.com/raspberry-pi-compute-module-cm4.html
- LockAndLol 6y agoWhy does it still take 7s to boot? I seem to remember a video of the librem5 booting faster than that. Is that possible?
- geerlingguy 6y agoI could optimize the boot process further, but this is stock Pi OS.
- lmns 6y agoI don't know what librem5 is doing there, but 7s is quite fast for a general purpose os. I wouldn't expect it to get much faster to be honest.
- 01100011 6y agoFor me, the increased perf is nice, but what I really want is increased longevity. IME, microSD is a poor fit for hosting a R/W filesystem. Every time my Pi based systems have gone down, it's due to a faulty microSD. I was using well rated microSD cards and they still died relatively quickly(months, not years). I suspect they'd be fine if I was running a read-only rootfs, but with a lot of the applications I run(i.e. HomeAssistant) you need R/W capability.
- lostapathy 6y agoWhy on earth would you use the microSD when you were booting off an nvme drive, as is the whole point of the OP?
- jbarberu 6y agoI think they're saying it's the longevity, rather than the performance boost, that they're excited about.
- geerlingguy 6y agoThat's how I read the grandfather comment too—a 3-4 GB/sec NVMe SSD wastes a lot of performance potential on a Pi, but the main thing that is nicer about even low-end SSDs is they have way better write/rewrite longevity than microSD cards, few of which are design in any way for general computing use. Most microSD cards optimize for only one thing—storing large, sequentially-written video files, then copying them off. Rinse and repeat. Even some of the fancy "100 MB/sec+" microSD cards only get like 1-2 MB/sec in random access patterns.
- megous 6y ago4k block random read on a regular A1 rated uSD card is 8MiB/s. I benchmark 11MiB/s on some of my Sandisks Ultras, depending on manufacturing date. Writes usually don't matter much, unless you use an inappropriate filesystem for a SD card or sync a lot. Longevity is longer for SSDs but it's not that bad for uSD cards either. If you setup your system so that there are no pointless writes all the time, they last 3-5 years, no problem, and probably more. The biggest benefit is that uSD cards are much lower power. And unless the use case is very storage heavy, like a constantly accessed database, or backups, SSD is just a waste of resources.
- LeoPanthera 6y agoThe Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4. Not what most people think of as "The Raspberry Pi".
- bullen 6y ago10 watts, how does it not melt? Both the CM and the NVMe?
- moondev 6y agoAwesome post Jeff - very interesting and informative as always. Appreciate your continued "guinea pig" role testing all these hardware combinations and sharing your results with the community. Cheers!
- dsm9000 6y agoI use my cluster of rpis to run light compute jobs so I prefer to run everything in RAM using alpine Linux. I don’t need to have sdcard or nvme adding extra cost. NFS for persistence and cheap independent wall warts plugged into a couple power strips. However I guess if you need the IOPS maybe the nvme is called for and worth the extra cost.
- TheGuyWhoCodes 6y ago10 Watts is pretty big... Maybe there should be some tweaking to the Active State Power Management of the PCIe link? Especially when the Pi can only push it to 400MB/s
- villgax 6y agoFinally, always wanted a reliable booting media instead of the micro SD cards which flaked out on power offs both deliberate & unexpected
- decker 6y agoCool project. I have to wonder if it's at all economical to strap this to a raspi compute module for anything other than hobby purposes.
- dikei 6y agoI like the Pi a lots, I just wish it has a built-in Realtime clock. Everytime, the Pi boots up, it need to re-synchronize time and I have to hard-code a NTP server IP, since DNSSEC won't work without correct time.
- dunnevens 6y agoA built-in clock would be nice. Have you tried one of the RTC modules? I haven't yet, but thinking about this module for one of my projects. https://www.adafruit.com/product/4282 https://www.adafruit.com/product/4282
- qwerty456127 6y agoI even hope they will add more PCIext lanes in Pi5. I even imagine a Pi-like device with no ports but a number of full USB4 (which include Thunderbolt which is PCIex) ports and a GPIO to arrive once. This seems like the ultimate universal PC for me...
- 72deluxe 6y agoMy NVME SSD plugged into a USB 3 port on the Pi4 (booting from SD card) goes to sleep after a few days and therefore the root filesystem is unreadable so I have to reboot. Any tips here on how to keep the thing awake and alive?
- Craighead 6y agoA daily cron job that writes a file to the nvme ssd with the current date and time?