3 ms·

Mainly because the raspberry 4 is the most powerful and cheapest (2Gflops/W CPU for ~$45) device that has less than 10W total consumption and has a GPU that doe

by bullen 5y ago

Mainly because the raspberry 4 is the most powerful and cheapest (2Gflops/W CPU for ~$45) device that has less than 10W total consumption and has a GPU that does not clutter that power draw too much (~1W). This means it's the ideal low power server device for home hosting with lead-acid backup if you can get 1Gb/s up+down fiber! Unless you need quality disk, then you should probably look elsewhere too, but a 1TB SanDisc SD card har pretty low power draw; atleast it has got that working for it. But you need better ergonomics than this, sealing it is a sure way to overheating. I'm working on the final design of my raspberry cluster: http://move.rupy.se/file/final_pi_2_4_hybrid.png http://move.rupy.se/file/final_pi_2_4_hybrid.png

dijit 5y ago
I don't buy it. I'm actually a large fan of the Pi but people seem to think it's lower power than it actually is: but the performance trade-off is real. the -peak- power consumption of a Pi is 15W (but it's difficult finding an adapter which will supply that). So if we're talking peak power consumption the Pi would win because most decent quality mobile x86 chips draw something like 15w by themselves at peak, but if you look at something with the m3-8100y[0] then you've got a CPU that draws 5w at peak, and has 10 PCIe lanes instead of just 1. they have boards with this kind of platform: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html If you're looking to get a super low energy homeserver these absolutely dominate on peak usage. But, a rpi and a laptop are roughly comparable in terms of idle power consumption. Unless it's like a gaming laptop or something. Mine draws 3w during "idle"* from the wall and I have a Xeon E3-1505M v6 (45W TDP). [0]: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/185282/intel-core-m3-8100y-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/185282/... - "idle" meaning with a few containers, a window manager, the screen turned on and wifi enabled/connected.
- bullen 5y ago
  You need to compare apples to apples, CPU Gflops/W is the number for that. And humanity is probably stuck between 2-3 for eternity (usable cheap X86/ARM/RISC-V, not fringe prototypes). Pi 4 uses 7W CPU full 400% blast for about 14 Gflops, how much does the LattePanda give at peak? Next step up is Atom at 25W. Also you have to add size of the cluster and cost of the PSU and cables to the equation. More PCI lanes is only interesting if you plan on using them.
  - fulafel 5y ago
    File servers (or most server apps generally) don't do much FP. And gflops counts tend to incorporate SIMD lanes to get many times bigger numbers than scalar code, which again is not used by most server apps.
    - bullen 5y ago
      Ok, so what is the better metric? I'm pretty sure Gflops on f.ex. this site is without SIMD as it makes no sense to compare CPUs like that: http://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/group/green_machines.html http://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/group/green_machines.html
      - fulafel 5y ago
        Not sure what's the best proxy benchmark, sorry. Maybe something like SPEC jbb or sfs benchmarks? Re the numbers at that site, that's using OpenBLAS linpack which is likely utilizing SIMD but can also be memory bandwidth bound.
        bullen 5y ago
        Ok, thanks for letting me know, I thought the world was sane and had a way to compare CPUs in an apples to apples fashion...
  - dijit 5y ago
    > More PCI lanes is only interesting if you plan on using them I’m hard pressed to think what else you would want in a file server. Storage uses PCI lanes (4 for NVMe), network uses PCI lanes (1 for each gigabit of network, typically).
    - bullen 5y ago
      I'm still stuck on SATA, don't see the point of NVMe because there is no application I want to write that needs that disk speed. I use my servers as MMO backends, partly they will serve files, but mostly they'll do real-time networking and db stuff... some AI for the monsters and validation for anti-cheat so I need CPU more than fast storage or network.
- nuker 5y ago
  > I don't buy it. Size? I’d never change my chinese x86, 10W TDP, mini-pc running OPNsense for a Pi. Its perfect size. But I have to use Pi for my drone video, nothing else will fit.
  - stedaniels 5y ago
    Sounds like a good excuse for a bigger drone.
    - nuker 5y ago
      its 650mm already :)
  - dijit 5y ago
    That’s fair. I’d also argue that the form factor has a good community around it. I’m not saying there are no reasons. But people salivating at the Pis as a be all and end all of low energy devices are a bit annoying. The Pi is primarily a tool for students and to a lesser extent: makers to get a general purpose computer to be as cheap as possible for the purpose of education. But people want it to be home servers or to compete with other products of a higher price point. But it betrays the original purpose.
hughrr 5y ago
The problem is this is a pretty bad trade-off for storage as your only storage option is an SD card for primary storage and then USB for secondary and both of those quite frankly suck terribly for reliability and stability. If someone sold a raspberry Pi with half decent power distribution on it, SATA or NVMe storage, I might raise one eyebrow but at this point, compared to even low ball commodity laptops it's a joke of a product which is squarely destined to end up in the e-waste bin.
- afavour 5y ago
  > your only storage option is an SD card for primary storage Hasn't been true for a while now. The Pi 4 can boot from USB storage.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    Impressive. Now I can choose to trust my data to a shitty USB stick or a shitty no brand USB to SATA bridge... Just give me a native SATA or NVMe port.
    - afavour 5y ago
      Just a thought: maybe don't buy a shitty USB stick? You're talking as if reliable USB SSD drives from established brands simply don't exist. I'm sorry the $35 computer doesn't have all the storage connections you'd like it to. It's still very useful for the rest of us.
    - krageon 5y ago
      I had a feeling there'd be a hat for this and I was correct: https://geekworm.com/products/for-raspberry-pi-4-x873-v1-2-m-2-nvme-ssd-storage-expansion-board-support-key-m-2280-ssd https://geekworm.com/products/for-raspberry-pi-4-x873-v1-2-m... There you go, now you too can use a Pi :)
      - hughrr 5y ago
        No - that's a shitty USB to NVMe bridge repackaged as a hat for it. It's just pretending. I want a couple of PCIe lines on the SoC on an M2 NVMe connector. That's all.
Saris 5y ago
I have these 2 passively cooled i3-7100u boxes with 32GB of RAM, that idle at 2W of power each most of the day, they also have SSDs instead of uSD cards. The Pi makes sense for projects where you need a low performance embedded solution with GPIO, but I don't really get the point of using them as replacements for normal x86_64 servers purely based on power consumption, because their performance is not very good when you include IO. They're great for building stuff for fun though, a bunch of Pis in a cluster is relatively pretty cheap compared to anything else for experimentation.
- bullen 5y ago
  Can you link a picture? I also have Streacom NUC passive cases, but I use those as linux desktop for my kid, I mean why waste a good GPU on a server?
  - Saris 5y ago
    Here's a post I made on them: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/moderro-iec-4660-teardown-and-info/10457 https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/moderro-iec-4660-teardown-... I paid $75 each since they just popped up on ebay and I was curious, there was not much info on them that I could find at the time.
    - bullen 5y ago
      My NUC builds uses these: https://streacom.com/products/nc2-fanless-nuc-case/ https://streacom.com/products/nc2-fanless-nuc-case/ A bit more compact and alot cooler. But still you cannot compare 2nd hand prices to a new Raspberry 4, interestingly I suspect Raspberry 4 second hand prices will rise over time as nothing as robust will be made. Just like the old v7 Raspberry 2 which are very low power for what they deliver. Now they have the Pi 4 2GB model back in stock here in Sweden at $45 after 6 months of the price being $80 because it was sold out. Eventually they will have to move on but I don't see how a Raspberry 5 could be better for my uses... We'll see!

by bullen 5y ago

dijit 5y ago

I don't buy it. I'm actually a large fan of the Pi but people seem to think it's lower power than it actually is: but the performance trade-off is real. the -peak- power consumption of a Pi is 15W (but it's difficult finding an adapter which will supply that). So if we're talking peak power consumption the Pi would win because most decent quality mobile x86 chips draw something like 15w by themselves at peak, but if you look at something with the m3-8100y[0] then you've got a CPU that draws 5w at peak, and has 10 PCIe lanes instead of just 1. they have boards with this kind of platform: https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html If you're looking to get a super low energy homeserver these absolutely dominate on peak usage. But, a rpi and a laptop are roughly comparable in terms of idle power consumption. Unless it's like a gaming laptop or something. Mine draws 3w during "idle"* from the wall and I have a Xeon E3-1505M v6 (45W TDP). [0]: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/185282/intel-core-m3-8100y-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/185282/... - "idle" meaning with a few containers, a window manager, the screen turned on and wifi enabled/connected.

bullen 5y ago
You need to compare apples to apples, CPU Gflops/W is the number for that. And humanity is probably stuck between 2-3 for eternity (usable cheap X86/ARM/RISC-V, not fringe prototypes). Pi 4 uses 7W CPU full 400% blast for about 14 Gflops, how much does the LattePanda give at peak? Next step up is Atom at 25W. Also you have to add size of the cluster and cost of the PSU and cables to the equation. More PCI lanes is only interesting if you plan on using them.
- fulafel 5y ago
  File servers (or most server apps generally) don't do much FP. And gflops counts tend to incorporate SIMD lanes to get many times bigger numbers than scalar code, which again is not used by most server apps.
  - bullen 5y ago
    Ok, so what is the better metric? I'm pretty sure Gflops on f.ex. this site is without SIMD as it makes no sense to compare CPUs like that: http://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/group/green_machines.html http://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/group/green_machines.html
    - fulafel 5y ago
      Not sure what's the best proxy benchmark, sorry. Maybe something like SPEC jbb or sfs benchmarks? Re the numbers at that site, that's using OpenBLAS linpack which is likely utilizing SIMD but can also be memory bandwidth bound.
      - bullen 5y ago
        Ok, thanks for letting me know, I thought the world was sane and had a way to compare CPUs in an apples to apples fashion...
- dijit 5y ago
  > More PCI lanes is only interesting if you plan on using them I’m hard pressed to think what else you would want in a file server. Storage uses PCI lanes (4 for NVMe), network uses PCI lanes (1 for each gigabit of network, typically).
  - bullen 5y ago
    I'm still stuck on SATA, don't see the point of NVMe because there is no application I want to write that needs that disk speed. I use my servers as MMO backends, partly they will serve files, but mostly they'll do real-time networking and db stuff... some AI for the monsters and validation for anti-cheat so I need CPU more than fast storage or network.
nuker 5y ago
> I don't buy it. Size? I’d never change my chinese x86, 10W TDP, mini-pc running OPNsense for a Pi. Its perfect size. But I have to use Pi for my drone video, nothing else will fit.
- stedaniels 5y ago
  Sounds like a good excuse for a bigger drone.
  - nuker 5y ago
    its 650mm already :)
- dijit 5y ago
  That’s fair. I’d also argue that the form factor has a good community around it. I’m not saying there are no reasons. But people salivating at the Pis as a be all and end all of low energy devices are a bit annoying. The Pi is primarily a tool for students and to a lesser extent: makers to get a general purpose computer to be as cheap as possible for the purpose of education. But people want it to be home servers or to compete with other products of a higher price point. But it betrays the original purpose.

hughrr 5y ago

The problem is this is a pretty bad trade-off for storage as your only storage option is an SD card for primary storage and then USB for secondary and both of those quite frankly suck terribly for reliability and stability. If someone sold a raspberry Pi with half decent power distribution on it, SATA or NVMe storage, I might raise one eyebrow but at this point, compared to even low ball commodity laptops it's a joke of a product which is squarely destined to end up in the e-waste bin.

afavour 5y ago
> your only storage option is an SD card for primary storage Hasn't been true for a while now. The Pi 4 can boot from USB storage.
- hughrr 5y ago
  Impressive. Now I can choose to trust my data to a shitty USB stick or a shitty no brand USB to SATA bridge... Just give me a native SATA or NVMe port.
  - afavour 5y ago
    Just a thought: maybe don't buy a shitty USB stick? You're talking as if reliable USB SSD drives from established brands simply don't exist. I'm sorry the $35 computer doesn't have all the storage connections you'd like it to. It's still very useful for the rest of us.
  - krageon 5y ago
    I had a feeling there'd be a hat for this and I was correct: https://geekworm.com/products/for-raspberry-pi-4-x873-v1-2-m-2-nvme-ssd-storage-expansion-board-support-key-m-2280-ssd https://geekworm.com/products/for-raspberry-pi-4-x873-v1-2-m... There you go, now you too can use a Pi :)
    - hughrr 5y ago
      No - that's a shitty USB to NVMe bridge repackaged as a hat for it. It's just pretending. I want a couple of PCIe lines on the SoC on an M2 NVMe connector. That's all.

Saris 5y ago

I have these 2 passively cooled i3-7100u boxes with 32GB of RAM, that idle at 2W of power each most of the day, they also have SSDs instead of uSD cards. The Pi makes sense for projects where you need a low performance embedded solution with GPIO, but I don't really get the point of using them as replacements for normal x86_64 servers purely based on power consumption, because their performance is not very good when you include IO. They're great for building stuff for fun though, a bunch of Pis in a cluster is relatively pretty cheap compared to anything else for experimentation.

bullen 5y ago
Can you link a picture? I also have Streacom NUC passive cases, but I use those as linux desktop for my kid, I mean why waste a good GPU on a server?
- Saris 5y ago
  Here's a post I made on them: https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/moderro-iec-4660-teardown-and-info/10457 https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/moderro-iec-4660-teardown-... I paid $75 each since they just popped up on ebay and I was curious, there was not much info on them that I could find at the time.
  - bullen 5y ago
    My NUC builds uses these: https://streacom.com/products/nc2-fanless-nuc-case/ https://streacom.com/products/nc2-fanless-nuc-case/ A bit more compact and alot cooler. But still you cannot compare 2nd hand prices to a new Raspberry 4, interestingly I suspect Raspberry 4 second hand prices will rise over time as nothing as robust will be made. Just like the old v7 Raspberry 2 which are very low power for what they deliver. Now they have the Pi 4 2GB model back in stock here in Sweden at $45 after 6 months of the price being $80 because it was sold out. Eventually they will have to move on but I don't see how a Raspberry 5 could be better for my uses... We'll see!