4 ms·

I wonder if there is a blog post in this somewhere, that I could write. I have a bunch of Pi 4s (4GB). I just put one in an Argon M.2 case and was wondering wh

I wonder if there is a blog post in this somewhere, that I could write. I have a bunch of Pi 4s (4GB). I just put one in an Argon M.2 case and was wondering what to do with it. I have a "gut feel" for how my workstation should behave, I am a (backend) software engineer by profession, tend to work my day job on an i7 laptop (XPS 15, Ubuntu) but at home I'm on Ryzen 7 1800X (Manjaro) and Ryzen 9 3900X (Debian). Is there some useful non-benchmark type "measurements" I could take by using a Pi as a workstation for a few days, that people would be interested to read about?

marcodiego 5y ago
You can try subjective benchmarks. These ARM SBC's are as powerful as workstations from the 90's, so try to use them with as demanding software as what was run on a workstation from the 90's. Trying to replicate this would certainly do a great blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27796821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27796821
- 3np 5y ago
  It's comparable to a brand new Intel workstation in 2010. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Rockchip-RK3399-vs-Intel-Core2-Quad-Q9500-vs-Intel-i5-760/3987vs1047vs773 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Rockchip-RK3399-vs-Inte... For most people trying this, the SD card is the bottleneck and there are options. The mentioned Rpi2 had USB 2.0 shared with storage and network. The 4B has USB 3.0 and dedicated lanes for GBE and storage. Ryzen 3700 <> RPi 4B <> RPi 2
3np 5y ago
One significant bottleneck in a common desktop Rpi would be the SD card. You can improve a lot by putting the root filesystem on SATA-over-USB or use the CM with an appropriate board. If you'd have been in the market for a new board, I would have recommended something that exposes PCIe, or at least SATA. The best non-SoM option < USD 100 for that is probably RockPi 4 (but please fill in). You can fit it with an M2 NVMe (with limited lanes) or multiple SATA drives. RK3399 or RK3399pro have been holding that segment for some time now. Sadly RK3399 has max 4GB RAM. Armbian works great. There is also Quartz64 and Rock 3A (max 8GB RAM, PCIe3). But it's going to take a while until community and mainline kernel support make the RK3566/RK3568 ready for a casual user. You're going to have to be conscious about multitasking. Having 100 browser tabs open is not going to fly. And while 4k may be theoretically possible, you don't want to do that. Other than that I think it's all right. ----- I have a similar profile to yourself. Currently drafting a small cyberdeck - maybe more as a replacement for smartphone than PC use.
- NewJazz 5y ago
  But it's going to take a while until community and mainline kernel support make the RK3566/RK3568 ready for a casual user. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64_Development#Upstreaming_Status https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64_Development#Upstreamin... TL;DR Video output just recently (this week) got ported to mainline Linux, but it is still a bit rough. Only works on 1080p60fps monitors. Everything else major for the kernel has been mainlined or is in review. U-boot is still only downstream rockchip with closed source memory initialization (boot blobs).
lproven 5y ago
If you want to experience something really radically different from the rest of 21st century computing, try RISC OS on one of them. https://www.riscosdev.com/projects/ https://www.riscosdev.com/projects/ RISC OS is the original native OS for the ARM chip. It's still alive, actively maintained and developed, and it's FOSS now. It's a 1980s OS that predates NeXTstep and Windows 3, let alone Linux, which means a unique (but very effective and elegant) GUI, and a shell, that are totally unlike anything else you've ever seen. It's a 35 year old OS. Don't expect miracles. It doesn't support wifi or multiple cores, but it's very very fast and responsive on a single core of a RasPi, and there is a big software library with hundreds of freeware titles and some commercial stuff too.

marcodiego 5y ago

You can try subjective benchmarks. These ARM SBC's are as powerful as workstations from the 90's, so try to use them with as demanding software as what was run on a workstation from the 90's. Trying to replicate this would certainly do a great blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27796821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27796821

3np 5y ago
It's comparable to a brand new Intel workstation in 2010. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Rockchip-RK3399-vs-Intel-Core2-Quad-Q9500-vs-Intel-i5-760/3987vs1047vs773 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Rockchip-RK3399-vs-Inte... For most people trying this, the SD card is the bottleneck and there are options. The mentioned Rpi2 had USB 2.0 shared with storage and network. The 4B has USB 3.0 and dedicated lanes for GBE and storage. Ryzen 3700 <> RPi 4B <> RPi 2

3np 5y ago

One significant bottleneck in a common desktop Rpi would be the SD card. You can improve a lot by putting the root filesystem on SATA-over-USB or use the CM with an appropriate board. If you'd have been in the market for a new board, I would have recommended something that exposes PCIe, or at least SATA. The best non-SoM option < USD 100 for that is probably RockPi 4 (but please fill in). You can fit it with an M2 NVMe (with limited lanes) or multiple SATA drives. RK3399 or RK3399pro have been holding that segment for some time now. Sadly RK3399 has max 4GB RAM. Armbian works great. There is also Quartz64 and Rock 3A (max 8GB RAM, PCIe3). But it's going to take a while until community and mainline kernel support make the RK3566/RK3568 ready for a casual user. You're going to have to be conscious about multitasking. Having 100 browser tabs open is not going to fly. And while 4k may be theoretically possible, you don't want to do that. Other than that I think it's all right. ----- I have a similar profile to yourself. Currently drafting a small cyberdeck - maybe more as a replacement for smartphone than PC use.

NewJazz 5y ago
But it's going to take a while until community and mainline kernel support make the RK3566/RK3568 ready for a casual user. https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64_Development#Upstreaming_Status https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64_Development#Upstreamin... TL;DR Video output just recently (this week) got ported to mainline Linux, but it is still a bit rough. Only works on 1080p60fps monitors. Everything else major for the kernel has been mainlined or is in review. U-boot is still only downstream rockchip with closed source memory initialization (boot blobs).

lproven 5y ago

If you want to experience something really radically different from the rest of 21st century computing, try RISC OS on one of them. https://www.riscosdev.com/projects/ https://www.riscosdev.com/projects/ RISC OS is the original native OS for the ARM chip. It's still alive, actively maintained and developed, and it's FOSS now. It's a 1980s OS that predates NeXTstep and Windows 3, let alone Linux, which means a unique (but very effective and elegant) GUI, and a shell, that are totally unlike anything else you've ever seen. It's a 35 year old OS. Don't expect miracles. It doesn't support wifi or multiple cores, but it's very very fast and responsive on a single core of a RasPi, and there is a big software library with hundreds of freeware titles and some commercial stuff too.