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I'm tired of information being vague, under-specified, or only available under NDA (if you're lucky). I'm not stupid enough to hop on this ride again. Are ther
by Zuiii 3y ago
I'm tired of information being vague, under-specified, or only available under NDA (if you're lucky). I'm not stupid enough to hop on this ride again.
Are there any fully open (in terms of schematics, firmware) RISCV rpi-"compatibles" out there? I'd be happy to pay triple the price of this thing for a power-efficient linux-capable sbc that is open.
- foggywin 3y agoWhat do you mean with vague information? There is an entire blog post describing the product: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/
- iamtedd 3y agoThis is pretty bad: "Does Raspberry Pi 5 need active cooling? "Raspberry Pi 5 is faster and more powerful than prior-generation Raspberry Pis, and like most general-purpose computers, it will perform best with active cooling. The Raspberry Pi Case for Raspberry Pi 5, with its integrated fan, is one way to provide this." They pose a question themselves, and don't even answer it. Of course something will perform best with active cooling. Does it need it? I don't need this wishy-washy marketing language from Raspberry Pi.
- joefarish 3y agoI think they answer your question in the PSU section “Raspberry Pi 5 consumes significantly less power, and runs significantly cooler, than Raspberry Pi 4 when running an identical workload.”
- wiz21c 3y agoI think the question is actually: "can I safely (like it's not going to melt or catch fire) use the RPI5 under any load without active cooling) ?".
- mlyle 3y agoSure, you can. If you frequently work it really hard, it'll have larger temperature swings and may fail earlier, but it'll still probably last quite awhile. The failure is not likely to be catching on fire.
- dragontamer 3y agoThat's not documentation of any reasonable level though. An MPU designer expects to see something like "200mA draw from the 1.2V power-domain when running at 400 MHz" or "10mA draw from the 1.2V power-domain when in first level of sleep". (Maybe not this small since Rasp. Pi is a more powerful chip, but... you know... actual specifics).
- iamtedd 3y agoNot on the linked page. "Will my Raspberry Pi 4 power supply work with Raspberry Pi 5? "Raspberry Pi 5 is a higher-performance computer than Raspberry Pi 4, and you may have problems using an under-powered supply. We recommend a high-quality 5W 5A USB-C power supply, such as the new Raspberry Pi 27W USB-C Power Supply." The question asks about power requirements, but the answer is about performance? The first time I read that I thought the 5 needs more power than the 4, not less.
- weebull 3y ago> we recommend a 5w PSU like our new 27W PSU Ermmm, what?
- pja 3y agoIt’s a typo: They mean 5A I think.
- marcosdumay 3y agoIt's clearly a typo, and should be 5V. But then you get 5V 5A ... 27W that is clearly incorrect too. So my guess is nobody is proofreading the technical specifications, and everybody that cares was kept away from that page.
- nimmen 3y ago5V * 5A = 25W, no PSU is 100% effective so 27W is reasonable requirement
- ralphm 3y agoI expect it is 27W to support 9V 3V, not because of tolerances per se. (Source https://www.sparkfun.com/products/23583 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/23583)
- marcosdumay 3y agoYou don't specify a PSU by its energy consumption. You specify it by output. Also, that 92% efficiency, is believable, but a bit high for a 5V 5A PSU (this is a difficult combination). I would expect any such unity to be marketed as high-efficiency.
- mlyle 3y agoThe answer is nuanced. It can run workloads somewhat faster and cooler than Pi 4 without active cooling. But it also can't reach close to its peak performance without active cooling.
- iamtedd 3y agoYour answer is more direct and uses fewer words. Can you help them fix their product page?
- mlyle 3y agoProbably not ;) The actual info I'd rely upon at this point: https://www.phoronix.com/benchmark/result/raspberry-pi-5-cooling-benchmarks/result-1.svgz https://www.phoronix.com/benchmark/result/raspberry-pi-5-coo... pi5 with active cooler is about 1.2-1.5x faster than pi5 without cooler for most workloads that care than without. Pi5 with active cooler is about 2-2.5x faster than Pi4. So Pi5 without cooler is probably about 1.5x faster than pi4, depending upon workload. (And more than this for quick bursts where thermal mass wins).
- darkclouds 3y agoAnd if you dont have a heatsink and fan of sorts just use alternativing fingers on the cpu, they can still absorb about 10-15 DegC off the cpu temp and thats overclocking a 3b in the 1.35Ghz range. Surprisingly robust. Sadly cant get it to idle below .6Ghz yet, that needs more work. But it makes wonder how much more phone manufacturers could squeeze out of their phones, although Apple are definately overclocking the 15.
- nsteel 3y agoShould we get Intel and AMD to clarify their product pages at the same time?
- noizejoy 3y agoHaha - and while we’re at it, might as well start putting labels on Apple’s performance graph slides :-)
- tpmx 3y ago"peak power consumption increases to around 12W, versus 8W for Raspberry Pi 4" A beefy heatsink case should be able to handle that.
- m463 3y agorequiring cooling limits the use case. (remember, they've sold > 30 million of them) I'm pretty sure what it means is that kids who use the pi on their desk don't need to spend on a cooler. It will probably throttle and run slower. Meanwhile an adult using the pi could put on a cooler and wring lots of performance out of it.
- M4v3R 3y agoAre we reading the same blog post? The post that parent posted literally reads: > "Raspberry Pi 5 has been designed to handle typical client workloads, uncased, with no active cooling".
- iamtedd 3y agoNo, I'm reading the posted product page. Where all the important, technical (considering the product) information should be.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago'uncased', which is the problem with many boards for the hobbyist market, from compute to sensors. IMHO, uncased means you're doing maintenance or it's a toy, but it's not a 'production' configuration.
- marcosdumay 3y agoThey can't tell you how the board will behave on any random case you decide to put it on. The uncased requirement is exactly what I'd expect to see there. Other than that, only if they decide to get really technical (they should) and tell you dissipating power / °C and temperature limits.
- jrockway 3y agoIt depends on what "need" means. I'm pretty sure you can take a 400W TDP Threadripper and run it without active cooling. It will throttle down to run at whatever speed (well, TDP) that doesn't fry it. The Raspberry Pi does the same thing. If your goal is to get the highest score on every benchmark, then yeah, you need active cooling. That has been true on every Raspberry Pi, I think. (I don't remember if the 1 needed active cooling. I did not have any. I also remember it taking over a day to recompile Linux! Still faster than setting up a cross compiler at the time ;)
- KennyBlanken 3y agoThreadrippers use 50W+ at idle, so no, it won't just "throttle down"
- jrockway 3y agoMine uses about 80, but yeah, you can get rid of 80W passively. Consider a 100 watt incandescent light bulb; no fan!
- waterhouse 3y agoAnd how hot does the bulb get? Googling yields "The surface temperature of incandescent light bulbs varies from 150 to more than 250 degrees" (https://www.pacificlamp.com/temperature-of-a-100-watt-bulb.asp https://www.pacificlamp.com/temperature-of-a-100-watt-bulb.a...). Which, googling says, is likely hot enough to damage a CPU.
- vel0city 3y ago150F is like 65C which loads of CPUs run fine at. Going past 212F (100C) is usually where you'll start having problems with a lot of common desktop processors.
- efitz 3y agoI hate it when someone answers a yes/no question with something other than yes or no. Here’s my proposed edit: Q: "Does Raspberry Pi 5 need active cooling? Original A: "Raspberry Pi 5 is faster and more powerful than prior-generation Raspberry Pis…” Better A: "For modest workloads, no. For heavier workloads, you will get better performance with active cooling. Raspberry Pi 5 is faster and more powerful than prior-generation Raspberry Pis…”
- epolanski 3y agoIt literally tells you that you don't need cooling, but if you add it you'll get more performance. I don't find it hard to understand what this means: the soc limits it's core performance based on thermal conditions and will throttle when hitting limit temperature. That's standard behavior on every computer or smartphone or GPU out there. Make temperature lower and it will clock and run at higher speeds without throttling.
- justin66 3y agoWho hurt you?
- lofaszvanitt 3y agoAnother reason not to buy it.
- rsaxvc 3y agoSays h265 decode, but nothing about h264. Does VC7 do h264 like VC6, or not at all?
- dragontamer 3y agoBeaglebone (from Texas Instruments) is more open, but still not as open as you'd probably like. Still, its a better balance than what Rasp. Pi organization has (more documents are available on AM335x, open-hardware for Beaglebone Green and reference designs, full chip specifications and the like). Beaglebone isn't really "more expensive", as much as its just "lower specs at the same price" though. The "most open" are MPU chips and their associated "System on Module" boards. This isn't quite a SBC, but its easier to use than a BGA. These SoMs are very poor from price/performance perspectives, but instead serve as reference designs and/or prototypes to the $8 or $9 chips. The overall expectation is that you're "supposed" to be building your own PCBs eventually, so the SoM are kind of just a prototyping aid. Most SoM provide 100+ pins from the chip as well, meaning you absolutely have to build a PCB to use them. However, 2-layer boards solder very easily to a SoM with castilliated edges (even with a hand-soldering iron)... albeit with a bit of flux and technique and practice. Its just the easiest way to deliver the most-pins of customization in the smallest space. So a relative beginer should be able to boot an SoM. The most difficult routing and Power-Delivery-Network details are already solved on an SoM, you just gotta apply power and build out the final interfaces / connectors. Take the ATSAMA5D27-SOM1, 104-pins in a 40x40mm form factor. $50 from Mouser for 500Mhz and 128MB RAM (though fully open source and fully documented at linux4sam, and processor manual, U-boot process and everything). But the underlying SiP (MPU + DDR2 RAM) is like $15... while the MPU alone is like $8 and 128MB of DDR2 RAM is only like $3.50 in practice. Since in mass-production, you'd probably have a custom PCB anyway, that's the most expected use case. https://www.linux4sam.org/bin/view/Linux4SAM https://www.linux4sam.org/bin/view/Linux4SAM . I'd say that Microchip / Atmel's MPUs seem to be the best documented that I've found, but are unfortunately the lowest specs. Still, they also have some of the lowest power-consumption (like 200 mW or something), so really they're in a low-power class of their own. Still Linux though. ------------ STM32MP1 is the MPU from ST Micro. Like the Microchip SAM-MPU series, the STM32MP1 is available in SOM, SiP, and "raw" MPU form. Except the SOMs are like $100+, the SiP is like $50+, while MPU is $10ish. ------------- I know NXP has a huge line of MPUs. I haven't researched them yet though. --------------- I think all the hardware designers at this level just "assume" that their customers, if they care about "open source", are probably making their own PCBs. If someone "just" wants a SBC (like the Rasp. Pi), there's not much point in publishing a ton of documents. People can just boot the Rasp. Pi and start messing with Linux. ------- I got no experience with this yet. I'm just curious and am thinking of a simple MPU layout project ever since I discovered that OSHPark has 6-layer boards and KiCAD supports BGAs in practice. Overall, these lower-power lower-end MPUs fill a different niche than a Rasp. Pi ever would. But I feel like there's enough overlap that these might scratch your "open source" and "fully documented" itches.
- peteforde 3y agoGenuinely curious: why does their announcement upset you so much? Most of the tech world announces products, executes a marketing strategy and then releases stock into the market. You make it sound like someone left you standing at the altar. You didn't know it existed an hour ago. If you were on a long vacation, it might have released before your return. Why get angry?
- johnchristopher 3y agoScalpers want to know if it's worth it to order en masse so they need more specs to feel the market ? shrugs
- Zuiii 3y ago> why does their announcement upset you so much? Why do you assume this specific announcement is what upset me? Why do you assume this has anything to do with their product marketing strategy? Why do you assume I wouldn't have gotten angry even after they released the product?
- travisjungroth 3y agoI think you’re talking past each other. The “information” is the schematics and firmware of the board, not the press release and the specs.
- schappim 3y agoI was lucky enough to get early access to the Pi5[1]. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. [1] Youtube Video on the RPi 5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_QPM9xV_sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_QPM9xV_sw
- keyle 3y agoExcellent work!
- ThatPlayer 3y agoHow's the USB-C port on it? Is it still limited to USB 2.0? I want USB 3.0 for OTG (usb client) uses.
- fanf2 3y agoThe USB-C port is still USB2 like the Raspberry Pi 4. Both the 4 and the 5 support OTG over the USB-C port.
- trvz 3y agoCould you please run the Geekbench 6 [1] benchmark and report the results? [1]: https://cdn.geekbench.com/Geekbench-6.2.0-LinuxARMPreview.tar.gz https://cdn.geekbench.com/Geekbench-6.2.0-LinuxARMPreview.ta...
- geerlingguy 3y agoSee: https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21 https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21 748 single / 1507 multi
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y agoPerhaps something from pine64?
- RetroTechie 3y agoAny board based on StarFive's JH7110 is currently best in this regard, I think. Datasheet & reference manual for this SoC is available. Especially their VisionFive 2 board. I've even downloaded a schematic for it (although older revision than actual board I have). And they're pretty good about upstreaming drivers. That said: what you probably care about is documentation for integrated peripherals (esp. GPU), and existence of open source, mature drivers for those. RPi is very good in this regard. Afaik the only binary blobs there is some GPU/SoC firmware, and (maybe) some boot code. RPi's in general are very well supported & documented, and its software ecosystem is very mature compared to anything RISC-V based. Could you pinpoint what you think is lacking there? Other ARM based boards may offer more bang/$. Likely at the cost of documentation or driver support (Beagleboard being an exception).
- older 3y agoOlimex produces fully open boards, but noting RISCV based which is capable of running Linux yet AFAIK.
- bbstats 3y agoSo dramatic lol