4 ms·

Raspberry really needs to pick up the pace to compete with newer (albeit more expensive) SBCs with Intel N100 and similar processors. The TDPs are very comparab

Raspberry really needs to pick up the pace to compete with newer (albeit more expensive) SBCs with Intel N100 and similar processors. The TDPs are very comparable, but the x86_64 still blows it out of the park performance-wise. Also, software support is a non-issue on Intel platforms, which still is not the case for Arm platforms.

ulnarkressty 3y ago
On non-accelerated tasks the performance is very close[0] and at half the idle power consumption. For the specific case of a low-power always-on platform, it's still the best. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hekzpSH25lk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hekzpSH25lk
- Denvercoder9 3y ago
  I'm not sure based on what exactly you think the performance is very close (video is a terrible way to present information), but in the benchmark shown at the end of the "CPU Performance" section, the Intel beats the Pi by almost 3x.
criddell 3y ago
I don’t think they need to do that. They are still selling every single board they can make and I think a diversity of boards and approaches is great.
- kristjank 3y ago
  Probably not. However, a large portions of their customers are integrating them into industrial products because of their cost-effectiveness or scalping them to sell at a markup.
- tempaccount420 3y ago
  Boards that they could sell, but can't because of manufacturing issues, is also a loss ;)
westurner 3y ago
A Rockchip RK3588S with an NPU TPU and an RTC battery is a good idea for safer complex SBC applications. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38007967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38007967 : > The RTk.GPIO is a Plug & Play USB Device which adds 28 x Raspberry Pi style GPIO pins to your computer An RP2040 (RPi Pico) is also a USB 2x20 GPIO, with a uf2 bootloader and upgradeable firmware. Conda-forge builds arm64 Linux and now MacOS packages from feedstocks. There's usually not a maintained arm64 copy of containers though, so you must build containers yourself with or for ARM64 with cross-compilation from a faster build machine, which distrobox makes really simple. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38505448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38505448 ... https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_tips.md#using-a-different-architecture https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_...
rft 3y ago
I think the RPi is more of a jack of all trades, master of none. This also applies to performance. It bundles an impressive amount of partially niche, but overall well supported, features (Linux, USB3, gigabit ethernet, okish wifi & BT, HDMI with CEC, GPIO, camera, okish GPU) with a powerful enough CPU and enough RAM for an acceptable price. If you want the traditional desktop experience or a higher workload server, the RPi is likely not going to win against an N100 SBC or mini PC. For many applications besides that the RPi fits the niche of powerful enough to run it, power efficient enough to not worry about it running all the time, cheap enough to not worry too much and common enough to be well supported. Things like single-purpose software packages/distributions are often better supported on an RPi, just because it has become the "standard". Sure, you might find hardware better suited for each use case, but it seems like the RPi can handle most of it and thus becomes the default choice. As an example, I recently tried out an N100 mini PC to drive my living room TV instead of an RPi4. I liked the option of having a fully featured desktop with decent performance just in case (most importantly Firefox). Plus the N100 on paper has more video decoding options, either via HW decoders or just by virtue of handling more via software decoding. In practice, these advantages were irrelevant for my primary use case (watch movies, series & long-form YT videos). But, I lost out on "it just works" features. The RPi4 just boots into Kodi (via LibreELEC) and works flawlessly with HDMI CEC, the N100 does not have any CEC capability (missing HW feature). Sure, I can use an external USB dongle to get CEC support, but after buying that I am at a far higher price than for the RPi4 + SD card + good power supply + simple case. Side note: the RPi4 also beat a Pine64+ for that use case, just because I couldn't get the board to play nice with LibreELEC. No CEC and no wifi, even after tinkering for far too long.
- madduci 3y ago
  Well, intel CPUs have always been jack of all trades as well and the software support is the best so far to this date. What scares me about those ARM SBCs is the lack of software support, especially when it comes to GPU acceleration. They perform very well in headless mode, but on graphics they all still lag far behind. One day (maybe another couple of generations of SBCs) will be better, but we are not there yet.
- eklavya 3y ago
weberer 3y ago
The MSRP for the N100 is $128 and I don't see any GPIO pins. It looks to be more of a budget desktop PC than a hobbyist board.

ulnarkressty 3y ago

On non-accelerated tasks the performance is very close[0] and at half the idle power consumption. For the specific case of a low-power always-on platform, it's still the best. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hekzpSH25lk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hekzpSH25lk

Denvercoder9 3y ago
I'm not sure based on what exactly you think the performance is very close (video is a terrible way to present information), but in the benchmark shown at the end of the "CPU Performance" section, the Intel beats the Pi by almost 3x.

criddell 3y ago

I don’t think they need to do that. They are still selling every single board they can make and I think a diversity of boards and approaches is great.

kristjank 3y ago
Probably not. However, a large portions of their customers are integrating them into industrial products because of their cost-effectiveness or scalping them to sell at a markup.
tempaccount420 3y ago
Boards that they could sell, but can't because of manufacturing issues, is also a loss ;)

westurner 3y ago

A Rockchip RK3588S with an NPU TPU and an RTC battery is a good idea for safer complex SBC applications. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38007967 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38007967 : > The RTk.GPIO is a Plug & Play USB Device which adds 28 x Raspberry Pi style GPIO pins to your computer An RP2040 (RPi Pico) is also a USB 2x20 GPIO, with a uf2 bootloader and upgradeable firmware. Conda-forge builds arm64 Linux and now MacOS packages from feedstocks. There's usually not a maintained arm64 copy of containers though, so you must build containers yourself with or for ARM64 with cross-compilation from a faster build machine, which distrobox makes really simple. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38505448 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38505448 ... https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_tips.md#using-a-different-architecture https://github.com/89luca89/distrobox/blob/main/docs/useful_...

rft 3y ago

I think the RPi is more of a jack of all trades, master of none. This also applies to performance. It bundles an impressive amount of partially niche, but overall well supported, features (Linux, USB3, gigabit ethernet, okish wifi & BT, HDMI with CEC, GPIO, camera, okish GPU) with a powerful enough CPU and enough RAM for an acceptable price. If you want the traditional desktop experience or a higher workload server, the RPi is likely not going to win against an N100 SBC or mini PC. For many applications besides that the RPi fits the niche of powerful enough to run it, power efficient enough to not worry about it running all the time, cheap enough to not worry too much and common enough to be well supported. Things like single-purpose software packages/distributions are often better supported on an RPi, just because it has become the "standard". Sure, you might find hardware better suited for each use case, but it seems like the RPi can handle most of it and thus becomes the default choice. As an example, I recently tried out an N100 mini PC to drive my living room TV instead of an RPi4. I liked the option of having a fully featured desktop with decent performance just in case (most importantly Firefox). Plus the N100 on paper has more video decoding options, either via HW decoders or just by virtue of handling more via software decoding. In practice, these advantages were irrelevant for my primary use case (watch movies, series & long-form YT videos). But, I lost out on "it just works" features. The RPi4 just boots into Kodi (via LibreELEC) and works flawlessly with HDMI CEC, the N100 does not have any CEC capability (missing HW feature). Sure, I can use an external USB dongle to get CEC support, but after buying that I am at a far higher price than for the RPi4 + SD card + good power supply + simple case. Side note: the RPi4 also beat a Pine64+ for that use case, just because I couldn't get the board to play nice with LibreELEC. No CEC and no wifi, even after tinkering for far too long.

madduci 3y ago
Well, intel CPUs have always been jack of all trades as well and the software support is the best so far to this date. What scares me about those ARM SBCs is the lack of software support, especially when it comes to GPU acceleration. They perform very well in headless mode, but on graphics they all still lag far behind. One day (maybe another couple of generations of SBCs) will be better, but we are not there yet.
eklavya 3y ago

weberer 3y ago

The MSRP for the N100 is $128 and I don't see any GPIO pins. It looks to be more of a budget desktop PC than a hobbyist board.