8 ms·

They designed and built their own microcontroller. This chasing performance narrative doesn't make sense. And let's be real, it doesn't have 25W power consumpt

by nsteel 2y ago

They designed and built their own microcontroller. This chasing performance narrative doesn't make sense. And let's be real, it doesn't have 25W power consumption. You can attach enough things to it to get to 25W if you try really hard but that's hardly the same thing. The latest cheapo Intel parts are contenders (at ~10W, where the pi 5 actually operates) and if you just want perf you're better off with that. But if you want a low-level connectivity, a rich community, docs, and tailor-made projects, you still want a pi.

margalabargala 2y ago
Yes, they made a microcontroller to compete with the ESP32, but the ESP32 has orders of magnitude more market share and ecosystem. Not to diminish what they accomplished with the RP2040; it's an impressive chip. But as for whether they're chasing performance, the RP2040 isn't their flagship product. The Pi 5 is. And I've had a Pi 5, under heavy CPU (not peripheral) load, start throwing undervoltage warnings when using a 5V3A power supply from a Pi 4.
- nsteel 2y ago
  https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21 https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21 Power Idle power draw (at wall): 1.8 W (See note) Maximum simulated power draw (stress-ng --matrix 0): 9.7 W During Geekbench multicore benchmark: 7.9 W During top500 HPL benchmark: 11 W (2.75 Gflops/W)
  - margalabargala 2y ago
    Huh. Maybe I had a bad power supply, then. Interesting. This is compellingly saying that I was too hasty in assuming the low voltage warnings were from the 18W supply topping out. Thank you for this.
    - abswest 2y ago
      Seen same power warnings, when powered by RP4 5V/3A. Had to use 5.1V power supply to get rid of them.
      - fostware 2y ago
        It's been that way since the RP3 - heavy load resulting in rainbow square. Use the official power supply labelled 5.1v and the square disappears
    - rerdavies 2y ago
      Maybe it's a spiky 9.7w. :-/
      - lazide 2y ago
        A very real problem. Also power supply/chip tolerances and a little extra gunk on a pin somewhere can line up unfavorably. Personally, I had tons of power issues due to underspec cables with a Pi4. Irritating.
IshKebab 2y ago
The RP2040 isn't a very compelling microcontroller though. The only interesting thing about it is the programmable peripherals, but we've seen that before, e.g. from XMOS and in practice the protocols & peripherals you're going to use 99.9% of the time are completely standard - I2C, SPI, I2S, UART, counters/PWM, etc. For the rare case you need something custom and high speed there are really cheap FPGAs now. The ESP32 supports all of those protocols and Wifi and Bluetooth, and it has low power sleep modes. And there are RISC-V versions which is quite nice from a a warm fuzzy point of view. I think RPi still has a place for hobby electronics projects where you want GPIO. I don't think people are going to use it as a standard computer (desktop / media server / etc) though.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  XMOS was around for a long time, but for whatever reason I never saw it used much. There are so many RP2040 projects floating around on github now, showcasing the programmable IO ports. That's very helpful if you want to tinker with something yourself.
- 05 2y ago
  > I think RPi still has a place for hobby electronics projects where you want GPIO. But any sane design would offload the IO to a more capable MCU that has more than a single SPI channel, among other weird limitations.. Sure, hobbyists often do weird things, but the niche for RPi is pretty much 'basically a computer, but you could theoretically blink an LED' - the actual experience of using those peripherals is much worse that what you'd have in Arduino or Platformio. Try attaching an interrupt handler to a GPIO pin on Linux, now you need to write a kernel module :)
  - throwup238 2y ago
    RPi's niche is really as an SBC supported by mainline Linux and a giant community. That's why it had supply shortages - that's a huge value add to the electronics industry and the money was too good to resist pivoting to commercial users over education and hobbyists. Grabbing an Altium/KiCad/etc footprint and slapping a compute module on a board while prototyping with a Pi is still the fastest way to go to market with a well supported Linux CPU. All the other manufacturers have really really shitty BSPs in comparison, even if you're just offloading everything realtime to an MCU. ESP32/ESPHome may have taken over the lower end with its easy config but there's still no real Pi competitor. A decade after the first RPi release, I still dread using any other platform when I have to design a board that requires more compute than an ESP32.
yummypaint 2y ago
Agreed, just the other day i ran a pi 5 with official power supply through a kill-a-watt while watching youtube etc and it was generally below 10 W at the plug

by nsteel 2y ago

margalabargala 2y ago

Yes, they made a microcontroller to compete with the ESP32, but the ESP32 has orders of magnitude more market share and ecosystem. Not to diminish what they accomplished with the RP2040; it's an impressive chip. But as for whether they're chasing performance, the RP2040 isn't their flagship product. The Pi 5 is. And I've had a Pi 5, under heavy CPU (not peripheral) load, start throwing undervoltage warnings when using a 5V3A power supply from a Pi 4.

nsteel 2y ago
https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21 https://github.com/geerlingguy/sbc-reviews/issues/21 Power Idle power draw (at wall): 1.8 W (See note) Maximum simulated power draw (stress-ng --matrix 0): 9.7 W During Geekbench multicore benchmark: 7.9 W During top500 HPL benchmark: 11 W (2.75 Gflops/W)
- margalabargala 2y ago
  Huh. Maybe I had a bad power supply, then. Interesting. This is compellingly saying that I was too hasty in assuming the low voltage warnings were from the 18W supply topping out. Thank you for this.
  - abswest 2y ago
    Seen same power warnings, when powered by RP4 5V/3A. Had to use 5.1V power supply to get rid of them.
    - fostware 2y ago
      It's been that way since the RP3 - heavy load resulting in rainbow square. Use the official power supply labelled 5.1v and the square disappears
  - rerdavies 2y ago
    Maybe it's a spiky 9.7w. :-/
    - lazide 2y ago
      A very real problem. Also power supply/chip tolerances and a little extra gunk on a pin somewhere can line up unfavorably. Personally, I had tons of power issues due to underspec cables with a Pi4. Irritating.

IshKebab 2y ago

The RP2040 isn't a very compelling microcontroller though. The only interesting thing about it is the programmable peripherals, but we've seen that before, e.g. from XMOS and in practice the protocols & peripherals you're going to use 99.9% of the time are completely standard - I2C, SPI, I2S, UART, counters/PWM, etc. For the rare case you need something custom and high speed there are really cheap FPGAs now. The ESP32 supports all of those protocols and Wifi and Bluetooth, and it has low power sleep modes. And there are RISC-V versions which is quite nice from a a warm fuzzy point of view. I think RPi still has a place for hobby electronics projects where you want GPIO. I don't think people are going to use it as a standard computer (desktop / media server / etc) though.

actionfromafar 2y ago
XMOS was around for a long time, but for whatever reason I never saw it used much. There are so many RP2040 projects floating around on github now, showcasing the programmable IO ports. That's very helpful if you want to tinker with something yourself.
05 2y ago
> I think RPi still has a place for hobby electronics projects where you want GPIO. But any sane design would offload the IO to a more capable MCU that has more than a single SPI channel, among other weird limitations.. Sure, hobbyists often do weird things, but the niche for RPi is pretty much 'basically a computer, but you could theoretically blink an LED' - the actual experience of using those peripherals is much worse that what you'd have in Arduino or Platformio. Try attaching an interrupt handler to a GPIO pin on Linux, now you need to write a kernel module :)
- throwup238 2y ago
  RPi's niche is really as an SBC supported by mainline Linux and a giant community. That's why it had supply shortages - that's a huge value add to the electronics industry and the money was too good to resist pivoting to commercial users over education and hobbyists. Grabbing an Altium/KiCad/etc footprint and slapping a compute module on a board while prototyping with a Pi is still the fastest way to go to market with a well supported Linux CPU. All the other manufacturers have really really shitty BSPs in comparison, even if you're just offloading everything realtime to an MCU. ESP32/ESPHome may have taken over the lower end with its easy config but there's still no real Pi competitor. A decade after the first RPi release, I still dread using any other platform when I have to design a board that requires more compute than an ESP32.

yummypaint 2y ago

Agreed, just the other day i ran a pi 5 with official power supply through a kill-a-watt while watching youtube etc and it was generally below 10 W at the plug