4 ms·

If Pi Clusters were actually cost competitive for performance there would be data centres full of them.

by fidotron 1y ago

phoronixrly 1y ago
If they were cost competitive for ... anything at all really...
- wltr 1y ago
  Well I have a Pi as a home server, and it’s very energy efficient, while doing what I want. Since I don’t need latest and greatest (I don’t see any difference with a modern PC for my use case), it’s very competitive for me. No need for any cooling is bonus.
  - Waraqa 1y ago
    >very energy efficient If your server has a lot of idle time, ARM will always win.
    - wltr 1y ago
      My home server mostly not used. It triggers some simple bash scripts each hour, or each night. It serves some simple personal web pages. I access them a couple of times a day, each time randomly. I have a Raspberry Pi 1B, and it looks like despite being massively underpowered, it’s the most energy efficient. And in my use-case, I think of using it for the task. One day my primary Raspberry Pi broke (turned out to be a PSU issue), and I thought of having an old laptop running 24/7 as a home server. While being not very power hungry, it’s still wants much more energy (plus it has fans). For a casual usage (I forgot to mention Pi-Hole) it feels like an overkill. So, while a Raspberry Pi isn’t the best, it has its niche, and I’m happy of having one (actually, a few).
- ACCount37 1y ago
  Prototyping and low volume. They're good for long as the development costs dominate the total costs.
- jacobr1 1y ago
  They are competitive for hobbyist use cases. Limited home servers, or embedded applications that overlap with arduino.
  - kldg 1y ago
    I picked up some 1GB Rock-2F boards while available in the US for ~$10/ea. Seems they aren't shipping the 1GB boards to the US anymore though. Before this, I had a couple Raspberry Pis; one I fried, and the other acted as a web server for a few years. My realization in ordering the Rock-2Fs is I really only need an MMU (that is, an SBC instead of something like an ESP32) when I'm running something with a graphical desktop, which is, outside my workstation, never (except for kiosks, which I use Android tablets for). -OR when I want to plug something into a bloated SBC board which saves me from having to solder a connector on, which is sometimes. I use one for running a timelapse camera (camera is USB) while another is a portable mp3 player I can put in shirt pocket and which has aux port (tho its aux line is noisy). -So that's two of the four Rock-2F boards in use.... but it took me far less time to think up uses and deploy 25/25 of seeedstudio's ESP32C3 boards I ordered a couple years ago, and have used ~5/25 of the ESP32C6s I ordered early this year. They're so cheap, and use so much less energy than ARM boards, that it's difficult to justify using the SBCs anymore. I think they're asking $50 for a base 2GB Pi4B, now -- that's 10 ESP32C3 boards (with integrated WiFi and BMS, btw!) -- and the Pi5 is even less competitive except in what I'd characterize as a very unusual scenario where you need high compute at edge (where it's both needed AND the latency of computing at the edge is lower than sending it to central server for processing), OR you need the security of protected memory, OR you have no central server and an ESP32 isn't going to cut it (I'll say, though, that one can run a thermostat with multiple WiFi-connected thermometers, and run a web server interface just fine.).
- magicalhippo 1y ago
  I picked up several Rpi 4 2GB for $20 each just before covid-19. At that price point they've been quite competitive for small homelab workloads. The current RPi 5 makes no sense to me in any configuration, given its pricing.
  - mayli 1y ago
    Yeah, it's only competitive as a toy for under $35, anything beyond that you can get a cheap x86 with much better performance, a much compatible architecture and much more IOs.
- ssl-3 1y ago
  It depends on the application. If one just wants a cheap desktop box to do desktop things with, then they're a terrible option, price-wise, compared to things like used corpo mini-PCs. But they're reasonably cost-competitive with other new (not used!) small computers that are tinkerer-friendly, and unlike many similar constructs there's a plethora of community-driven support for doing useful things with the unusual interfaces they expose.
- rebolek 1y ago
  They are cost competitive enough for Korg synthesizers which is pretty OK for me.
shermantanktop 1y ago
Like the joke about the economists not picking up the $20 bill on the ground? Faith in the perfect efficiency of the free market only works out over the long term. In the short term we have a lot of habits that serve as heuristics for doing a good job most of the time.
- IAmBroom 1y ago
  > Faith in the perfect efficiency of the free market only works out over the long term ... and even then it doesn't always prove true.
- infecto 1y ago
  Sure but for commodities, like server hardware, we can say it’s usually directionally correct. If there are no pi cloud offerings, there is probably a good economic reason for it.
- ThrowawayR2 1y ago
  There's been so much investigation into alternative architectures for datacenters and cloud providers, including FAANG resorting to designing their own ARM processors and accelerator chips (e.g. AWS Graviton, Google TPUs) and having them fabbed, that that comes off not as warranted cynicism but silly cynicism.
- uncircle 1y ago
  > Like the joke about the economists not picking up the $20 bill on the ground? For those like me that don't know the joke: Two economists are walking down the street. One of them says “Look, there’s a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk!” The other economist says “No there’s not. If there was, someone would have picked it up already.”
  - shermantanktop 1y ago
    Presumably the non-economist following them picked up the twenty, unencumbered by theory.
pmarreck 1y ago
[flagged]
miunau 1y ago
Mythic Beasts rents rpi servers: https://www.mythic-beasts.com/order/rpi/ https://www.mythic-beasts.com/order/rpi/ - there is a niche for it
- mayli 1y ago
  This is also a proof where you can get cheaper and more perf/$ if you buy x86 based vps.
rozab 1y ago
People said the same about PlayStations, to be fair

If Pi Clusters were actually cost competitive for performance there would be data centres full of them.

phoronixrly 1y ago

If they were cost competitive for ... anything at all really...

wltr 1y ago
Well I have a Pi as a home server, and it’s very energy efficient, while doing what I want. Since I don’t need latest and greatest (I don’t see any difference with a modern PC for my use case), it’s very competitive for me. No need for any cooling is bonus.
- Waraqa 1y ago
  >very energy efficient If your server has a lot of idle time, ARM will always win.
  - wltr 1y ago
    My home server mostly not used. It triggers some simple bash scripts each hour, or each night. It serves some simple personal web pages. I access them a couple of times a day, each time randomly. I have a Raspberry Pi 1B, and it looks like despite being massively underpowered, it’s the most energy efficient. And in my use-case, I think of using it for the task. One day my primary Raspberry Pi broke (turned out to be a PSU issue), and I thought of having an old laptop running 24/7 as a home server. While being not very power hungry, it’s still wants much more energy (plus it has fans). For a casual usage (I forgot to mention Pi-Hole) it feels like an overkill. So, while a Raspberry Pi isn’t the best, it has its niche, and I’m happy of having one (actually, a few).
ACCount37 1y ago
Prototyping and low volume. They're good for long as the development costs dominate the total costs.
jacobr1 1y ago
They are competitive for hobbyist use cases. Limited home servers, or embedded applications that overlap with arduino.
- kldg 1y ago
  I picked up some 1GB Rock-2F boards while available in the US for ~$10/ea. Seems they aren't shipping the 1GB boards to the US anymore though. Before this, I had a couple Raspberry Pis; one I fried, and the other acted as a web server for a few years. My realization in ordering the Rock-2Fs is I really only need an MMU (that is, an SBC instead of something like an ESP32) when I'm running something with a graphical desktop, which is, outside my workstation, never (except for kiosks, which I use Android tablets for). -OR when I want to plug something into a bloated SBC board which saves me from having to solder a connector on, which is sometimes. I use one for running a timelapse camera (camera is USB) while another is a portable mp3 player I can put in shirt pocket and which has aux port (tho its aux line is noisy). -So that's two of the four Rock-2F boards in use.... but it took me far less time to think up uses and deploy 25/25 of seeedstudio's ESP32C3 boards I ordered a couple years ago, and have used ~5/25 of the ESP32C6s I ordered early this year. They're so cheap, and use so much less energy than ARM boards, that it's difficult to justify using the SBCs anymore. I think they're asking $50 for a base 2GB Pi4B, now -- that's 10 ESP32C3 boards (with integrated WiFi and BMS, btw!) -- and the Pi5 is even less competitive except in what I'd characterize as a very unusual scenario where you need high compute at edge (where it's both needed AND the latency of computing at the edge is lower than sending it to central server for processing), OR you need the security of protected memory, OR you have no central server and an ESP32 isn't going to cut it (I'll say, though, that one can run a thermostat with multiple WiFi-connected thermometers, and run a web server interface just fine.).
magicalhippo 1y ago
I picked up several Rpi 4 2GB for $20 each just before covid-19. At that price point they've been quite competitive for small homelab workloads. The current RPi 5 makes no sense to me in any configuration, given its pricing.
- mayli 1y ago
  Yeah, it's only competitive as a toy for under $35, anything beyond that you can get a cheap x86 with much better performance, a much compatible architecture and much more IOs.
ssl-3 1y ago
It depends on the application. If one just wants a cheap desktop box to do desktop things with, then they're a terrible option, price-wise, compared to things like used corpo mini-PCs. But they're reasonably cost-competitive with other new (not used!) small computers that are tinkerer-friendly, and unlike many similar constructs there's a plethora of community-driven support for doing useful things with the unusual interfaces they expose.
rebolek 1y ago
They are cost competitive enough for Korg synthesizers which is pretty OK for me.

shermantanktop 1y ago

Like the joke about the economists not picking up the $20 bill on the ground? Faith in the perfect efficiency of the free market only works out over the long term. In the short term we have a lot of habits that serve as heuristics for doing a good job most of the time.

IAmBroom 1y ago
> Faith in the perfect efficiency of the free market only works out over the long term ... and even then it doesn't always prove true.
infecto 1y ago
Sure but for commodities, like server hardware, we can say it’s usually directionally correct. If there are no pi cloud offerings, there is probably a good economic reason for it.
ThrowawayR2 1y ago
There's been so much investigation into alternative architectures for datacenters and cloud providers, including FAANG resorting to designing their own ARM processors and accelerator chips (e.g. AWS Graviton, Google TPUs) and having them fabbed, that that comes off not as warranted cynicism but silly cynicism.
uncircle 1y ago
> Like the joke about the economists not picking up the $20 bill on the ground? For those like me that don't know the joke: Two economists are walking down the street. One of them says “Look, there’s a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk!” The other economist says “No there’s not. If there was, someone would have picked it up already.”
- shermantanktop 1y ago
  Presumably the non-economist following them picked up the twenty, unencumbered by theory.

pmarreck 1y ago

[flagged]

miunau 1y ago

Mythic Beasts rents rpi servers: https://www.mythic-beasts.com/order/rpi/ https://www.mythic-beasts.com/order/rpi/ - there is a niche for it

mayli 1y ago
This is also a proof where you can get cheaper and more perf/$ if you buy x86 based vps.

rozab 1y ago

People said the same about PlayStations, to be fair