Are There Any Raspberry Pi 2 Benchmarks You'd Like To See?

[kneekoo]

On topic:
I'm quite happy with the benchmarks already proposed and requested so I'm looking forward to see the results.

Off topic:
When you don't know where Raspberry Pi comes from it's easy to think it's a cheap PC but a poor choice compared to others. The goal of that mini PC was to provide a very accessible PC to kids, so they can learn how to tinker with hardware and software. Why? Two main reasons:
1. Young people these days are less skilled with technology compared to the generations of ZX Spectrum, Commodore and such. And that's because...
2. The devices that gets into kids' hands these days are mostly consoles, tablets, smartphones and such. All those are closed hardware and sometimes you can't even take a look inside without physically damaging them.

The design choices... oh, well... I didn't like them too much either, although Raspberry Pi 2 is now an excellent entry-level PC for that kind of money. But the main goal itself beats the crap out of the design because the real value on the Raspberry Pi is its community and all the effort put behind it. Most people interesting in tinkering with hardware/software don't have very specific demands but rather want something interesting and useful to do and the community around this project is great. There are hundreds of cool projects and re-spins, so that's an immense value. The way the Raspberry Pi Foundation sparked and channeled the passion of seasoned and wanna-be developers rebooted tinkering world-wide and as a result there are now better options hardware-wise.

Yes, they will have to keep up with the raw power of the PC but the way they are handling the project makes me believe improvements will keep coming. And I won't expect too much so I don't get disappointed. But I won't demand too much because I know the main goal and I encourage them to keep producing cheap entry-level PCs with decent performance and really good hardware and software development options.

So cheers to Raspberry Pi! \o/

[cbxbiker61]

I'd recommend just doing a review of the RPi2 doing one of the things that it is good at....a dedicated Kodi box.

1. The video chip is good (plays high bandwidth video)
2. It has gpio (good for turning the box into a dedicated box doing something specific)

In my case I have:
1 RPi2 acting as a dedicated gps based Stratum 1 ntp server (RPi1 was plenty fast, but i wanted the box to do compile chores as well)
1 RPi1 with a 3.5" touchscreen acting as a control panel for my Printrbot (running qt5 code that I wrote), plenty fast for this
1 RPi2 as a dedicated Kodi playback device (pretty darn good here, although I still lean towards the CuBox-I for this task)

It seems kind of a waste to do benchmarks for things that just aren't that common for RPi's (and almost never make sense for anything but to say you did it), i.e. desktop usage.

As far as performance goes, I've benchmarked the RPi2 against a CuBox-I quad core, and I know all I'll ever have to know about performance, it's half as fast doing normal compute and memory bandwidth is half that of the CuBox. So yeah, not a great performer for general purpose computing tasks.

[caligula]

On topic:
I'm quite happy with the benchmarks already proposed and requested so I'm looking forward to see the results.

Off topic:
When you don't know where Raspberry Pi comes from it's easy to think it's a cheap PC but a poor choice compared to others. The goal of that mini PC was to provide a very accessible PC to kids, so they can learn how to tinker with hardware and software. Why? Two main reasons:
1. Young people these days are less skilled with technology compared to the generations of ZX Spectrum, Commodore and such. And that's because...
2. The devices that gets into kids' hands these days are mostly consoles, tablets, smartphones and such. All those are closed hardware and sometimes you can't even take a look inside without physically damaging them.

The design choices... oh, well... I didn't like them too much either, although Raspberry Pi 2 is now an excellent entry-level PC for that kind of money. But the main goal itself beats the crap out of the design because the real value on the Raspberry Pi is its community and all the effort put behind it. Most people interesting in tinkering with hardware/software don't have very specific demands but rather want something interesting and useful to do and the community around this project is great. There are hundreds of cool projects and re-spins, so that's an immense value. The way the Raspberry Pi Foundation sparked and channeled the passion of seasoned and wanna-be developers rebooted tinkering world-wide and as a result there are now better options hardware-wise.

Yes, they will have to keep up with the raw power of the PC but the way they are handling the project makes me believe improvements will keep coming. And I won't expect too much so I don't get disappointed. But I won't demand too much because I know the main goal and I encourage them to keep producing cheap entry-level PCs with decent performance and really good hardware and software development options.

So cheers to Raspberry Pi! \o/

The chinese built these clones for the same reason. It's just that their buying power is much less so they prefer $15 devices. RPi 2 is really expensive in some parts of the world. Nowhere near $35. For a basic setup you also need sd card, power supply, and cables. Suddenly the price is $80.

[caligula]

This is all very true, RPi is a piece of crap but it's the only board in the price category that will get OpenGL (not ES) support && it won't be fixed to a particular kernel version. Or is it not? I know about Qualcomm's Adreno drivers however the cheapest board with Adreno GPU is Dragonboard which is about 80$, isn't it?

I've been looking at a wide variety of hobby projects that make use of RPi. Most of them are headless. The GPU is just sitting there doing nothing.

Guess what, if you want a HTPC, RPi model A/B/A+/B+ are very weak and what's worst, even now they're more expensive than the dedicated chinese HTPC hardware running Kodi. Those chinese boxes actually run Kodi faster on Android than RPi 2 on a minimalistic system. They also support 4k or H.265. And yes, they come with integrated wifi, bt 4.0, 4 GB eMMC flash (a lot faster than RPi SDHC), in a case! Did I already mention they're a lot cheaper than a similar RPi system.

I agree the decision of splitting RPi into A and B models kinda makes sense, but I would have left out the GPU from model A. People used to buy RPi because it was a cheap, versatile embedded platform. However now that the chinese/koreans built clones based on Allwinner/Samsung/Amlogic, RPi consumes 60 to 100% more energy and the performance is shittier. For embedded stuff, I still prefer NodeMCU and Arduino. You get 10-20 of those for the price of one RPi board. Lots of GPIO pins, integrated wifi, integrated flash, decent CPU for embedded. Nowadays ESP8266 even runs Javascript.

If you're low on money, go buy a chinese 4k/H.265 HTPC box and 4-5 NodeMCUs and Arduinos. It's the same price as a single RPi system.

[caligula]

Uhm, ESP8266 requires to deal with custom tool chain, unusual OS and other weird crap. Not to mention it is not compatible with anything else and you hit 100% vendor lock. Once you deploy some projects... what if Espressif would decide to, say, increase prices? Right: you already put your bet on it and can't easily migrate to another device. This is much easier with devices similar to Pi, which ensures there going to be decent competition, power and features would improve, while prices would tend to go down, etc. Not to mention Linux gives a shitload of options. I'm even scared to imagine how one supposed to implement web interface on ESPs. And on Linux ARM I can basically install usual httpd of my choice and do what I need. Obviously it is better to go for more or less lightweight one, like lighttpd, nginx, or even something like thttpd or openwrt's httpd, rather than slow and resource-hogging Apache. Not to mention it is kinda wrong idea to trust wireless security to some proprietary wireless stack. And wireless as method of communication is a really fragile thing, so it is unacceptable in places where inability to communicate with device can cause troubles. Generally speaking, it is really easy to send specific packets, bringing all wi-fi activity within transmitter's range to almost complete halt.

I suppose people use ESP8266 for IoT sensors and stuff. The application code at the far end is pretty minimal and simple. You could easily port it in many cases. Even if you had to do 1-wire code by hand, it's not a big deal. The $15 Orange Pi is probably a good alternative if one needs a bigger system. No idea how well the mainline kernel supports it now. You can boot it already but some core drivers are still under development by sunxi devs.

[michelvf]

Perhaps a good, useful, widely familiar list might look something like: A PIII (~800MHz coppermine perhaps?), Athlon XP (1600ish?), Pentium M (~1.6gHz?), Core2 (duo penryn?), Athlon64 X2 (4000+?), i5 (2500k?)

I don't like this kind of comparison, because after a few software upgrades, the comparison gets completely useless. I mean: once I had a PIII800MHz, but then the software were completely different it is today. Also, immagine I never used a PII800MHz, how relevant a comparison with that would be?

I'd prefer a number of X per second, X being int, float, mem operations, bytes written or read in disk, frames or anything else that fits

[SystemCrasher]

I suppose people use ESP8266 for IoT sensors and stuff.

I think it is temporary. Programming strange RTOS is no fun for me. Furthermore, this is odd knowledge, which IMHO going to be useless in few years. This is also 100% vendor lock: you can't easily move to another device. RTOS and SDK are unique to device. Also no fancy libs and progs I'm used to. And no powerful, featured OS kernel on my side.

This makes system implementation slow, hard and PITA overall. So I would leave it to others, etc. Actually, these devices aren't even comparable. Pi-like devices & CPU modules are more like small computers with some extra abilities good for embedded, and ESPs are more like microcontrollers. You can, say, use virtually any usb device in Linux. Be it webcam, printer, 3G modem, or keyboard - you can hook it and get it work. You CAN face some reliability issues. But on ESP you'll rather face the fact you can't do it at all. Then, EPSs could have lower power consumption. At least unless you can do a very hardcore power optimization of Linux based system, both in hardware (e.g. power gating of all optional parts and taking care of system consumption) and software (handling power gating, etc). Needless to say, it could be quite a challenge.

[quote]The application code at the far end is pretty minimal and simple. You could easily port it in many cases.[/qutoe] And in Linux I do not need to "port" at all. I just come, assemble custom system image tailored for desired task, maybe coding some custom logic if it is something unusual, but most of time I would just be using one of these 50K debian packages. With little to no changes. It would need some glue and configuration to put everything together, but its nowhere close to "porting" in terms of efforts. And overall.... rebuilding OS image for Debian allows me to reuse knowledge and expertise I already had, due to the fact I use similar things on desktops and servers. Sure, it takes understanding of some extra things, etc. But since I sometimes programming microcontrollers and have overall reasonable knowledge of microprocessor systems, it's not something entirely new to me. It just technologies which reached levels I always dreamed for. Now its time to have fun

Even if you had to do 1-wire code by hand, it's not a big deal.

Sure, but, overall you would only have microcontroller-like interfaces and almost no PC-like. So what about reading usb stick? Or, say, 3G HSPA or LTE modem could have reasonable price. On other hand, industrial 3G module could easily cost like the rest of system, and industrial LTE module could easily exceed system price by several times. And cheaper chinese modem modules suck in terms of reliability so hard that usb 3G/LTE device would actually perform better.

The $15 Orange Pi is probably a good alternative if one needs a bigger system. No idea how well the mainline kernel supports it now.

Speaking for myself, I seek some reasonable, balanced points, where system price, development times and resulting quality join together to get reasonable system at reaonable price. Absolutely lowest price of unit isn't a topmost priority most of time, since I'm not going to compete with china mass production factories. They can do it better, soldering and assembing devices like 24/7 using their half-slave workers. On other hand, they are manufacturing. And do not give a fuck about anything eles. This is both bless and curse. It is good because it leaves ME room to act as system integrator who would implement custom system for unsual tasks, bringing all parts together. But if you use chinese module or board... it also backfires. Should you need something non-default and either you have to do everything yourself, or if it haven't worked and you've got stuck, it would be really pointless thing to ask manufacturer. Manufacturer mostly got reference schematic/board, barely adapted it a bit, uploaded reference android crap and considered its mission complete. It is really pointless idea to ask china manufacturers about inner workings of their devices. They do not have even slightest fuck. And can't answer your questoin even if they would want to do so (which may or may not be a case). For this reason, I'm sometimes prefer Olimex boards and modules. Well, at least they have some idea what they sell. Though you see, chinese documentation isn't exactly best thing on the planet, and, say, allwinner datasheets tend to be incomplete and inaccurate and only useful like 50% of time to get overall idea

But at the end of day I warmly welcome cheap devices, they allow to implement even more fancy things, and are putting competition globally. Forcing whole market to reconsider prices.

You can boot it already but some core drivers are still under development by sunxi devs.

Linux sunxi devs rock, this is one of best SoC-oriented Linux communities around, being more active than many others . Somehow, they are so epic they managed to write most of hardware drivers on their own, doing it far better than chinese SDK did AND doing it right, in sense of using kernel facilities and ways of doing things, rather than chaotic ad-hoc low quality chinese code.

Obvious example: I've been running several AW devices as "early adopter". So I had chance to evaluate how it performs before relying on it in commercial applications. I've seen like 2 kernel panic crashes in several months in vendor's EMAC (100Mbps Ethernet) driver. OTOH, it never crashed on mainline to the date, while passing whopping terabytes of data and doing it months and months. Needless to say I'm not a big fan of vendor SDKs, because it tends to be like this here and there...

[Ardje]

Because I don't have one? Nor really extra funds to buy every board out there...

Those are sound arguments ;-).

[kneekoo]

The chinese built these clones for the same reason. It's just that their buying power is much less so they prefer $15 devices. RPi 2 is really expensive in some parts of the world. Nowhere near $35. For a basic setup you also need sd card, power supply, and cables. Suddenly the price is $80.

True, some people simply cannot afford technology. Period. However, when you do afford something, you also have to consider the costs. A full desktop PC costs a whole lot more, not just to buy it but also to operate it. You can buy a cheaper second hand PC but you can't rely on it as you would rely on a new one - which has 2-3 years of warranty and it's not used. Then you have to consider that buying a PC - new or old, full desktop or a tiny PC as Raspberry Pi - you would need peripherals anyway if you start from nothing. So the costs are basically the same for peripherals. But if you already have a phone with a micro USB adapter - there's your power supply. When you have a USB keyboard, there's your keyboard. The same goes for a mouse and possibly the monitor - if it has HDMI. And the cost of a 4GB or 8GB (micro)SD card is not prohibitive at all, for almost anyone.

So if you have a low budget and you want to learn, the RaspberryPi 2 model B is a decent start. Let's keep in mind that most of us started with 8086, 80286 and so on. And we learned a lot. So when we look at the whole picture we can safely say that while the RaspberryPi has plenty of room for improvement, it can be successfully used as an education platform, just as it was intended in the first place. And it can also do a lot more, which is where the fun begins.

[caligula]

True, some people simply cannot afford technology. Period. However, when you do afford something, you also have to consider the costs. A full desktop PC costs a whole lot more, not just to buy it but also to operate it. You can buy a cheaper second hand PC but you can't rely on it as you would rely on a new one - which has 2-3 years of warranty and it's not used. Then you have to consider that buying a PC - new or old, full desktop or a tiny PC as Raspberry Pi - you would need peripherals anyway if you start from nothing. So the costs are basically the same for peripherals. But if you already have a phone with a micro USB adapter - there's your power supply. When you have a USB keyboard, there's your keyboard. The same goes for a mouse and possibly the monitor - if it has HDMI. And the cost of a 4GB or 8GB (micro)SD card is not prohibitive at all, for almost anyone.

So if you have a low budget and you want to learn, the RaspberryPi 2 model B is a decent start. Let's keep in mind that most of us started with 8086, 80286 and so on. And we learned a lot. So when we look at the whole picture we can safely say that while the RaspberryPi has plenty of room for improvement, it can be successfully used as an education platform, just as it was intended in the first place. And it can also do a lot more, which is where the fun begins.

I've worked as a volunteer installing RPi stuff in a school. The sad thing is that they don't recycle things. They buy everything as new for the Pi. They also pay an insane price for all the things since it needs to come from an official distributor. Something like $60 for the Pi, $20 for a charger. You also need a powered USB hub if you want to power the larger USB Wi-Fi dongles.

Yes we started with 8086. However the Rpi doesn't run that kind of programs. The software was written in optimized asm back then, now you use a Python or JavaScript interpreter with slow codegen on arm. Also for desktop use, Rpi can't really use its GPU acceleration. No OpenGL. It's not really that ideal as a desktop although it works as a large development board. It also consumes quite a lot og power (2-3 W) idle so it wont work as a mobile, battery powered embedded device either unless you want short battery life. And you know, if you already have an old pc, you can buy USB powered gpio pins if you want to control things or USB powered Arduino Mega. It's around $3 from China.