Raspberry Pi B+ - Still Slow, But A Small Improvement

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Raspberry Pi B+ - Still Slow, But A Small Improvement

The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced today the launch of the Raspberry Pi Model B+ as the final evolution of the original RPi board while still costing $35 USD...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTc0MTQ

[chuckula]

What else do you expect for $25-$35????

Of course the Raspberry Pi is slow*... that ain't the freakin' point of the device and never was the point!! The point is that the Raspbery Pi is CHEAP (I ain't holding my breath for a K1 board to be priced at $35 for a "high-end" model) and it has a community built around it to make it easy for hobbyists and kids to learn how computers actually work and how to use computers to solve problems via software and hardware projects. Kids don't need another stupid toy to play games or IM people, but they do need to learn what actually makes a computer work under the hood.

I've got an overclocked 4770K at home for when I need performance, but the Rpi can be used in a whole bunch of projects that are never going to work with a desktop PC. Use the right tool for the job!


* Having said that, the Rpi is ~50% faster than the Pentium 233MHz that I lugged off with me to college way back in the dark ages, and 512MB of RAM is quite a bit more than was on the vast majority of P1 systems. I was able to run Matlab and a bunch of other engineerinng software on it back then, so the definition of "slow" has changed quite a bit.

[radeon]

the Rpi is ~50% faster than the Pentium 233MHz that I lugged off with me to college way back in the dark ages, and 512MB of RAM is quite a bit more than was on the vast majority of P1 systems. I was able to run Matlab and a bunch of other engineerinng software on it back then, so the definition of "slow" has changed quite a bit.

Unfortunately this is a common symptom of many, if not all mismanaged software projects.

Each developer considers his software the only one running on a machine.

The widespread usage of overblown frameworks and interpreted languages (like JS for GNOME) does nothing to alleviate the issue.

Interpreted languages for OS tasks have become a real cancer in modern computing.

If you take a look how much a simple compiler update can increase program performance, imagine how fast modern GUIs would run if they weren't written in obscure typeless, interpreted languages.


You basically can't use a modern GUI system with a browser on a machine with less than 2 GB RAM today. Which is two thousand million bytes.

[schmidtbag]

Of course the Raspberry Pi is slow*... that ain't the freakin' point of the device and never was the point!! The point is that the Raspbery Pi is CHEAP (I ain't holding my breath for a K1 board to be priced at $35 for a "high-end" model) and it has a community built around it to make it easy for hobbyists and kids to learn how computers actually work and how to use computers to solve problems via software and hardware projects. Kids don't need another stupid toy to play games or IM people, but they do need to learn what actually makes a computer work under the hood.

I understand what you're saying, and to a degree, I agree. But, what bothers me about the Pi is as a supposedly non-profit product, for an additional $15 there are better alternatives. The Pi is just about the cheapest fully functional PC you can get, but I think what bothers me about the Pi more than anything else are people's expectations of it. It's not meant for 1080p video playback. It isn't meant for high-speed storage and networking. It isn't going to replace your 5 year old PC. It isn't going to run Windows or it's applications. It was originally designed to be an educational tool, and all the constant complaining about how it didn't do this-or-that turned it into something it didn't need to be. The original B model was supposed to only have 256MB of RAM and 2 USB ports. For what the Pi was supposed to do, this was sufficient. Seriously, the self-entitlement of people these days is a burden to society sometimes.

[radeon]

There was a study about Kernel bloat and performance decrease. It estimated a 2% performance loss each year.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/22/linus_torvalds_linux_bloated_huge/

While we see some performance jumps every once in a while, they are mainly caused by previously untapped hardware functions, not because of code performance improvements.

[monkeynut]

Despite all that's been said in this thread so far, I still wouldn't have minded a CPU clock speed increase. IIRC Broadcom has a 1.3GHz ARM11 chip that was used in one of the last Nokia Belle phones. I don't know the practicality of this, because I assume that the RPi foundation have bought up the chips in advance. But yeah, it just needs a BIT MORE grunt. A bit more.

[torsionbar28]

The Pi is just about the cheapest fully functional PC you can get, but I think what bothers me about the Pi more than anything else are people's expectations of it. It's not meant for 1080p video playback.

Eh? OpenELEC works really well on the Pi, and plays my entire movie collection @ 1080p beautifully. Best bang-for-your-buck media center PC out there is the Pi + OpenElec.

[Ouroboros]

Two more USB ports when it didn't even have enough to power one before >.> The only features that might matter is the supposed audio improvement and more GPIO pins.
Power was already low, I doubt anyone cares too much about it or that it's a significant difference. SD --> microSD doesn't make much of a difference, speed and prices are about the same IIRC.

[Ouroboros]

I understand what you're saying, and to a degree, I agree. But, what bothers me about the Pi is as a supposedly non-profit product, for an additional $15 there are better alternatives. The Pi is just about the cheapest fully functional PC you can get, but I think what bothers me about the Pi more than anything else are people's expectations of it. It's not meant for 1080p video playback. It isn't meant for high-speed storage and networking. It isn't going to replace your 5 year old PC. It isn't going to run Windows or it's applications. It was originally designed to be an educational tool, and all the constant complaining about how it didn't do this-or-that turned it into something it didn't need to be. The original B model was supposed to only have 256MB of RAM and 2 USB ports. For what the Pi was supposed to do, this was sufficient. Seriously, the self-entitlement of people these days is a burden to society sometimes.

The GPU is about the only good thing about the Pi other than the price. AFAIK, it does fine with GPU accelerated 1080p. IIRC, it uses the same chip as some of the older Roku's.

[monkeynut]

Two more USB ports when it didn't even have enough to power one before >.> The only features that might matter is the supposed audio improvement and more GPIO pins.
Power was already low, I doubt anyone cares too much about it or that it's a significant difference. SD --> microSD doesn't make much of a difference, speed and prices are about the same IIRC.

They've changed the power management to make it use less power and get more out of your wall adapter.