ODROID-N2 Offer Six Cortex-A73/A53 Cores For $65~82, Good Performance In Linux Benchmarks

[elatllat]

The N2 is looking good on the crypto front

https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=149&t=30103

Maybe Phoronix can edit a cryptsetup benchmark in.

[L_A_G]

Would be nice if there was any info on how cold/warm this new ODroid board runs. Because the XU4 that I use as a fanless and low power 24/7 Git server to share code between me and a couple of other developers on the internal network runs kind of toasty even when it's not under load. I originally thought the default cooling setup with a fan was just for people anal about keeping their boards cool, but it turns out to be the default cooling choice with good reason.

Obviously the bigger "big" and "little" cores will be bigger, but being made on what looks to be GlobalFoundries' 12nm process (rather than the 28nm process used to make the Exynos SoC in the XU4) the process node should probably more than make up for the toastier designs.

[Michael]

Would be nice if there was any info on how cold/warm this new ODroid board runs. Because the XU4 that I use as a fanless and low power 24/7 Git server to share code between me and a couple of other developers on the internal network runs kind of toasty even when it's not under load. I originally thought the default cooling setup with a fan was just for people anal about keeping their boards cool, but it turns out to be the default cooling choice with good reason.

Obviously the bigger "big" and "little" cores will be bigger, but being made on what looks to be GlobalFoundries' 12nm process (rather than the 28nm process used to make the Exynos SoC in the XU4) the process node should probably more than make up for the toastier designs.

Did you look at the last page? There are thermal metrics.

[skeetre]

Ordered mine last night. The 4gb version direct from hardkernel, sorry Ameridroid. I didn't get the eMMC memory, figured I'd try microSD and/or usb3 port first. I got a micro 64gb usb3 drive for $12.99 the other week that would be great for this. No idea what I'll use it for, my wife asked what I wanted for our anniversary and my birthday (both next week), and I had no idea. Then I read this article and voila! I've got a couple Pis that I use kano os and retropie on, so maybe this will be my new webserver.
It was weird, at work it said $35 shipping, but from home, and using the same ship-to address, it was $18.10 shipping. $113 total with power supply, black case, and usb wifi adapter.

[L_A_G]

Did you look at the last page? There are thermal metrics.

Looks like I missed that, but it would be nice if there was something to compare it to.

[wizard69]

The PI team is certainly in a pickle. As for the next board what we need from the Raspberry PI team is an open source RISC processor. Mainly the goal here is to be able to advanced their educational goals.

My big big problem with ARM hardware is the lack of a major player in the single board computer segment. The capability of the processor may be a factor here, but implementation is everything. The only thing that bothers me about N2 is the power connector. Having that barrel connector (coax power receptical) on the I/O side is detrimental to embedded use.

@ #15--

"...The RPi boards may not be the most powerful..."

MAY not be the most powerful?!

You reading the same Phoronix test results in this article I am?
In every one of the tests, the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ came in dead last (don't forget the test where the 3B+ couldn't even complete the test).

"...at least they have open drivers and mainline kernel support *right now*..."
As Robin Williams once said, "That's like being the best-dressed lady on the radio".

The RPi is at dead end, and the RPi group knows it; you need to face the facts, too. All the fanboys wishing and waiting for that unicorn called the "$35 Rpi 4" are being conveniently blind to the fact that there are no more equivalents to the BCM CPU which Eben Upton basically gets for free, since BCM has no other customers. And when the Raspberry Pi Group cannot even "design" (read that, in this case, as "lift right out of the data sheet's app notes") a simple power supply for their much-heralded PoE device without generating a major disaster.
The RPi group doesn't have ANY candidate processor for a "$35 RPi4"; has proven that they don't have a clue when it comes to real engineering design; and have no plan (Eben Upton talks about a RPi4 being available--perhaps--in 2020); all of RPi's "updates" and "upgrades" have been, for the most part, cosmetic (remember Upton admitting that the 64-bit BCM3877 was designed in to the RPi3 simply to get "...a faster 32-bit processor..."? How about the the 300 Mbps "Gigabit Ethernet" puffery? Would you have sat still for anyone else telling you that they were "giving" you "Gigabit Ethernet", but that it had one teensy problem: it only would run at 300 Mbits? I didn't think so. But, "...they have open drivers and mainline kernel support...".

The future of the RPi is not looking good right now. Not even that end of the business they've been quietly counting on for salvation: publishing.

[blackshard]

The N2 is a 4+2 big.little. So it's a quad core A73 (out-of order successor to the A17) + two A53s. Beyond that it also has DDR4 while the tinker board has DDR3. The N2 is also 64bit vs the Tinkerboards 32bit.

Didn't you read carefully my post, did you?

I quote it again:

I think the benchmarks of the Asus Tinkerboard are wrong: it is impossible that an out-of-order quad-core Cortex-A17 is beaten by any in-order quad-core A53, yet there are lot of benchmarks showing that.

Never talked about the Odroid N2, just said what the post says.

More significantly, the "dirty little secret" with many of these SBCs is that they aren't usable at their rated speeds because of thermal throttling. Many have no heatsinks (like the Tinkerboard) and when run at load for any significant period of time their performance takes a hit, often a dramatic one.

And so what are we benchmarking? The board, or the board in a particular condition? If we do the benchmark in winter it returns a result different than in summer, so are we benchmarking the board in a particular season of the year?

[thesandbender]

Didn't you read carefully my post, did you?

Not well enough, no.

And so what are we benchmarking? The board, or the board in a particular condition? If we do the benchmark in winter it returns a result different than in summer, so are we benchmarking the board in a particular season of the year?

Room temperature.

[blackshard]

@ #15--

"...The RPi boards may not be the most powerful..."

MAY not be the most powerful?!

You reading the same Phoronix test results in this article I am?
In every one of the tests, the Raspberry Pi 3 B+ came in dead last (don't forget the test where the 3B+ couldn't even complete the test).

"...at least they have open drivers and mainline kernel support *right now*..."
As Robin Williams once said, "That's like being the best-dressed lady on the radio".

The RPi is at dead end, and the RPi group knows it; you need to face the facts, too. All the fanboys wishing and waiting for that unicorn called the "$35 Rpi 4" are being conveniently blind to the fact that there are no more equivalents to the BCM CPU which Eben Upton basically gets for free, since BCM has no other customers. And when the Raspberry Pi Group cannot even "design" (read that, in this case, as "lift right out of the data sheet's app notes") a simple power supply for their much-heralded PoE device without generating a major disaster.
The RPi group doesn't have ANY candidate processor for a "$35 RPi4"; has proven that they don't have a clue when it comes to real engineering design; and have no plan (Eben Upton talks about a RPi4 being available--perhaps--in 2020); all of RPi's "updates" and "upgrades" have been, for the most part, cosmetic (remember Upton admitting that the 64-bit BCM3877 was designed in to the RPi3 simply to get "...a faster 32-bit processor..."? How about the the 300 Mbps "Gigabit Ethernet" puffery? Would you have sat still for anyone else telling you that they were "giving" you "Gigabit Ethernet", but that it had one teensy problem: it only would run at 300 Mbits? I didn't think so. But, "...they have open drivers and mainline kernel support...".

The future of the RPi is not looking good right now. Not even that end of the business they've been quietly counting on for salvation: publishing.

BCM3877? Random numbers?

Sorry but I don't agree with this scenario.

Raspberry, despite the horrible horrible horrible closed source firmware, has a strong mark in documentation and being open for the kernel and userland part, also the OpenGL GPU driver is available as opensource part: all the others have no such kind of solution, most chinese chipmakers (like AmLogic) users must use closed-source mali drivers. LIMA and Panfrost still have a long journey ahead to get the same features. Issues are still the USB subsystem (and their ridiculous capped gigabit ethernet), the way too old GPU/VPU and memory (still DDR2).

The fact that the Pi3B+ is always the slowest is just because you are comparing apples to oranges: Rpi is 35$ board with 4-core A53. Excluding the Odroid C2, all the others have much higher price tag and much more powerful chips. Chips are so powerful that you almost get an Intel atom board for such price, which is far away in terms of performance and linux support than any ARM.

Now we see this nice Odroid N2, which has a superlative heatsink on it... wow! I don't see any real progress, this is not pushing the performance-per-watt boundary in either direction, this is exactly what you get from 4*A73 + 2*A53 cores.

The next Raspberry Pi will be launched when the next boundary will be hit, and of course you will not get top-of-the-notch performance, but you will get an usable SBC at a reasonable price, which is a different thing than toy-like SBCs that are so powerful but they still lack support of some sort (or you're forced to use kernel 3.x if you want to use - let me say - the hardware h.264/h.265 decoder...)

[skeevy420]

Ordered mine last night. The 4gb version direct from hardkernel, sorry Ameridroid. I didn't get the eMMC memory, figured I'd try microSD and/or usb3 port first. I got a micro 64gb usb3 drive for $12.99 the other week that would be great for this. No idea what I'll use it for, my wife asked what I wanted for our anniversary and my birthday (both next week), and I had no idea. Then I read this article and voila! I've got a couple Pis that I use kano os and retropie on, so maybe this will be my new webserver.
It was weird, at work it said $35 shipping, but from home, and using the same ship-to address, it was $18.10 shipping. $113 total with power supply, black case, and usb wifi adapter.

Yeah, the 4GB version, 32GB EMMC, and Power Supply are cheaper direct from Hardkernel for me too after shipping is calculated...by 67 cents

Ameridroid has cheaper shipping and slightly higher priced components. For me this morning it's +$1.95 on the N2, +$.05 on the 32GB EMMC, +$1.45 on the PS, & -$3.78 on the shipping.