Raspberry Pi 4 Announced With Dual HDMI, USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, V3D Driver Stack

[microcode]

Like Raptor Computing's Talos II?

Yeah. Raptor's computers are very attractive aside from the POWER ecosystem being basically IBM-only, despite the openwashing. Even with those weaknesses I'm entertaining it as an option for my next home workstation. I just got so much value from my AMD Threadripper system that I'm not sure I can move backward in terms of capabilities.

[microcode]

I've yet to see even an ARM system in a standard PC form factor (I would even accept STX, mind you).

At least with ARM, you have several major distros from which to choose. I think software support for RISC V is much further behind.

I bought a prototype of a Mini-ITX ARM workstation board that was featured a few weeks ago here on Phoronix; it should ship out in september, and the final product (with more PC peripherals) should come a bit later. the ATX form factor has many, many faults which make it annoying and cumbersome to make motherboards these days (the placement of things is really not ideal, means they have to use more layers and work harder on signal integrity for the things to function), but there's just so much compatible equipment for ATX that it's hard to justify going a different direction for workstations. Particularly the power supplies, PCIe peripherals, and to a lesser extent, the chassis.

[RussianNeuroMancer]

The rock64 with 4GB ram is pretty much useless if you don't use android and trying to use linux is a crashtastic experience.

You talking about ROCK64 or PINE H64 ver. B? Which installation image, kernel, GPU driver did you use?

I testing ROCKPro64 right now, and besides two issues and Xorg crashes within Mali driver (so far happening with anything that use GPU, including Chromium, KWin and even just modesettings DDX; I hope for Panfrost here) I didn't find anything. Mali issue didn't bother me much because even with plain framebuffer Firefox can handle 720p 60 fps on YouTube without dropping frames. So far so go.

[coder]

FYI, there's an interactive Q&A session with Eben Upton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Upton) - founder & lead architect of the Raspberry Pi - going on, here:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ra...ama,39709.html

It should be open for another 24 hours.

As their forum software is a bit broken, you need to sign into the forum on a different page, such as this one:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/

Then, navigate to the Q&A thread and post your question.

[danmcgrew]

A lot is being written about the new Raspberry Pi's being a suitable machine for--finally-- "building a PC" (same thing was claimed for the RPi 3B+).

It might be informative to check into the specs for the upcoming $199.00 Pinebook Pro:

Rockchip RK3399 SOC with Mali T860 MP4 GPU; 4GB LPDDR4 RAM; 1080p IPS Panel; Magnesium Alloy Shell body; Bootable Micro SD Slot; 64GB of eMMC (Upgradable); PCIe x4 to m.2 NVMe SSD Slot (requires optional adapter); SPI Flash 128Mbit; HD Digital Video Out via USB-C; USB 2.0 Host; USB 3.0 Host; USB-C (Data, Power and Video out); Lithium Polymer Battery (10000mAH); Stereo Speakers; WiFi 802.11 AC + Bluetooth 4.1; Headphone Jack; Microphone; Front-Facing Camera; Choice of ISO or ANSI Keyboard; Large Trackpad; UART Access via Audio Jack; 3.5″ Barrel Power (5V 3A) Port.
Operating systems include Custom Debian (probably pre-installed), Ubuntu Mate, Ubuntu with LXDE and Chromium OS; and--within a few weeks of launch / before most end-users get their units--Manjaro KDE, KDE Neon and Armbian.

https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/

[coder]

Edit: well, if you need to run a computer from a battery, or to put it in a pocket, then RPi is superior to x86 today.

Apparently, you haven't seen the Power Draw Benchmark from here:

https://medium.com/@ghalfacree/bench...4-73e5afbcd54b

Intel makes a line of desktop-derived SoCs for tablets that burn less power at idle. When they stretch their legs, they easily smoke the Pi, at not much more TDP.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us...-3-60-ghz.html

Of course, a glance at the list price will quickly explain why they aren't popular in Pi-class hardware. However, don't forget that the Pi is on 28 nm while Intel is on 14. And Broadcom probably couldn't afford to power-optimize it to the same degree that Intel has.

However, if it's battery power that you want, then you really should be looking to boards based on a cell phone SoC. Most mid-range and higher SoCs are on even smaller nodes.

[xfcemint]

Apparently, you haven't seen the Power Draw Benchmark from here:
https://medium.com/@ghalfacree/bench...4-73e5afbcd54b

Yes I did. It says:
Power draw at the wall - idle:
RPi2 ----- 1.6 W
RPi3 ----- 2.1 W
RPi3B+ -- 2.8 W
RPi4B ---- 3.3 W

Intel makes a line of desktop-derived SoCs for tablets that burn less power at idle.

Nah. You need independent measurements of complete systems to be able to compare on that basis. You haven't posted anythithing similar.
Well, possibly you are right, but if such systems exist, they have many other downsides. Like: price.

When they stretch their legs, they easily smoke the Pi, at not much more TDP.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us...-3-60-ghz.html
Of course, a glance at the list price will quickly explain why they aren't popular in Pi-class hardware.

However, if it's battery power that you want, then you really should be looking to boards based on a cell phone SoC. Most mid-range and higher SoCs are on even smaller nodes.

It's not JUST the battery power. There are always multiple considerations. Sometimes you can ignore the size, but rarely anyone ignores the price.

[xfcemint]

Apparently, you haven't seen the Power Draw Benchmark from here:
https://medium.com/@ghalfacree/bench...4-73e5afbcd54b
Intel makes a line of desktop-derived SoCs for tablets that burn less power at idle. When they stretch their legs, they easily smoke the Pi, at not much more TDP.

Yes I did. It says:
Power draw at the wall - idle:
RPi2 ----- 1.6 W
RPi3 ----- 2.1 W
RPi3B+ -- 2.8 W
RPi4B ---- 3.3 W

I just thought "well,what unreasonable values". So I did my own quick power measurement:

RPi2 (Cortex A7), Emulation Station running, HDMI monitor plugged in, power draw AT USB POWER CONNECTOR:
RPi2 ----- 1.0 W

I mean, it it unreasonable to compare POWER-AT-WALL because there are so many power adaptors for Pi. Small, cheap power adaptors are usually inefficient. You know that because they heat up when plugged in.

As you can see, my measurement indicates that the Power Draw Benchmark in the mentioned article is misleading. RPi draws much less power than indicated in the article.

[speculatrix]

Everything is great except the MicroHDMI ports

actually, there are times when you might want to run two independent displays on the Pi, just thinking, maybe one is a touch screen control interface for a tv headend client, the other is the display for the streaming video.

but yeah, dual 4K with the ram bandwidth. hmm.

[speculatrix]

Pah, why go online to order and then have to wait, just walk into your local Raspberry Pi shop and buy a bundle. I'm sure there will be Pi outlets alongside Apple stores in every major city shopping mall before long

That's what I did earlier (would have done it Monday but didn't have time). Voila, one Pi4 + card + case + PSU + microHDMI cable and I'm in business.

The nice thing about the shop is that they don't charge a premium for it being a retail outlet. Given it's in Cambridge where shop rents are sky high, and most shops have higher prices than in cheaper locations, that's really good.

I'm just loading up PTS to see what it can do. I don't have a heatsink and fan with me, other people running benchmarks (like CNX) suggest that when you use more than one cores, thermal throttling sets in.