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

[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/benchmarking-the-raspberry-pi-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/en/ark/products/95441/intel-core-i7-7y75-processor-4m-cache-up-to-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.

[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.

[coder]

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.

How did you measure it, at the USB connector? How do you know your measurement is accurate?

Regardless, for use on battery power, that's still quite a lot. And, presumably, it won't stay at idle 100% of the time.

I'd reiterate that the Raspberry Pi is not a good choice for operation on battery power. Clearly, this was an off-hand remark you didn't consider very carefully.

[speculatrix]

a few to whet your appetite

https://openbenchmarking.org/result/1906271-HV-RPI4NOHEA05

https://openbenchmarking.org/result/1906271-HV-RPI4NOHEA06

https://openbenchmarking.org/result/1906270-HV-RPI4NOHEA16

for some reason, /proc/cpuinfo says the chip is BCM2835

[coder]

actually, there are times when you might want to run two independent displays on the Pi,

In the above-linked Q&A, the Pi's architect said that he very much envisions the Pi as a potential desktop-replacement. He then noted that everyone around their office has at least two monitors connected to their PC. This seems to be the rationale behind 2x HDMI.

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

Hmmm... well, 32 MiB would hold a 4k framebuffer @ 32 bpp. I doubt they have an in-package hunk of DRAM for that, but it wouldn't be unreasonable to do such a thing. Keep in mind that DRAM is much smaller than the SRAM typically used for cache.

[coder]

I'd reiterate that I disagree.

Um, nobody would use a cell phone with such crappy efficiency. For one thing, just think about how hot it would get!

And as for battery life, if we apply the same correction factor to the Pi 4, then you're talking about ~2 W at idle and nearly 5 W at full load.

Assuming the typical battery capacity of a cellphone being something like 10 Wh, that means it'd need to be recharged after < 5 hours of sitting in your pocket. That's well beyond the point when people replace their phone (or at least its battery). And at full load, you get only about 2 hours!

Anybody who's selecting a SBC to use with a battery pack would be much better off with one based on a modern, cellphone or tablet-oriented SoC.

[coder]

You can't imagine any other use cases which are not cell-phone alike?

The point is that the Pi's efficiency is actually quite bad, by modern standards. That there are yet faster SoCs out there that sip power, by comparison, should give you pause, before recommending the Pi for use with battery power.

I think you don't want to admit that you were being a bit mindless.