Raspberry Pi's Raspbian OS Finally Spins 64-bit Version

[rclark]

However, let's not forget that the Pi's original mission was to be an affordable development platform. Not a full replacement for a desktop computer, but still usable in standalone fashion. I think it's still lagging, there... even compared to some of its competition.

True, a development platform for educational purposes. I do have a Pi-400 that I hooked up to a monitor and mouse and with it booting off an USB 3.0 SSD. I ran it for a few days just to get a feel for it. I found it quite acceptable for general browsing, watching a youtube video, writing a few documents with LibreOffice, and yes a little programming in 'C' and Python. I don't recall calling up VLC. Not as 'snappy' as my 5900X based desktop system, but for class-room work, I think it would be dandy. A true money saver in the schools for learning. Currently the Pi-400 is tucked away waiting for a use-case around here. I had plans on tearing it down for a project as all the board connectors are on one side ... but haven't got around to it.

[coder]

Even a single core 700 MHz RPi from 2012 supports 1080p H264.

Maybe using its GPU, but my Pentium 4 3.2 GHz would struggle to decode some 1080p H.264 files (probably 24 or 30 fps), even using an optimized decoder from CoreCodec. So, I'm calling BS on the notion that Pi v1 could software decode H.264 at anything remotely close to 1080p/30.

[coder]

I run them all headless.

So did I. I didn't even own a HDMI-capable monitor, when I got my first Pi.

However, let's not forget that the Pi's original mission was to be an affordable development platform. Not a full replacement for a desktop computer, but still usable in standalone fashion. I think it's still lagging, there... even compared to some of its competition.

Photo/video editing? I have powerful desktops available for those applications.

I've actually run GIMP on my ODROID-N2, FWIW. It was entirely usable for my purposes.

[coder]

I, for one, am grateful that the Raspberry Pi Foundation did all this work to get an all-around decent 64-bit OS released whatsoever, even if there are warts. For the price point (granted you can actually get one), the warts are forgivable. IMHO, they go much farther, in this regard, than any other ARM SBC maker. So big is this disparity, to my eye, that I have zero interest in any other ARM SBC maker.

ODROID-N2 supported 64-bit Ubuntu LTS for years. Does that count?

[caligula]

Right, but try handing a Raspberry Pi or a similarly-powered PC to a casual user as a daily driver for browsing/gsuite/YouTube, it's just not enough horsepower. Typical newspaper sites with ads absolutely crush it, and YouTube is a slideshow. None of that is going backwards to cater to last decade's compute requirements, and that's not a 'local bloaty software' kind of problem.

True, but the real issue isn't the video playback. It's the heavy structure of the js/html pages. At least in theory the browser could offload video decoding and rendering to the GPU. But that wouldn't make it usable.

[mangeek]

Even a single core 700 MHz RPi from 2012 supports 1080p H264. I remember watching XvMC MPEG2 in 2002 or so.

Right, but try handing a Raspberry Pi or a similarly-powered PC to a casual user as a daily driver for browsing/gsuite/YouTube, it's just not enough horsepower. Typical newspaper sites with ads absolutely crush it, and YouTube is a slideshow. None of that is going backwards to cater to last decade's compute requirements, and that's not a 'local bloaty software' kind of problem.

I say this as a Pi lover. I use Pis every day for stuff they're good at, but I think we have to stop fantasizing about their potential and blaming 'bloat' for why they're not snappy and fun for day-to-day use. They have the horsepower of a six year-old midrange smartphone, it's two generations behind what would be 'pleasant' for day-to-day use, regardless of software it's running.

[caligula]

Except that's not how things work. A machine with circa-2008 horsepower today can't play full screen streaming video on the web, and takes several seconds to load web pages. It's not just bloaty software, it's an entire ecosystem that's sized for the computing power that's available to it, and it's never going to move backwards. I don't want to go back to blocky 1 megapixel displays, low-strength encryption, buffering MPEG2 video, and browsing that struggled with basic CSS.

Geforce has supported H264 1080p video since 2004 (Geforce GT 6600), IIRC. Even a single core 700 MHz RPi from 2012 supports 1080p H264. I remember watching XvMC MPEG2 in 2002 or so.

[caligula]

The web changed, as have browsers. People forget this, but web apps are much richer and the amount of code compiled and linked into browsers probably rivals that of the host OS.

Indeed some SPA pages download 30 MB of program code. Only 5 binaries in my /bin are larger than that.

[caligula]

Ah. In that case, the piece that's confusing you is "on the original Pi". The Pi4 has no "working" access to the VideoCore block other than through MMAL (32-bit only, "custom" API, requires custom non-mainlined code to work at all), or, potentially / theoretically V4L (currently mostly-broken, poorly implemented, and with several key patches still missing from ffmpeg master).

Ok, makes sense now. I've only used the 32-bit RPis as video players. Nowadays I need 60 Hz 4K, so RPi won't deliver.

[coder]

I am not familiar with the architecture for the pi too much to know if the 64 bit mode offers more CPU registered than 32bit mode. More usable general purpose registers usually help compilers not push/pop registers to stack and can help performance in tight loops. I imagine that emulators and other programs that crunch numbers a lot can benefit if compiled as 64bit in this case so do anyone knows if 64bit mode exposes more general purpose registers?!

According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture

• ARMv7-A has 15 × 32-bit integer registers; optionally, up to 32 × 64-bit registers, SIMD/floating-point
• ARMv8-A has 31 × 64-bit integer registers; guaranteed, 32 × 128-bit registers for scalar 32- and 64-bit FP or SIMD FP or integer; or cryptography

Guaranteed FP & SIMD support is a big point in favor of AArch64. That brings it level with x86-64, which incorporates up to SSE2 (also 128-bit) in the base specification.

ARMv9-A guarantees SVE2, which is one of its more appealing features. Otherwise, it's not nearly as big of a jump as between v7 and v8. SVE2 is a minimum of 128-bit. Fujitsu's HPC processor implemented it at 512-bit, but ARM's HPC-oriented Neoverse V1 implements only 256-bit. Their upcoming Neoverse N2 will implement at only 128-bit.