Linux 4.19 Kernel Benchmarks On The Raspberry Pi

[darkbasic]

RPI was not affected by Meltdown/Spectre, so most of interesting security mitigations for else do nothing for RPi

There are mitigations for ARM as well, but they don't impact as much as on Intel.

[Veto]

My Amlogic S912 TVbox can run latest mainline kernels.

Interesting! Can you give a link or model name to this box? Can you recommend that box in general or would you now buy something else?
(Looking for a dirt cheap box to use for a hotel wifi extender / access point / firewall)

[Dr. Righteous]

Orange pi boards are cheaper and beyond rasperry pi boards. Used laptops cost the same as orange/rasperry pi systems. Android tv boxes can run Debian and they include cases and power units. For embedded development arduino and mbed boards suit better.

Agree; lest everyone forget the goal of the Raspberry Pi foundation was educational; to get kids involved in "making" with the Rasp Pi and all the skilled needed for this.
My son and I have done a couple projects with the Pi and had a ball.

[johanb]

There are mitigations for ARM as well, but they don't impact as much as on Intel.

I might not remember correctly, but wasn't it just the ARM implementations with out-of-order execution which were impacted by Spectre?

Cortex-A8 is in-order while Cortex-A9 and above is out-of-order and with that in mind RPi 3 should need to have Spectre mitigations while RPi 1 and 2 shouldn't?
Someone who knows more than me about this, please correct me because this doesn't make up so I'm obviously misunderstanding something.

EDIT: Found the answer on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectr...bility)#Impact

[oskar-n]

Orange pi boards are cheaper and beyond rasperry pi boards. Used laptops cost the same as orange/rasperry pi systems. Android tv boxes can run Debian and they include cases and power units. For embedded development arduino and mbed boards suit better.

It's all about mainline, community and documentation, the "competitors" are all worse in that aspect.
Working with the kernel on most SoCs is a pain.

[sireangelus]

I might not remember correctly, but wasn't it just the ARM implementations with out-of-order execution which were impacted by Spectre?

Cortex-A8 is in-order while Cortex-A9 and above is out-of-order and with that in mind RPi 3 should need to have Spectre mitigations while RPi 1 and 2 shouldn't?
Someone who knows more than me about this, please correct me because this doesn't make up so I'm obviously misunderstanding something.

EDIT: Found the answer on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectr...bility)#Impact

cortex a53 are in-order.

Honestly what i find strange is that there is still no complete 64 bit support, that would give it quite a boost in performance.

[Mateus Felipe]

But, on a side note, if you're worried about performance, using a raspberry pi board was not the way to go in the first place.

Where I live they are cheaper than other boards that are cheaper when you pay in dollars.

[milkylainen]

I might not remember correctly, but wasn't it just the ARM implementations with out-of-order execution which were impacted by Spectre?

Cortex-A8 is in-order while Cortex-A9 and above is out-of-order and with that in mind RPi 3 should need to have Spectre mitigations while RPi 1 and 2 shouldn't?
Someone who knows more than me about this, please correct me because this doesn't make up so I'm obviously misunderstanding something.

EDIT: Found the answer on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectr...bility)#Impact

The problem with the kernel is that code goes into it without as much as an iota of performance regression testing. So when you have projects like this which need to row their own kernel, you get results like this. They had a stable kernel x and now they need to upgrade to y. Functionality, security, whatever really. So now they're stuck with the massive delta from x->y with no way to unfudge the performance situation.

[milkylainen]

I might not remember correctly, but wasn't it just the ARM implementations with out-of-order execution which were impacted by Spectre?

Cortex-A8 is in-order while Cortex-A9 and above is out-of-order and with that in mind RPi 3 should need to have Spectre mitigations while RPi 1 and 2 shouldn't?
Someone who knows more than me about this, please correct me because this doesn't make up so I'm obviously misunderstanding something.

EDIT: Found the answer on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectr...bility)#Impact

Also, this is a better source.

https://developer.arm.com/support/arm-security-updates/speculative-processor-vulnerability

[caligula]

It's all about mainline, community and documentation, the "competitors" are all worse in that aspect.
Working with the kernel on most SoCs is a pain.

It's funny how RPi is already 7 years old and the competitors still don't have any support.