Hi, On 2021-06-05 4:50 a.m., Christoph Biedl wrote: > Marc Haber wrote... > >> I'd still consider the Raspberry Pi. It's unfortunate that the binary >> non-free blob is already needed to boot the box even if one doesn't >> need/use the GPU after booting, but it is reasonably common that >> people care about their software on the platform, and it's also >> affordable and has versions with enough RAM available. > > Another point here: Since so many people use it, there's a good chance > even seldom-occurring hardware flaws will be found and eventually worked > around. An effect we saw some two decades ago with the cheap-but- > horrible rtl8139 network adapters. > > For me, the biggest downside of the RPi4 is the need for an extra power > plug as they take up to three amps - while for example a BananaPi can be > powered using some unused USB (<= 3.0) port. > >> Many of the options pointed out by Siji Sunny are a decade old and >> therfore do not fill your with for a "modern" platform. I am currently >> in the process of fading out the Banana Pis because the platform has >> never really taken off and a dual core 32 bit CPU with 1 GB RAM is >> running out of fun these days. > > Depends on the planned use and the budget. I am slowly fading out the > DockStars who are really ten years old now - but mostly due to the > memory limit (128 Mbyte) and the architecture (armel) where I can expect > Debian will end support in a not-too-distant future. Otherwise they can > route 16 MBit without any problem. > > For CPU-hungry tasks (package building) I've switched from a CubieTruck > to an RPi4 a few months ago and the performance boost was mindblowing. > (Aside, has anybody noticed aptitude from jessie and buster in an armel > chroot dies with SIGILL sometimes when running on the arm64 CPU of an > RPI4?) > > So you if (OP) are basically want to build a console server - which is > how I read you question - almost any board will do it. With the year > 2038 in mind (no kidding, this will arrive faster than you think), I'd > advise against armel and the pseudo-armhf used in the first two (or > three) RPi generations. For arm64 will can expect to have support after > that date, for armhf there's at least hope. > We could call this a console server with only one console. I want to build a board so we can offload some math calculation used in chemistry onto a RISC CPU. This is also to demonstrate the speed of ARM vs CISC (AMD/Intel x86_64).
For sure the 64bit CPUs are much more interesting. This is only a starting project so I'm far from having made all the decision. I only wanted to make the precision that I don't need the GPU and HDMI output as this may open some more possibility. Yes, a serial port based console is still needed, both for debugging, interactive booting if needed and because it's somewhat a pain to debug when you have absolutely no output before network is ready. I know that there's some project of creating a opensource version of the Raspberry Pi video core chipset. Maybe this will give me a push to think about the Pi. But there's also the lower power requirement of some other solution that interest me. I saw a board on AliExpress that offer some AllWonder A33 with 1 or 2Gb RAM for a really good price. For what I'll be doing, I could use such board and pack them 4 together as this give added power that you don't get by just using a board with more core. Two system with 4 core is better than one system with 8 core, at least if you only do pure maths. I'm still learning much on ARM now. It's kind of funny... When I started into computing all the common home PC and standard office PC used Intel x86 processor or Motorola 68k. The expensive workstation run on RISC CPU like IBM RS/6000, SGI Indigo, Sun SparcStation, HP Apollo, etc... And then Apple, IBM and Motorola created the PowerPC. So Apple created it's PowerMac computer line. And IBM created workstation based on the Power chipset (RS/6000 derivative today still called Power, now something like Power6 probably). Time passed by and Apple went to Intel because they didn't invest much into the future development of PowerPC based chipset. Now that Intel didn't do much in development, but only pushed more transistor on silicon, they are somewhat in a rabbit hole. They used all their trick they had from the past, massive parallel, hyperthreading, using cache, etc. And Risc (Acorn Risc Machine) - ARM is now getting back to the front. Has a better energy efficiency and does more instruction in less cycle. Now it does also scale better. So it's like a wheel... It will take much stuff for me to be impressed with computer now... All has been done and seen. Except maybe the Quantum computer... Like the one made by D-Wave system... we are back with mainframe computer that require at least a rack and water cooling. We never got rid of those but now we are back to a solution where the's no choice other than using cryogenic cooling. And if a real bug get into a quantum computer, at least it will freeze before making short circuits. > Christoph > -- Polyna-Maude R.-Summerside -Be smart, Be wise, Support opensource development
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