SBC-Fan
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Posts posted by SBC-Fan
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If only it were that simple. After a lot of searching and clicking I found that the Pine A64 LTS version is a 'Total' 64-bit hardware. It has the CortexA53 64-bit CPU on an ARMv8-A 64-bit chipset or ISA(instruction set architecture).
https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PINE_A64-LTS/SOPine#CPU_Architecture
https://developer.arm.com/ip-products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a53
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AArch64
For some reason SBC(Single Board Computer) manufacturers rarely specify or distinguish between the CPU and the ISA or chipset unlike Desktop manufacturers. To take advantage of 'Total' 64bit processing both Hardware and Software should be in sync. [ CPU, ISA, OS and APP] The evolution from 32bit to 64bit Archtecture has been an incremental one with lot of mix and match stuff as mentioned in the below article:
https://nerdschalk.com/32-bit-and-64-bit-android-phones-list/amp/
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Funny thing is that I purchased the 18650 cell power backup with a USB to DC Jack cable only to realise later that any mobile phone power bank with 5v 2a output is enough.
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Hello
Unfortunately my OrangePi PC which I used for couple of years failed and I'm looking to buy the 64-bit SBC from Pine64.
Funny thing about my OrangePi PC was that there was one and only one old Armbian image version (Armbian-20.05.4-Orangepipc-focal-5.4.45.img) which ran GUI successfully out of the many other Armbian and OrangePi images I tried which helped me run it as a desktop for using Libre office and others. Unfortunately 1GB RAM was too low for Gaming lol. Thanks to the Armbian community for that.
Before buying, I presume the PineA64 LTS version has a 64bit Rambus if not - I don't understand how processing speed will be better on an SBC with 64bit CPU and a 32bit RAMbus. Can anyone please confirm
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Thanks @MacBreaker
exactly what I was looking for. Can you please help me with the connections?I guess the Orange Pi AC adaptor needs to be connected to the device. How and where to connect the DC 4mm connector to the device and how to connect from the device to Pi?
Can you please explain or share your setup?
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Hello folks,
I plan to build a power bank or a ups for my Orange Pi Pc H3. Here is the log dump for more info: http://ix.io/2kMo
I have been using my Pi PC as a full fledged desktop thanks to all you Armbian contributers. We have occassional power outages and to counter the issue I'm planning to build an alternate power source.
After some online search I found that some of the IOT boards support usb power banks as a power supply, hence would like to know if Pi PC H3 supports this feature or can be programmed?
Another option is to use a MoPi board, not sure if Pi PC H3 supports the board.
https://pi.gate.ac.uk/pages/mopi.html
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33 minutes ago, Igor said:
Since people already explained you that memory upgrade is no go ... I can suggest you Orangepi 3 with 2Gb memory or better, some RK3399 with 4Gb. Or some Amlogic with 4Gb. You don't need to tweak the system in any way to squeeze out more. Armbian is not Debian in this sense, we did that for you. It was pushed to the limits of the hardware long time ago.
The positive takeaway from the discussion is that, performance is not only about the RAM, but also the CPU. I still suspect that Chromium browser could be the culprit, but that is another topic.
After some research I found that the newer version(v8) of ARM processors support SMT (Simultaneous multi-thread) processing per core. The version 7 has only single thread processing per core, which could be a cause of freezing Chromium.
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1 hour ago, guidol said:
The OPi PC with H3 can run also H3Droid - which I do use here as Voice/TTS Server
Thank you for letting me know about the H3 Droid OS. Much appreciated.
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41 minutes ago, guidol said:
The Orange Pi PC2 has a H5 CPU (64bit) . also with 1GB of Ram (not 2GB ): http://www.orangepi.org/orangepipc2/
The Orange Pi PC has a H3 CPU (32bit) with 1GB of Ram : http://www.orangepi.org/orangepipc/The OPi PC with H3 can run also H3Droid - which I do use here as Voice/TTS Server
You are correct. My mistake, I meant Orange Pi Plus 2
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56 minutes ago, martinayotte said:
The RAM chip needs an additional address line from the H3 SoC to decide if it is addressing the upper or lower bank of the memory.
If the OPiPC PCB was designed in function to use 1GB, and didn't provided this additional address line to be compatible with 2GB chips, then this line will be left floating on the chip and can even not be limited to the first 1GB bank, but can even give random memory data depending of if the floating line will be treat as LOW or HIGH depending of the EFI, it will return the wrong data.
Now I get it! Thank you for explaining. I reviewed the AllWinner H3 datasheet to find some information about the memory architecture and addressing, but was unable to find any accurate information. I found some generic information here: (Page 28-29)
https://s2.smu.edu/~dhoungninou/CSE-EE-5-7385/slides/week14/memsys.pdf
Is there any website out there where we can check the spare part compatibility for micro-controllers?
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18 minutes ago, Werner said:
Still outdated firmware/software can be an issue and with the provided information this can be sorted out quickly. That is why support requests without these informations are usually discarded.
I have updated the firmware version in my original post:
It is an AllWinner Sun8i family H3 Board
armbian-firmware 20.02.4
ArmbianMonitor dump is here: http://ix.io/2kMo
QuoteConsidering the price point of these boards I am not sure if it is worth the effort even thinking about doing any surgeries on such boards.
I have the tools and time, besides I don't feel like buying a new board now. I can find the spare part online, the only confirmation I need is that it will work.
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18 minutes ago, martinayotte said:
The PCB routing doesn't provide the extra address line to allow upgrading RAM ...
Thank you for your reply. I did read your reply on the other thread, but was unable to understand the logic of extra address lines. My ARM board uses 32 bit addressing, and not sure what is the RAM limit. My logic of upgrading the RAM is to avoid the over utilization, which leads to overheating and locking up. If I use 2 GB RAM instead of 1 GB, would this not allow me to run more applications?
I mean the Orange Pi PC 2 has H3 Board with 2 GB RAM, so I suspect there is not much of a difference between Orange Pi PC and Orange Pi PC 2. If I can purchase the RAM chip of an Orange Pi PC 2 and solder it on to an Orange Pi PC - it should work right?
From an OS standpoint, I have tried increasing the swap, but that has not helped improve the performance.
root@orangepipc:/home/orangepi# swapon -s
Filename Type Size Used Priority
/swapfile file 2097148 312088 -2
/dev/zram1 partition 495296 281412 5
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Quote
Providing armbianmonitor -u is a very good start go get a chance receiving support. It is always handy to know what ou are dealing with, right?
Thank you for the reply. My main query is hardware related as I have noticed that the ARM CPU performance is not great while running multiple applications or content. For example if I open multiple tabs (2-3) on chromium which has different web content such as video and images - the browser just locks up.
When I open Chromium with a blank tab, the CPU usage sometimes goes to 100% which prompted me to ask a question about the bulky browser.
I'm well aware that this is an Armbian discussion forum, hence I browsed to find the right thread to post my hardware query. Not sure why the other poster, Igor, was nitpicking my post. The reason I mentioned OPi community is because there are many Orange Pi users who post on these forums, hence I was trying to gain their attention as Orange Pi doesn't offer much support.
I have installed Armbian Buster, but I'm not aware of any Armbian specific commands, as I mostly use Debian commands. I have used the armbian-config utility, but I was unable to find any other Armbian specific commands in the documentation. I found your commands here: https://docs.armbian.com/Hardware_Allwinner-H3/
QuoteSBCs usually are not meant to be "upgraded" like your intel architecture desktop pc or laptop. And I guess you'd have a tough time replacing it. No idea which ram to use though.
Yes, maybe time for me to buy a new one. The ARM technology is advancing very rapidly and maybe will replace the intel architecture in a few years. Gone will be the days of desktop and laptops running on intel processors. Unfortunately, I bought an ARM with just 1 GB RAM, but I bought this as a replacement for my old laptop which I sold during a crisis.
I did browse the forums before posting and found that one of the users had successfully replaced the RAM chip:
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I have edited my original post.
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Hello
Opi Community,I have an Orange Pi PC with the below HW Specs:
Snippet of lshw output:
description: ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l)
product: Xunlong Orange Pi PC
width: 32 bits
capabilities: smp
4 CPUIssue: Chromium locks up frequently while browsing the internet.
Yes I'm running the ARMBIAN OS (Armbian Buster)
Chromium Version 76.0.3809.100 (Developer Build) built on Debian 10.0, running on Debian 10.1 (32-bit)
Not sure if it is an H2 or H3 board. How do I find it?It is an AllWinner Sun8i family H3 Board
armbian-firmware 20.02.4
ArmbianMonitor dump is here: http://ix.io/2kMo
I would like to know if I can upgrade the RAM from 1 GB to 2GB ? If yes which RAM chip do I purchase?
I have a soldering kit with me to replace the RAM chip.
Bonus Question: Not sure if the issue is with chromium itself, if anyone has experienced this, is there an alternate browser?
Regards,
OPi user
Pine A64 LTS 64bit Architecture
in Beginners
Posted
Marketers make it very complex to understand mixing-up terminologies. I don't blame them since it is the manufacturer who needs to clearly explain each and every technical term.
There are multiple technologies used in a layered structure which makes it very complex. I was not satisfied with my previous answer so I dug in deep to find more about the actual physical layer.
ISA(Information Set Architecture) is once again a logical layout which instructs the data flow on the actual physical board.
Similar to 'chipset' - the actual motherboard with buses and electrical paths - on desktops and laptops in SBCs they are termed as AMBA(Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Microcontroller_Bus_Architecture
"Advanced High-performance Bus (AHB). AHB is a bus protocol introduced in Advanced Microcontroller Bus Architecture version 2 published by ARM Ltd company. In addition to previous release, it has the following features: Large bus-widths (64/128/256/512/1024 bit).'
I suspect the physical inter-connectivity on the PCB has supported 64-bit data transfer since 2003 at the least. AMBA version 5 is the latest with better data speeds.
https://developer.arm.com/architectures/system-architectures/amba/amba-5
Now that we know that AMBA is the standard for interconnectivity and data transfer on the system-board other than the processor.
Armv7, Armv8 etc are the standard for interconnectivity and data processing on the CPU. If you check the comparison table in the below link
https://developer.arm.com/ip-products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a53
The actual physical addressing limit is 40-48 bits for the Armv8 standard.
'Note: In Armv8.0-A, the maximum size for a physical address is 48 bits. This was extended to 52 bits in Armv8.2-A.'
https://developer.arm.com/documentation/101811/0101/Address-spaces-in-AArch64
I don't like the term SoC(System on Chip) instead prefer the logical SBC(Single Board Computer).
SoC is used to differentiate these tiny computers from desktops and laptops since SBC don't have RAM slots or expansion slots and all the components are integrated on a single circuit board but to understand the underlying technology I still prefer a modular approach of differentiating the CPU from the rest of the system.