NicoD

After several months of development, we finally bring desktop development to the daily driver state. Our desktop builds follow KISS philosophy. They are build around proven technology, we are not touching things that are done well. Just fixing things here and there and removing most / hopefully all bloatware that is added upstream. We are preparing a wide selection of desktop variants
 
 
while we will officially only support a few of them but anyone is welcome to join and tweak / support its desktop of choice. We will support you in best possible manner! And this way things starts the voyage to become officially supported one day. Only if you join. We can't take more load.
 
        

We support XFCE since early days and that will remain primary desktop since it represent a best combination between functionality, speed and beauty. Second desktop, which we are adding now is Gnome because its clean and most stable among advanced / bulky desktops. It can ran fairly smooth as low as on Allwinner H5 / 1Gb memory, while it runs very well on some RK3399 hardware. In both cases it uses open source 3D acceleration - Lima and Panfrost. New desktop option will be added gradually, but for now:

Orange pi 4: Budgie, Gnome, Cinnamon, Gnome, Mate
https://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-4/
 
Pinebook PRO: Gnome
https://www.armbian.com/pinebook-pro/
 
Nanopi T4: Budgie, Gnome, Cinnamon, Gnome, Mate
https://www.armbian.com/nanopc-t4/
 
Nanopi M4V2: Budgie, Gnome, Cinnamon, Gnome, Mate
https://www.armbian.com/nanopi-m4-v2/
 
What about others?

- ASAP. Those are semi manual builds, some are manually tested and it takes a lot of time. On top of that we are having some infrastructure troubles ATM ...
- we still need to fix few minor bugs, before we put on stamp as "supported" even those builds are IMO generally in a better shape then other images on the market
- you can help by testing and enabling specific builds by sending a PR to this file. https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/master/config/targets.conf It will help to get things up faster.

Today I had the pleasure of benchmarking an ARM64 server.
This server has been made available for Armbian to test native ARM64 image building.
I knew nothing about the server. Nobody told me any details.
So everything was an adventure for me to find out. I got SSH access, so my research began.

A lscpu informed me it had 32-cores all clocked at 3.3Ghz. 
 
cat /proc/cpuinfo confirmed these 32-cores
 
Checking on what kernel we're on. Ubuntu Focal 5.4.0-52-generic. 
And how much memory. 128GB RAM.

So first thing I wanted to know, how does one core perform with 7-zip benchmark?
The record I had seen until now was from the A73 cores from the Odroid N2+ clocked at 2.4Ghz. 2504MIPS decompression.
So :
taskset -c 31 7z b
 
This beats the Odroid N2+ its A73 cores clocked at 2.4Ghz. 2763 vs 2504MIPS decompression. 
This also tells me these cores do not perform as good per clock as a high performance core. 
While doing the single core benchmark I checked the sensors to know the wattage and temperature.
 
CPU power is about 20W for a single core tasks. 
Without a load the CPU consumes between 10W-15W. So in total it consumes a bit more than 20W in idle.
Temperature never went under 49C even after +5 minutes in idle. 
 
Of course, the next thing to do is an all-core 7zip benchmark. 
This gives an amazing result. Way higher than anything I had ever seen on ARM.
 
85975MIPS decompression. This is amazing.
Best I had seen was 11000MIPS of the Odroid N2+. So this server does 8 x better than the N2+. 
Tho, I must say. 7zip does bad with unequal clusers. The N2+ has a great difference in cluster frequencies. So it performs worse then expected here. 

The wattage went a lot higher, up to 110W. And the temperature rose quickly up to 75C in seconds.
 
To test the internet connection I downloaded an Armbian image multiple times. Sometimes it was as low as 3MB/s. 
Highest average speed I've seen was 12.5MB/s
 
Next test. BMW Blender render benchmark. 
Here the fastest I had ever seen was by the Khadas VIM3. That did it in 42m51s.
I haven't done this yet with the N2+ in Armbian. In Odroid's Ubuntu it was a little slower. I expect it to be a little faster than the VIM3 in Armbian Bionic. 
This is a tile based test. So every core gets its own task, until all tiles are done. 

Well, this ARM64 server did this in 8m27s. 
5 x faster compared to the Khadas VIM3. 

For this the wattage didn't go over 85W. But the temperature did rise to 83C. So it started to throttle. 

@lanefu already had done SBC-Bench on it when it was free. So this I didn't have to do myself.
http://ix.io/2Dcc
Here we see a lot. For example the CPUMiner did : 81.0kH/s 
The Odroid N2+                                                         : 14 kH/s         5.7 x less 
RK3399 does a maximum of                                     : 10.23kH/s     8 x less
Odroid C2 clocked at 1.75Ghz                                   : 4.65kH/s       17 x less

So this server clearly can move a lot of bits around. 
Now, what is this server? Ask google if nobody else tells me. "32 core ARM server 3.3Ghz"
First answer : https://www.theregister.com/2018/09/18/ampere_shipping/
That looks like it is this CPU. But still I can't find the exact name. 
2nd answer : https://www.servethehome.com/ampere-32-core-64-bit-arm-chip-x-gene-3-ip/
So this is the Ampere 32-core 64-bit from X-Gene 3 IP.

Here the wikichip : https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/apm/x-gene/apm883832-x3?fbclid=IwAR0ljCQ61DY8Zwh_VyZd0fQH43dmPUTJA-CGLiQKYqU2fWwszFm1CPjH6Zo

This supports up to 1TB RAM. 8 channels @ 2666Mhz. With a maximum memory bandwidth of 158.95 GiB/s.
42 lanes of PCIe Gen 3, with 8 controllers
– x16 or two x8/x4
– x16 or two x8/x4
– x8 or two x4
– Two x1

4 x SATA Gen 3 ports, 2 x USB2. And a TDP of 125W TDP.

For me this is just an awesome thing to behold. I use ARM for almost everything.
The NanoPi M4V2 is my main desktop computer.
It isn't as powerful as my PC, but does the task for 10 x less power consumption, while being completely silent.

But when I need a big CPU, it isn't enough.
Even the more powerful Odroid N2+ isn't powerful enough to render long, +20minutes 1440p video's for example for my Youtube channel.
So then i need to use my x86/amd64 PC. 

Today I have seen and tasted the future. 
While this doesn't use the most modern Cortex/clusters. And it is only 16nm.
So there is still a lot of room for improvements in performance and lower power consumption. 

ARM for desktop is possible, and ARM servers for big datacenters is possible(AWS). I have seen the future, I loved every second of it. 

Here benchmarks compared to my SBCs

 

Greetings, NicoD

Here's the video.
Thank you @balbes150 for the images and @JMCCfor the media script.
Now I can start with something else

I'll add your use case (sd + nvme) to install, but you  have to check it yourself. 

@balbes150I'll check the new image tonight. 
I finally have filmed everything I need for the video. I had a lot of issue's with capture devices not working properly and always had to redo it. 
So I installed it 4 times. And every time it didn't boot from NVMe, but instead from sd-card. Changing extlinux with the correct uuid from NVMe works. 
I did choose the correct way, you'll see it in the video. Tomorrow I should have it finished. It'll be a long one. Review and installation all in one...

@NicoD You can check out this image 20210228-legacy ?
 
https://disk.yandex.ru/d/h_pMzFbuFXseOA?w=1
 
I added a patch from 
 
https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/2650#issuecomment-787198231
 
to it to improve 4K.
 
Pay attention.
Before installing the media script or updating the system , freeze the kernel update, otherwise you will get the old kernel from the network repositories (this is not the correct kernel with errors).
 
p. s. the image is already fixed DTB to reload.

fix
https://disk.yandex.ru/d/nA1iIKNCuZJxRw?w=1
 

Reboot doesn't seem to be working. It either shuts down, or stays on without doing anything. 
Otherwise it all looks ok. I do have a problem with kazam when the media script is installed. I've had that too on M4V2 with media script in Buster, so it's not the image.
I'm filming everything to make the video. I'll not use Android to write the image, I'll link to the video of @gounthar instead. He clearly has more Android knowledge, and way more patience. 

Version 20210226. Fixed NVMe and added a separate DTB for roc-rk3399-pc (works with Renegade Elite) with Legacy kernel. After testing for several weeks u-boot-2021.01 on different rk3399, the transition to u-boot-2021.01 was made
 
I remind you that the configuration of DTB and other startup parameters is now performed in the file /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf

For power management install :
 
sudo apt install xfce4-power-manager  

It works. OMG I'm so happy. You did an amazing work. 
 
Graphics Feature Status Canvas: Hardware accelerated Compositing: Hardware accelerated Multiple Raster Threads: Force enabled Out-of-process Rasterization: Disabled OpenGL: Enabled Hardware Protected Video Decode: Hardware accelerated Rasterization: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Skia Renderer: Enabled Video Decode: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Vulkan: Disabled WebGL: Hardware accelerated WebGL2: Hardware accelerated And ... 
/dev/nvme0n1p1 ext4 458G 70M 435G 1% /media/nicod/3acb3cd1-680c-455f-ab36-36f424ce5302  
I'm stoked. I've got a bad habit of staying at a project until it's done. I should have done other things the last month, but every day I kept trying with the P1.
I'll finally be able to finish it and start with another board. And I'll be able to use the P1 as my main machine. And my M4V2 for gaming. Thank you.
 
I'll wait for that. I don't mind waiting a bit longer.

It works. OMG I'm so happy. You did an amazing work. 
 
Graphics Feature Status Canvas: Hardware accelerated Compositing: Hardware accelerated Multiple Raster Threads: Force enabled Out-of-process Rasterization: Disabled OpenGL: Enabled Hardware Protected Video Decode: Hardware accelerated Rasterization: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Skia Renderer: Enabled Video Decode: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Vulkan: Disabled WebGL: Hardware accelerated WebGL2: Hardware accelerated And ... 
/dev/nvme0n1p1 ext4 458G 70M 435G 1% /media/nicod/3acb3cd1-680c-455f-ab36-36f424ce5302  
I'm stoked. I've got a bad habit of staying at a project until it's done. I should have done other things the last month, but every day I kept trying with the P1.
I'll finally be able to finish it and start with another board. And I'll be able to use the P1 as my main machine. And my M4V2 for gaming. Thank you.
 
I'll wait for that. I don't mind waiting a bit longer.

In a few hours, I plan to update the images on the site, including with a new version of Buster (which will all have the patched DTB enabled by default).

Fix
https://disk.yandex.ru/d/q93YskG2DU9Reg?w=1

I did it. Somehow.

Seems to work fine on the M4.
 
Linux nanopim4 4.4.213-rk3399 #6 SMP Thu Feb 18 19:25:55 CET 2021 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux  

Now I checked on P1 without NVMe), with the "plus" file-video and sound are accelerated by 2 times, with the non-plus file, video and sound are normal. (DTB files from the site).
NVMe operation has not been verified.

Definitely, according to the picture, something went wrong. Can you do the installation again from scratch, and this time copy-paste the installation output? And also "armbianmonitor -u".

I've just installed the media script on the Station P1. Video playback is 2x speed. Either in Youtube with Chromium, or with MPV and a normal video file.
Everything sounds like the chipmunks.
I also think not everything went correct with the chromium settings. 

Problems are haunting me on the StationP1.  I've been trying for a month to make a video about it and never was able to have everything working. When not filming it often worked. But when filming... Quantum mechanics are against me.

Maybe it is possible to perform a simple recording of what is happening on the monitor on a regular video camera or take photos of your favorite moments ?

I don't use android, after version 4 (after googl messed it up and turned it into shit).
 
I totally agree

I found the marking of the sound chip - this is es8388

I don't have a good camera. I did take some pictures of the top, not from the bottom. I did film the replacing of the thermal pad, but it isn't sharp enough to see anything. I'd need to disassemble the whole thing to be able to see the bottom. 

There are some pictures of it here. https://download.t-firefly.com/产品规格文档/开源主板/ROC-RK3399-PC Plus - Specification.pdf?


I'm using a normal 1080p pc display. No tv. I'll try again. I also tried the focal mainline from your folder and it also didn't boot. Also stuck at those stripes. I didn't know USB boot worked. I'll try that too. 

@NicoD  I uploaded new Legacy images 20210204 to the site with support for WiFi NVMe and analog audio for the P1.

Here my Linux review of the Odroid N2+.
It has a beastly CPU, but is lacking in I/O.
Here's my video.
 
 
Ubuntu 18.04 - No autofill in terminal. sudo apt install bash-completion Can't change keyboard layout to Belgian 5Ghz wifi adapters not working/No kernel headers to install + Good video playback with Firefox in 1440p res. up to 1440p video. But no VPU acceleration. Light screen tearing. sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade sudo apt autoremove sudo apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils #for Ubuntu 18.04 sudo apt install bash-completion zram-config geany sudo geany /media/boot/config.ini #set cpu frequency and display resolution XFCE ArchLinux - Display resolution can't be set, not in OS or config.ini No on-board sound. USB audio adapter works Temperatures / Hottest day of the year ------------ Idle OC 43°C Max OC 77°C Heavy throttle at 75°C after 10 minutes from idle Idle default 40°C Max default 73°C Power consumption ----------------- N2 -- - IDLE : ≃ 1.9W (Performance governor) - CPU Stress : ≃ 5.5W - Power-off : ≃ 0.2W N2+ --- - IDLE : ≃ 2.2W (Performance governor) - CPU Stress : ≃ 5.9W (@2016/2208MHz), 6.2W (@2016/2400MHz) - Power-off : ≃ 0.2W SD card reader / sandisk extreme 128GB -------------- 77.8 MB/s read 28.3 MB/s write 0.51 msec access time USB3 with NVMe to USB3 ---------------------- 318.9 MB/s read 215.5 MB/s write The same NVMe on the M4V2 389 MB/s read 392.7 MB/s write eMMC 32GB read 166.1 MB/s - No on-board wifi. Interference with USB3 and 2.4Ghz wifi dongles. Better to use the OTG port for these. Can't change display resolution in OS Throttling at OC clocks + Most powerful ARM CPU in -100$ SBC. Very low consumption.