The Strive for a more Powerful Raspberry Pi

[firrae]

Hello all,

 

After reading the Pine forums and having @tkaiser point out a few things I overlooked and/or missed I figured this might be a good place to ask a question that I've been trying to find the answer to. Please note that I'm not much of a hardware guy, I know the basics, enough to be dangerous. I am primarily a web applications developer and I use Raspberry Pis currently as testbeds for my server code. How do I accomplish this? Well I have (currently) a 7 Pi docker swarm based on hypriot's swarm image (I think it's a really cool package).

 

Now for my question: I've been fine on CPU usage with only a few spikes, usually from an issue in the code I've written, but my main limitation is memory. I usually set up a large swap file, but it's not nearly as performant as I would like. I'd also like to eventually need to run fewer boards, I know time can fix that as everything gets better, but I'm looking for a Pi 2 replacement to begin building out hopefully needing less boards as I play with things.

 

Any ideas or suggestions as to what boards would be worthwhile to look at are appreciated, even if they are early.

[tkaiser]

Are you really running out of memory? Do you use RPi-Monitor for example to get a clue what happens during your load pikes?

 

I've seen many bad OS distros that run for example irqbalanced that does nothing else than eating up all your RAM (60 MB per day) until the machine swaps to death. And swapping on RPi is always bad since the SoC has only one single USB 2.0 connection to the outside. I would check that first since I find it a bit hard to believe you really need 2 GB RAM for your workload.

 

BTW: http://blog.hypriot.com/post/family_arm_hardware_for_docker_more_children/

[firrae]

A majority of my development is in Node, Java, Ruby, and eventually ASP.net 3. I haven't run RPi-Monitor but I'll be installing it as soon as I have time (the next few days are busy for me) so maybe I can find the choking point. The underlying OS to my knowledge of the hypriot image is Raspbian, and to my current knowledge that isn't the most optimized, so then you put Docker on top of it and I can only assume it's not the best.

 

Your link is one I missed, and it is interesting. I think the CPU is fine, my error logs state that the containers are running out of memory so hopefully I can see see what up a bit better with RPi-Monitor. Even with that said though, I am interested in more powerful SoC's that are available or are soon to be available. The Banana M3 interested me, but your write up on it has me holding off on it, the Pine seemed promising but it too is down the same hole. I'm now looking at the Cubietruck and the ODROID-XU4 as possibilities.

[tkaiser]

The ODROID-XU4 is interesting and I would love to get access to any device using Marvell's 33DE3218 (also just slow Cortex-A53 but featuring both SATA and PCIe)

 

And if anyone would produce a useable board based on the Kirin 950 this would also be nice (that one being really fast due to Cortex-A72). But I fear missing Linux support would be the showstopper anyway...

[firrae]

I love working with these boards because they're generally pretty quiet and low power consumption, but hopefully we can start seeing some of the more powerful chips being used. What do you think the timeline is on the Banana Pi M3 being usable and/or supported by armbian? That seems like something neat with the Exnyos processor. Also do you see armbian supporting the XU4 (or is there something like armbian/raspbian for it already), or would you just use ARM Ubuntu/Debian?

 

Also I know this isn't ARM related but did you see the LattePanda? It's based on an Intel processor but doesn't seem too much bigger than a Pi.

[firrae]

I seem to have answered one of my questions, the UX4 has eMMC modules that have XUbuntu pre-installed, alternatively there's an Android version as well.

[tkaiser]

Armbian support for Banana Pi M3? Most likely never since no one loves this SoC except of Nora Lee and Lion Wang. Since I offered to donate the board I've been asked by Hans de Goede to send my M3 to him so they could at least finish the 1st steps of mainline u-boot support (the A83T dev boards from Allwinner seem to be too unrealiable to work with). If I send it, maybe sometimes mainline kernel/u-boot will be ready (but I still doubt that) but no one will finish Armbian support. Since the M3's vendors are liars (Lion Wang claiming the M3 booted kernel 4.1 which is simply impossible given the state of support in u-boot alone) that only want to cash in on the original Banana Pi's popularity with new crappy boards every half year the best signal to send out regarding Banana Pi M3 is: Don't buy it, it will never work as intended due to crappy software/support.

Regarding LattePanda: No way to choose this device due to the crappy micro USB DC-IN connector, see the comments: http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/12/02/lattepanda-is-a-79-arduino-compatible-intel-atom-x5-board-running-windows-10-crowdfunding/#comment-507273

 

Then regarding those "Trail" x86 SoCs in general: You should read here through the comments: https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/is-it-time-for-open-source-hardware-x86-olinuxino/(reading Olimex' blog is always a good idea because they share their knowledge, pick up good ideas from their community and a lot of knowledgeable people contribute in the comments)

[firrae]

Fair enough, I might buy a ODROID-XU4 to play with instead of a BPi. It's sad to see chip makers making it hard to do cool things with their hardware, and then groups doing as you said.

 

As for the LattePanda, I get your points. Personally I don't foresee me using many USB devices on it (or any really) so I think I'll keep my KS backing of it even though as a new toy and in the hope it shows there's interest in the idea of x86 in a form factor like RPi. We'll see about it, if anything it'll be a neat toy to add.

 

Is there a device on the armbian list that is technically more powerful than the RPi? Also is there anything that is better than a cash donation to armbian? I'd like to give back in some way for the help, and I'm sadly not that great with the low level of Linux or ARM.

[tkaiser]

Is there a device on the armbian list that is technically more powerful than the RPi?

 

Might apply to the quad-core i.MX6 devices, especially the Hummingboard with lots of RAM and mSATA SSD (at a price where I would already consider setting up an ESXi whitebox on x86 to virtualize everything )

 

The i.MX6 has its own drawbacks too (Ethernet speed limitation ~400 Mbits/sec and SATA 90-100 MB/s -- but if your application is somewhat network or I/O bound then it will outperm any RPi 2 easily). 

 

If you're ready for an adventure I would get a cheap TV box based on Amlogic's S905 and DIY Linux: http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/12/06/how-to-run-headless-linux-on-amlogic-s905-devices-such-as-mini-mx-or-k1-plus/

 

The S905 is also Cortex-A53 but can be clocked higher than A64 and they ship with more recent u-boot/kernel (but I doubt we will ever see mainline kernel on the S905, something that might happen with the A64 next year)

[zador.blood.stained]

Just a note, name Odroid XU4 sounded familiar to me, and I remembered that I saw some notes about it in comments in an article I linked here.

Since it's in Russian, TL;DR translation:

Pros (compared to cubietruck and RPi2):

• Small form factor
• Better performance (subjective)
• USB3.0
• GBit network faster than on cubie
• Barrel plug DC in (compared to RPi I guess)

Cons:

• 2.0mm GPIO headers with plastic "walls" surrounding them
• GPIO TTL voltage 1.8v, hard to find compatible periphery
• Very loud stock cooler, but speed can be lowered in software/by script
• With stock cooler throttling starts after 2-3 minutes with 2 cores loaded by cpuburn, temperature readings - 97°C
• With non-stock coolers (one with heat pipes and another without) throttling after 6-8 minutes with 4 cores
• Feels like SoC "body" plastic material has poor thermal conductivity (note from me - and/or internal temperature sensor readings are not accurate)
• "Normal" for these devices software/kernel support problems

After all experiments and putting stock cooler back board died after ~1 hour, shorted power somewhere

[tkaiser]

4 small ODROID additions: For headless operation the XU4 can run already with mainline kernel and USB3 performance might even be better but up to now no one tried it out (UASP): http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=97&t=17349

 

And Hardkernel sells a 'shifter shield' to compensate for 1.8V GPIO levels: http://www.mikronauts.com/hardkernel/hardkernel-odroid-xu4-shifter-shield-review/

 

The ODROID-C1+ might also be an alternative, no Armbian support now, but Hardkernel maintains a clean 3.10.y LTS kernel tree and the S805 used there is so far the fastest passively cooled quad-core SoC I personally tested (since Actions Semi's S500 isn't able to run at the advertised 1.3 GHz over longer time without a fan)

[firrae]

Might apply to the quad-core i.MX6 devices, especially the Hummingboard with lots of RAM and mSATA SSD (at a price where I would already consider setting up an ESXi whitebox on x86 to virtualize everything )

 

The i.MX6 has its own drawbacks too (Ethernet speed limitation ~400 Mbits/sec and SATA 90-100 MB/s -- but if your application is somewhat network or I/O bound then it will outperm any RPi 2 easily). 

 

If you're ready for an adventure I would get a cheap TV box based on Amlogic's S905 and DIY Linux: http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/12/06/how-to-run-headless-linux-on-amlogic-s905-devices-such-as-mini-mx-or-k1-plus/

 

The S905 is also Cortex-A53 but can be clocked higher than A64 and they ship with more recent u-boot/kernel (but I doubt we will ever see mainline kernel on the S905, something that might happen with the A64 next year)

I had been trying to stay away from building a full on server because I know if I do I'll go overboard and spend way to much lol. As for the hummingboard it's not out of the realm of my price range, maybe not this month, but certainly something to look at in the new year.

 

My stuff would be network dependant a bit, Docker communicates with all the Pis almost constantly and then the normal network traffic to and from them. I've never really gotten a good gauge for if there was ever a real issue at 100Mbps, but it hasn't been noticeable yet. I've tried to minimize all external factors by buying decent network gear and cables so up to Gb wouldn't be hard for my hardware to handle.

 

I might take a look at the DIY you posted though, might be a fun project to do with the local college's social gatherings, I can probably persuade them to buy some of those boxes in the name of "learning."

[firrae]

To add on, I also think ARM is a good look as to where we are headed in the future when it comes to servers. It's also somewhat fun to play with them.