[HN Gopher] Pine64 Unveils Quartz64 SBC
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Pine64 Unveils Quartz64 SBC
Author : stambros
Score : 110 points
Date : 2021-02-16 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnx-software.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnx-software.com)
| api wrote:
| There's quite a few third party boards that are far better than
| the Raspberry Pi 4. I found the Rpi4 quite disappointing,
| especially the half-supported GPU and the lack of AES/crypto
| extensions in the ARM64 chip. Only ARM64 chip I've ever seen that
| lacks those.
| ilikeorangutans wrote:
| What boards would you consider "better" and for what reasons
| (gpu and crypto extensions, or are there other factors)? I run
| a few raspberry pis and always looking for new/better toys.
| thebrid wrote:
| The Raspberry Pi optimises more for lower cost. For not that
| much more you can get something like the Odroid N2+ which has
| 6 cores total, 4 Cortex A73 cores @ 2.4 GHz for performance
| and 2 A55 cores @ 2 GHz for efficiency.
|
| https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-n2-with-4gbyte-ram-2/
| CameronNemo wrote:
| I like rk3399 boards, unless you need deep suspend or video
| out through the USB type c port.
| rcoder wrote:
| RK3399s make great bang-for-the-buck boards, but the idle
| power consumption is pretty high. I've been kicking around
| one of the Khadas VIM3s which has a newer Amlogic SoC on it
| and like what I've seen so far. It's a significantly more
| expensive board, though
|
| There are plenty of things that an RK3399 (or the new
| Rockchip being used in the OP) can handle just fine.
|
| I was definitely interested to see that this new chip
| supports up to 8GB of RAM. I think there are a lot of
| interesting applications for RAM-rich, Gig-E bearing nodes
| that can run off a battery. (Examples: Redis at the edge,
| "Field" PostgreSQL replicated to the cloud when possible,
| nested VMs protecting trusted "firmware" from remotely-
| loaded containers and machine images, etc.)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I'm unaware of ARM SBCs that have as much support from their
| vendors as the Raspberry Pi models do, though.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The target market for the Raspberry Pi foundation is education.
| They get cheap boards into the hands of people everywhere and
| provide plenty of documentation to get them started.
|
| Raspberry Pi has the biggest community, and therefore it's the
| best choice for anyone looking to get started.
|
| If you're the type of person who needs very specific features
| like AES acceleration, then you don't want to invest in a board
| aimed at education markets anyway.
|
| The Raspberry Pi 4 is actually very performant due to the
| Cortex-A72 cores, which are not common on other SBCs at low
| price points. It's actually an incredible performance value in
| the space, even if it doesn't fit everyone's exact situational
| requirements.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Cortex-M4s have an optional AES core and hardware RNG. Pretty
| sad for a higher grade chip to be missing that. It doesn't
| consume much die space.
| Funes- wrote:
| In my opinion, Raspberry Pi's main problem has to do with
| using SD cards, which are prone to errors and corruption.
| It's a kind of media storage that works best if it operates
| more statically--for instance, you read some photos on your
| camera, remove a few, take some new ones... and that's it for
| the day. They are not intended to undergo a large number of
| read/write cycles on a regular basis, and that's what the
| Raspberry Pi makes them do, using them to run its OS.
| chabes wrote:
| Pi 4s can boot from USB now, as of the Sept 2020 bootloader
| update. No need for microSD.
| Funes- wrote:
| No, not only Raspberry Pi 4's. I've had this on my
| bookmarks for a while, which explains how to boot any Pi
| (some models differ with regards to the procedure, or the
| need of an SD card, such as the Raspberry Pi Zero, which
| still needs one): https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati
| on/hardware/raspberry...
| stambros wrote:
| Lost 2 SD cards that way. It's a relic that should be
| phased out in favor of NVME or SATA.
| CameronNemo wrote:
| What SD cards did you use?
|
| I have seen high endurance ones available.
| tpmx wrote:
| These have never failed me:
|
| https://www.digikey.com/en/product-
| highlight/a/atp/advancedm...
|
| I even set up a testing rig to do randomized power shut
| down thousands of times; they didn't fail:
|
| https://forums.balena.io/t/raspberry-pi-atp-amlc-microsd-
| car...
|
| Found these via this 2018 HN comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16777238
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| The problem of reliance on an SD card is somewhat less
| nowadays with the Raspberry Pi 4. Its faster USB3 support
| allows you to just use the SD card for the /boot partition
| to boot the system, while you can maintain everything else
| (root, userspace) on an attached USB drive that can handle
| heavy reading and writing.
| chabes wrote:
| You can boot entirely from USB on the Pi 4s now. Don't
| even need the microSD for the boot partition.
| fn1 wrote:
| Booting from USB was possible for the RPI3 as well.
| fl0under wrote:
| You can use log2ram [0] to reduce the number of writes to
| the SD card. That's what I'm doing at the moment and
| haven't had any problems with my SD card, though it has
| been in use for less than 6 months so far. I agree though
| that a SD card is not the best storage option for the OS
| and would like to move mine over to an nvme drive.
|
| [0] https://github.com/azlux/log2ram
| tpmx wrote:
| > The target market for the Raspberry Pi foundation is
| education.
|
| I'd bet 80% of the sales are to hobbyists/companies.
|
| It's a weird setup. Have a look at this page:
| https://www.raspberrypi.org/about/meet-the-team/
|
| There are two groups of people:
|
| * Raspberry Pi Foundation (100+)
|
| * Raspberry Pi Trading (27)
|
| My understanding: The people in "Raspberry Pi Trading" do the
| hardware/software/documentation/product management/sales
| work, plus publish the monthly MagPi magazine. That's
| remarkably few people for this, btw. The profit of this
| operation goes to support the foundation, per the wikipedia
| page. There sure _seems_ to be a lot of fluff there.
|
| I think it would be wise to change that balance (100+ vs 27
| full times) a little bit more in advantage of Raspberry Pi
| Trading part.
| worik wrote:
| An interesting thing about that "meet the teem" page is the
| diversity.
|
| Most Linuxish projects are a pale sausage fest!
| tpmx wrote:
| I guess that's why they put the Raspberry Pi Foundation
| people first, then.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I'd bet 80% of the sales are to hobbyists/companies.
|
| Hobbyists are part of the educational target. Raspberry Pi
| has introduced more people to embedded Linux than any other
| project.
|
| We didn't always live in an era of cheap SBCs. Before
| Raspberry Pi, the barriers to entry were much higher and
| much more expensive.
|
| As much as people like to criticize the Pi for not having
| every possible feature or not being completely open source
| at every level, it doesn't actually matter for 99% of
| projects. It gets the job done cheaply, quickly, and with a
| huge support community behind it.
|
| The Raspberry Pi CM4 is now available for anyone who needs
| more granular access to IO or extra features like eMMC.
| tpmx wrote:
| It seems like you didn't reply to I wrote, but rather to
| what you imagined I could have written. Or you're just
| pontificating in general.
| asabjorn wrote:
| What is your favorite alternative?
| cdumler wrote:
| The issue has never been that the Raspberry PI hardware is
| amazing or fully utilized. The issue is that is that what is
| supported is supported well in software. You can put Raspian on
| it and expect consistent behavior in software, drivers, video,
| audio, etc. It will all just work in typical ways.
| [deleted]
| StillBored wrote:
| While this board has a nice selection of features, its likely
| the pi4 is faster in any number of workloads due to the use of
| the A72s. A55's are still in the small/energy efficient
| category (the article notes they are slower than the existing
| rk3399). Which is fine if your doing traditional micro-
| controller functions. But the problem with these boards is they
| end up being application specific rather than general purpose
| boards. For example they have hardware video decoders/etc but
| as soon as the user tries to decode something that doesn't have
| hardware support it falls back to the CPU, and turns into a
| slideshow.
|
| Now if this were the rx3588 with the A76s it would be a
| different story.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| How does the onboard battery charging IC work? Can I hook up a 3s
| li-ion battery and charge it via the 12v power input? Does the
| battery kick on if the main PSU is interrupted?
| timemachine wrote:
| This feature caught my attention too; can't wait till I can get
| my hands on a unit for testing.
| qchris wrote:
| I think that this could be an underlooked, but absolutely
| killer feature for this board. Built-in support for high-
| capacity li-ion batteries that automatically kick-in for a
| battery backup would be awesome for homemade NAS set-ups, not
| to mention a whole host of robotics-y or home automation
| projects.
| ac29 wrote:
| I dont see how a battery attached to the board would do much
| good for powering your drives in a NAS situation - they'd
| still need their own UPS.
| amelius wrote:
| Yeah, but you'll have to power your modem too.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| These work really well for that task. Can power a cable
| modem and a small edgerouter-x using a y-cable.
|
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/Belkin-Residential-Gateway-
| Battery-...
| MayeulC wrote:
| I imagine you would need to communicate the battery topology
| (voltages, currents) to the power management IC (PMIC).
| Probably via a devicetree, or possibly a devicetree overlay?
|
| Devicetrees are used to list hardware peripherals, and instruct
| the kernel load the appropriate drivers with the appropriate
| parameters (I2C addresses, etc), so it would be the reasonable
| place to put that info, though it's probably configurable at
| run-time instead. There might also be some defaults, but I'd
| expect it to be "power PMIC off" if that chip is only used for
| the battery circuit (which I doubt).
|
| Edit: According to the scematic on the wiki page[1], it's a
| feature of the main PMIC, RK817-15. I's also indicated "1Cell
| Li-ion"
|
| Interesting features for that chip[2]: Input
| range: 3.8V -5.5V for USB input 2.7V -5.5V for BAT
| input Switch mode Li-ion battery charger providing
| charging current up to 3.5A. Power path controller with
| 4A current path with optional extended external mos.
| Accurate battery fuel gauge with two separate battery voltage
| and current ADC Real time clock (RTC) Low
| standby current of 16uA (at 32.768KHz clock frequency)
|
| Devicetree support has already been submitted, probably merged
| a while back[3].
|
| [1] https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64
|
| [2] https://rockchip.fr/RK817%20datasheet%20V1.01.pdf
|
| [3] https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-arm-
| kernel/patch/...
| 1-6 wrote:
| This is the real star of CES (just kidding). Where can I put my
| preorder?
| Funes- wrote:
| Coupled with that 10-inch e-ink panel that they mention will be
| available when it launches, this could make for a great machine
| for working (reading, writing, coding...). I hope the price is
| not very steep.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I worry more about the price of a 10 inch e-ink panel.
| megous wrote:
| Yeah, those can easily be in the $200 range.
| captainmuon wrote:
| Don't worry about the price - when the e-ink patent overlords
| learn that they are not being used for blessed purposes
| (digital signage or ebook readers) but as general purpose
| display sold to end users (gasp!) they'll probably become
| mysteriously unavailable.
|
| (Source: our company tried to buy e-ink displays to integrate
| into a product. All I can say is, it is difficult...)
| CameronNemo wrote:
| Kobo's Clara HD is 99$, runs post market OS, has a small
| 1GHz core and 512 MB of RAM.
|
| Great low end option IMO.
| Funes- wrote:
| I was referring to the sum of both--to the price of that
| particular machine (SBC + e-ink panel) I just described.
| monadic3 wrote:
| What's the concern?
| FlyingSnake wrote:
| Cost of Pine64 SBC: $64
|
| Cost of e-Ink panel: $50
|
| Money paid to patent owner: $300
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(page generated 2021-02-16 23:00 UTC)