[HN Gopher] MirkoPC - a Raspberry Pi CM4-powered computer made i...
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MirkoPC - a Raspberry Pi CM4-powered computer made in Poland
Author : geerlingguy
Score : 194 points
Date : 2021-04-19 02:28 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| sloshnmosh wrote:
| What a great selection of boards!
|
| I'm very interested in the Pi router shown in the list that has 4
| lan ports.
|
| But I have heard that the Pi doesn't have good throughput for
| routing.
|
| Anyone know if that is true?
|
| I don't have any problems with my Pihole but that isn't really
| the same as a full network router
| Renaud wrote:
| I'm quite excited by the CM4 RPis. There are quite a few variants
| but all retain the same form factor and connector pinout.
|
| These little boards are fostering a lot of new break-out ideas
| for all sorts of purposes, from Routers to NAS with a lot of
| specialised equipment in between (great for industrial and
| automation).
|
| The great thing is that the core component remains the same, with
| known software that (generally) works well.
|
| You could make special boards with a few CM4 on them, all
| interconnected and ready for parallel computing.
|
| you could already do these things with the CM3 but the new
| versions have better and faster interfaces that make high
| bandwidth applications possible.
| hadlock wrote:
| This looks great, but for a new form-factor, why put the USB-C PD
| power port on another side than the other USB/Ethernet side?
|
| The Raspberry Pi is a great device at any price point, but the
| biggest fault, in my opinion, is that there are critical ports on
| all four sides, which means cables snaking out of it on three of
| the four sides, and SD card access on the fourth. Moving the
| power to the same side as the USB/Network would improve packaging
| considerably.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I broadly agree with moving ports together, but in this case
| I'm not sure there's room without making the board bigger or
| stacking ports (which I assume would significantly complicate
| things).
| thinkmassive wrote:
| Having all ports on one side is one of many reasons I like the
| Argon ONE case. It uses an add-on board to redirect the A/V and
| power ports, which also converts the HDMI ports to full sized
| versions.
|
| https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-v-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-...
| walrus01 wrote:
| I have seen a number of different rackmount case designs
| intended to vertically mount a number of raspberry pi 3b/4
| boards in something like a shallow depth, 3U enclosure. One of
| the design problems has been that the power jack is on the
| other side from the networking. Some people have solved it by
| additional DC-DC circuitry as a hat to power them from 802.3af.
| And the microsd card is accessed from the other side.
|
| But some model of rpi with all of its external connections
| along one side of the PCB would be very helpful for doing this
| with less third-party hacked up solutions involved.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| I feel like someone should basically build the Pi 400, but use
| a Compute Module 4 at the heart... like I wish the Pi
| Foundation would've done, for upgradeability.
| dijit wrote:
| the compute modules rarely (if ever) support backwards
| compatibility. At least not that I've ever seen.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Up until the CM4, every generation of CM (original CM, CM3,
| CM3+) worked in the exact same slot on the same hardware.
|
| I know this because I tested a mixed cluster with all three
| on a Turing Pi board :)
|
| Additionally, upgrading from a 1 GB Lite module to an 8 GB
| 32 GB eMMC module could also be possible if they were
| swappable.
| abraxas wrote:
| This is an amazing board because among other things it lets you
| add an NVMe drive making the Pi4 a perfectly reasonable computer
| for day-to-day tasks that don't push the graphics too hard.
| techrat wrote:
| I'm struggling to see the point of getting a CM4 and adding
| this MirkoPC board to it over just getting a Model B and a case
| that supports adding an M.2 flash card.
|
| As far as Pi as a desktop goes? Sluggish is being generous.
| Even with 8GB Ram, you're hobbled by the weak GPU. Coudn't even
| stream Twitch without encountering system wide lag. The Pi
| needs much more than faster storage if it's going to be
| replacing desktops at any meaningful rate.
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| You do know that the Model B does not have the PCIE lane
| connected so there's no such thing as case adding M2 flash
| support, right?
| techrat wrote:
| Who said the M2 had to be connected to PCIe lanes?
|
| https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B08MHYWJCP
|
| | About this item
|
| | M.2 SATA SSD Compatibility | The SSD Case accepts any
| size of M.2 SATA SSD with B-Key or B+M Key
|
| Hence why I said "getting a Model B and a case that
| supports adding an M.2 flash card."
| OJFord wrote:
| Not GP, but presumably the point is that must be using
| USB, so the only point is convenience of form factor/you
| already have the card/whatever - it can't be faster (if
| anything the converter's going to slow it down) than
| using a USB storage device.
| techrat wrote:
| It uses a USB3 to USB3 bridge. Still faster than MicroSD.
| imtringued wrote:
| You're converting from PCIe to USB 3.0 and then back to
| SATA. Isn't that extremely wasteful?
| techrat wrote:
| Honey, * _everything*_ gets converted somewhere, somehow.
| That 's what all those components inside our computers
| do.
|
| MicroSD gets converted from SDIO. USB flash drives get
| converted from their proprietary NAND/Microcontroller
| config. Might as well be saying "you're converting from
| electricity to bits, isn't that extremely wasteful?"
|
| Just ran a benchmark in Gnome Disks. 362MB/sec read,
| 313MB/sec write.
|
| But given that there is absolutely no other way for me to
| connect this flash drive to my Pi4 without defeating the
| point (replacing both the entire Pi4 and Case), I would
| say it seems to be doing fine. Especially compared to
| something with generally equivalent durability like, say,
| a hard drive over USB 3.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| The GPU has supported 1080p hardware h264 decoding since the
| first Raspberry Pi. If you're having issues with video
| streams, you're not using the hardware decoder and probably
| using software decoding on the CPU.
| techrat wrote:
| Then that means Raspberry Pi's own OS images are not using
| the hardware decoders for in Browser streaming.
| Const-me wrote:
| V4L2's h264 stateful video decoder is enabled in official
| OS images, and works great in practice on Pi4:
| https://github.com/Const-me/Vrmac/tree/master/VrmacVideo
| VLC player shipped in these OS images uses that one as
| well.
|
| If it doesn't work for you in Twitch, the likely issue is
| the web browser. Try to upgrade it to latest version,
| and/or configure it somehow.
| opan wrote:
| Try it in a video player. They generally play video a lot
| better than a browser. mpv + youtube-dl can handle
| Twitch.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Chromium support for hardware decode on the Pi was only
| added very recently (in the last month or two, I think).
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| hmmm. This could be root of the problem I described
| above. We were using the latest release of Chromium, but
| AFAIK the configuration screens claimed to be using the
| hardware decode.
|
| Good to know for the future. The project already shipped
| with an Intel PC for the video display.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| Yes, browser support for hardware decoding video on Linux
| is generally lacking even on x86. Firefox barely added
| support for it last year with Chrome having no support at
| all, requiring custom build flags and browser settings in
| Chromium.
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1619523
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| We tried the pi4 for a project where we had to playback 4-6
| videos simultaneously. As far as I could tell, it was
| properly configured for hardware decoding. It bogged down
| noticeably after 3 videos and was barely capable of doing
| 4. On paper it looked great; in real life not so much.
|
| Ended up going with a NUC for that part of the project and
| it worked great. The other aspects of the project that
| didn't need video (we had close to a dozen total displays),
| the pi did just fine.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| 1080p videos? I'm using an older Raspberry Pi 2
| displaying 4 RTSP h264 720p videos as a security camera
| monitor running 24/7 fine with
|
| https://github.com/Anonymousdog/displaycameras
|
| The issue trackers mentions a few attempts at getting
| 1080p streams running, but there definitely seems to be a
| limitation of some sort with more than 3 higher
| resolution videos.
| ekianjo wrote:
| The Pi will still struggle for youtube videos though.
| kcb wrote:
| Yes, and heavy sites like facebook. The Pi is just not quite
| there yet for seamless day to day use.
| walrus01 wrote:
| It's interesting to see how people have basically reinvented the
| standard motherboard, as people have been building PCs from in
| the DIY x86/x86-64 community for 30 years.
|
| We've gone from what a raspberry pi was originally intended to be
| (a $25-35 computer) to something the same size, complexity and
| price as a standard Taiwanese mini-itx or micro-atx x86-64
| motherboard and lower-end Intel or AMD CPU, with the same
| complement of I/O.
|
| I had the feeling this was inevitable when I saw people putting
| active DC powered fans on heatsinks on the rpi CPU some years
| ago.
|
| Sort of like how a modern Toyota Corolla has incrementally
| evolved to be a whole lot fatter, heavier, feature laden and
| costly than the same model name of car 20 years ago.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I see a few appealing reasons to spring for the rpi variants:
|
| - Lower power profile
|
| - _In theory_ no need for noisy fans
|
| - Exploring ARM
|
| Personally, I'm excited for a mobo that let me cluster N
| different CM4s with an array of SSDs. I like the idea of
| building a little Kubernetes cluster on a Pi array for the fun
| of it.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| You can build a fanless x64 PC quite easily: 4-core Intel
| Silvermont/Goldmont or AMD Ryzen Embedded V and R series can
| be passively cooled. Many of those ITX boards come with a 19V
| DC-Jack power-in so you can use a laptop power brick and
| eliminate the PSU fan as well. Fujitsu used to have some nice
| designs, I think now it's owned by Kontron. Asrock also has a
| good selection for more retail-oriented products.
|
| Of course you can also passively cool a full-fledged desktop
| CPU if you want but that's a different category in terms of
| price and performance so I am not talking about that.
|
| As for power, I have Puma-based x64 4-core boards that idle
| at 5W and consume 12W at full load (measured at the wall).
| Goldmont should be similarly efficient. RPi4 is about 7W at
| load I think. Not a huge difference.
| type0 wrote:
| Lenovo has ThinkEgde with passive cooling, not sure how
| price to performance compares there.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| No doubt x86 can be passively cooled, but presumably that
| means giving up the competitive price point that the OP
| mentioned with respect to the chip and mobo?
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| That carrier board doesn't seem to have a price yet, but
| if you don't mind buying used (and saving some perfectly
| capable devices from becoming e-waste at the same time)
| you can usually get a second-hand thin client for the
| price of the RPi CM module alone.
| w0utert wrote:
| Yeah, you can even go back much further in time if you're
| not too worried about performance. I've been running a
| fanless Atom J1900 based mini-PC as a home server for ~8
| years nonstop now. It's trivial to build such a system but
| at least back then the cost was literally 10x to 20x the
| price of a rPI today. I would guess that even though it's
| an 8-year old CPU it's probably about 2x as fast as an rPI
| 4B, and for something that's been chugging along for all
| this time the cost/depreciation over time vs. a much
| cheaper rPI isn't really an issue for me.
| izacus wrote:
| > - Lower power profile
|
| RPi is many things, but the latest generation is anything but
| low power. It IDLES at 60 degrees celsius, which means it
| really burns quite a bit of power just sitting there doing
| nothing.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| According to a quick Google search, the idle power for the
| 4B (not sure about the CM4) is 2.7W:
| https://www.pidramble.com/wiki/benchmarks/power-
| consumption. That seems quite low, no?
| intricatedetail wrote:
| It's fun, but even with SSD is going to be slow. I built that
| for "fun" (without ssds) and an hour later put it to storage
| and then setup vmware on a spare PC, because it was so slow.
| qwertox wrote:
| The IO pins are the big difference.
|
| If you wanted to solder/connect some ICs to your PC, you were
| limited to using the parallel/serial ports.
|
| We get a much more direct access to the CPU with these SBCs,
| which is what makes them so special.
|
| It's more like they are a microcontroller on steroids, rather
| than a stripped down PC.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Absolutely - but in the context here of low-budget desktops,
| having GPIO is something relatively few users want? I
| personally tend to use an RPi Zero W instead of an
| Arduino/ESP* for little projects because I like having
| networking, cron, etc.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| What I personally don't understand is why most ARM alternatives
| (odroid, raspberry, banana pi, beagleboard etc) always think in
| such small dimensions.
|
| I mean, a 128 core ARM with 1TB of RAM would crush any x86_64
| alternative easily. ARM has no limits in parallelization, why
| is there nobody using that advantage?
| detaro wrote:
| Not really "reinvented", since everyone knows what a
| motherboard is. A "normal" motherboard just isn't something you
| can easily design and make yourself.
|
| While the Pi is in many ways not the "best" basis for such
| projects, its the one that is the most initially accessible, or
| at least appears to be, compared to other SOMs. Hence you see
| more small projects based around it.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The rabbit hole gets deeper still: there are at least three in-
| progress ITX or ATX motherboard designs based on the Compute
| Module 4: https://pipci.jeffgeerling.com/boards_cm
| warmwaffles wrote:
| I'm also getting into this as well. Currently working on a
| PCB schematic for a compute module 4 with a full sized nvme,
| usb port and ethernet port for clustering.
| walrus01 wrote:
| sure, why not, I guess? At least if people want a really low
| cost desktop, or something like a computer powering a kiosk,
| there's a plethora of low cost but functional mini-itx,
| microatx or atx sized steel cases. If you go to newegg and
| sort by price, for instance:
|
| https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16811147295R?quicklink=true
|
| If you look further there's some much smaller slimline
| desktop mini-itx (170x170mm format) barebones cases that are
| probably about the same price.
|
| vast economies of scale in standardized mounting formats and
| open standards, like the dimensions/mounting holes for a
| normal ATX power supply...
| squarefoot wrote:
| Many of them probably are unaware of these things:
| https://www.ebay.com/itm/265106510516 (random result sorted
| for low price, just search for "picopsu") Once paired with a
| fanless Mini-ITX board they make for a really compact system
| that can be supplied by a single 12V line.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| That has an appeal, but it lacks the peripherals and
| support that comes with the raspberry pi.
|
| The great things about the pi, if not the greatest, is the
| sheer amount of documentation for doing all sorts of
| things.
|
| Trying to get access to the i2c on an intel board? yeah its
| possible, but its not easy.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It shouldn't be hard to use a PCIe GPIO card in a PC for
| bare metal programming or "in conjunction with third
| party OS such as MS-DOS(R) or Linux(tm)", factory
| automation companies might still be doing exactly that. I
| think why those are not brought up often is cost.
| mbreese wrote:
| If you really want to do something like that, you could
| always connect an Arduino or RPi (or similar) to a PC
| over serial/USB. Then you could use it as a kinda-gateway
| device. Taking commands from the primary PC and
| interfacing with low level peripherals over i2c, etc. But
| for the cost of this, it would probably make more sense
| to just wired the gateways up directly to Ethernet to
| allow one system to control all of the devices... which
| is how I imagine most factory automation is done. No need
| to have an extra PC to manage network control when an
| Arduino can do that by itself.
|
| Aside from the hobby aspect, one reason why Arduino and
| RPi are so popular for these types of projects is that
| they are effectively cheap enough to devote to an
| individual project. You'd wouldn't want to devote an
| entire PC just to manage a sensor or control a door,
| or... but an Arduino for $10 or RPi for $30, sure.
| undersuit wrote:
| There's been considerable movement to just get rid of the
| 3.3v and 5v lines from power supplies anyways. Newer
| motherboards are being built with the ability to just take
| 12v and convert it on board, essentially the circuitry on
| that miniPSU you linked.
| avhception wrote:
| I really think the RPi has the potential to become the de-facto
| ARM desktop, very much like the IBM PC became the de-facto x86
| machine. I really wish the boot procedure and all that wasn't
| so proprietary.
|
| It's unfortunate that the RPi foundation doesn't acknowledge
| this potential more.
|
| It feels like the RPi is stuck in the middle between being a
| low-cost board for GPIO tinkering and being a low-cost general-
| purpose computer, being not really that good at either task.
| Maybe they should create a coreboot-enabled board that is a
| little more pricey, starting at 60 or 80$ or something, for the
| "ARM-PC" (the RasPC!) market and separate that from the board
| for the tinkerers.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Really think the RPi has the potential to become the de-
| facto ARM desktop
|
| I'd say it already is yet still isn't particularly useful in
| this role.
|
| As soon as it gets able to run YouTube without visible
| performance problems and adds some spare PCIe lanes so you
| won't have to sacrifice USB 3.0.
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > the RPi has the potential to become the de-facto ARM
| desktop, very much like the IBM PC became the de-facto x86
| machine
|
| Your use of "de facto" implies a significant presence in the
| retail marketplace such that consumers choose the product
| readily without seeking options.
|
| The RPi is unlikely to ever achieve this in 2021 and beyond.
| However, the RPi 400 is a brilliant device. I recommend it
| over just about any other computing option except maybe a
| mid- to high-end Chromebook.
|
| From the point of view of sustainability, the RPi 400 is a
| much better option than a Chromebook.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Good CPU, but the GPU is only 32 GFLOPS https://www.cpu-
| monkey.com/en/cpu-raspberry_pi_4_b_broadcom_...
| https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=244519
| acegopher wrote:
| I think the de-facto ARM desktop is already here. It's the M1
| Mac.
| wpm wrote:
| With its blackbox boot procedure and all of the security
| stuff you have to disable to even run a pared down kernel
| with limited support for basically everything since the
| system architecture is also a blackbox, I'd disagree. It's
| unlikely to be reversed engineered into a defacto standard
| like the IBM PC was.
| pndy wrote:
| The 400 model of Pi has a potential to start something
| comparable to microcomputer boom in the 80s and become first
| step into ARM desktops (again) I believe and also become the
| standard for machines used in education - if someone will
| play this out well. Smartphones and tablets dominate consumer
| market nowadays for sure but these are largely entertaining
| devices only not offering much when it comes to education; of
| course you can install apps but you're still limited by form
| factor.
| cigaser wrote:
| RPi foundation has its goals and it follows them well. I hope
| they will not get distracted by "ideology".
| OJFord wrote:
| Like the '400' model built into a keyboard released fairly
| recently?
| zwirbl wrote:
| It took me a while to read CM4 compute module 4 instead of
| cortex-m4
| antattack wrote:
| Why are those rPI carrier boards so expensive? PC motherboards
| are larger, have more layers, controlled impedance, a lot more
| components, ENIG finish and cost less than half as much.
| nottorp wrote:
| Because they make thousands in a batch (at best! most probably
| much less) not hundreds of thousands.
| bradstewart wrote:
| Low volume.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| PC motherboards are manufactured in the thousands (at minimum)
| by large companies who benefit from economies of scale.
|
| Small boards are more 'boutique', often being produced in the
| tens or hundreds (though there are exceptions), and components
| are also way harder to come by.
|
| For some of the little chips I've seen people use on these
| boards, lead times can be months (or even years now), and the
| pricing is astronomical (e.g. a chip that was $0.80 a couple
| years ago is a few dollars or more today--if it's available).
|
| And some manufacturers won't even pick up the phone unless
| you're ordering in the thousands.
| sneak wrote:
| How much does it cost?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Right now the board designer has only made a small batch of
| prototype boards. He's thinking about a refreshed design and
| might take it to some sort of other funding platform, but as
| with all hardware projects, hard to tell what would happen or
| final price if it does happen.
|
| Look up the TOFU, by Oratek in Switzerland, for something
| relatively comparable.
| 88 wrote:
| Does anyone know how hard it's going to be for the Raspberry Pi
| Foundation to add some extra PCIe lanes to a future model?
|
| These boards are really exciting but at the moment all they're
| doing is trading off uses for the single PCIe x1 interface. In
| this case, losing the USB 3.0 ports in favor of an M.2 interface.
| qwertox wrote:
| Is there some kind of publicly accessible Roadmap for future
| Broadcom chips which the Raspberry Pi might be using in one or
| two years?
|
| I love these boards so much, but the PCIe-restriction is such a
| huge bottleneck, that I'd love to know when this will be
| resolved.
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(page generated 2021-04-19 23:02 UTC)