[HN Gopher] Pine64 and Radxa's new Pi CM4-compatible boards
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Pine64 and Radxa's new Pi CM4-compatible boards
Author : geerlingguy
Score : 89 points
Date : 2021-12-15 15:03 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jeffgeerling.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jeffgeerling.com)
| pyb wrote:
| With the Compute Modules, Raspberry Pi wanted to enter
| industrial/professional markets.
|
| However, in these markets, availability on short notice is a
| fundamental requirement. The CMs appear mostly unobtainable, and
| it's not clear that the Pi foundation will culturally be able to
| remedy this in the long term ; their strength is elsewhere.
| goodpoint wrote:
| In industrial markets *long-term* availability and robustness
| are also crucial.
|
| You don't want to develop and optimize your software stack for
| some hardware that will be out of order in 3 years.
|
| Olimex guarantees long-term availability and industrial
| standards.
|
| Raspberry Pi does not and is only suitable for the hobby
| market.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Raspberry Pi does have guarantees, for example if you look at
| the Compute Module 4 page [1] it reads "Compute Module 4 will
| remain in production until at least January 2028".
|
| Heck, even the 7-year-old Compute Module 1 will be in
| production until "at least January 2026". That's a 12-year
| product support lifecycle!
|
| [1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/compute-module-4/
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Alternatively, most of the production has already been snapped
| up by large customer(s). NEC is offering them as an option for
| their commercial displays, for instance.
|
| They do have a history of underestimating demand, though. The
| original 26-pin Raspberry Pi was unobtanium for a long time
| after it was introduced. Some things never change. :) The
| pandemic-related supply chain woes can't help.
| pyb wrote:
| Yes, many will remember the crazy waiting lists for the Pi 10
| years ago. They did not expect to get a huge amount of demand
| so early.
| hhh wrote:
| At release, we wanted to add support to our product line for
| the CM4 and needed some to test. However our MoQ was 200.
| Fast forward to today, we can't really get CM4s or regular
| pis fast enough. We recently secured enough for the next 4
| months (~800 Pi4 8GB,) but it's always a battle to find large
| quantities.
|
| We have a vendor that assembles these for us, so they all
| come pre-assembled. We've swapped parts in our BOM for these
| at least 13 times in the past year. Change SD cards, change
| microHDMI adapters, power supply, change case, pi model, etc.
| Relatively painless, but becomes a problem when 30 days of
| back order is ~150 raspberry pis.
|
| I still wouldn't even consider swapping to another device,
| though.
| krolden wrote:
| What's your product line if you don't mind me asking?
| justin66 wrote:
| > The CMs appear mostly unobtainable
|
| To whom? There might be a world of difference between the
| experience of buying a CM4 at retail and the experiencing of
| reaching out to the RPi foundation with a bulk order.
| dmonitor wrote:
| My boss was lamenting how projects would have to be pushed
| back because they are unavailable
| scottlamb wrote:
| > However, in these markets, availability on short notice is a
| fundamental requirement. The CMs appear mostly unobtainable,
| and it's not clear that the Pi foundation will culturally be
| able to remedy this in the long term ; their strength is
| elsewhere.
|
| I think all the other SBC vendors are even worse. E.g.
| seeedstudio is out of literally every Radxa product right now.
| 2021 is a tough year for niche products.
| 3np wrote:
| Anecdotally, I've been ordering a bunch of stuff this year -
| hardkernel/radxa/friendlyarm/pine64.
|
| Apart from PINE64, I've been able to get almost every board
| I've had my eyes on - in due time. They can go in and out of
| stock in intervals of weeks or months.
|
| This is all ordering directly from vendors. Domestic
| redistributors seem to be dry all over though. I guess you
| could say seeeed falls in the middle of those.
|
| Basically if you can afford to wait and subscribe to when
| things come back in stock (if you're unlucky), you'll usually
| get your stuff in due time.
|
| It takes some discipline to not be part of the problem by
| ordering extras just in case.
|
| These small Asian vendors are very agile and have swapped out
| NICs and stuff to make up for missing components.
|
| On the slightly more industrial side it's ridiculous, though.
| Due to Intel NIC shortage, PCEngines APU has been out of
| stock globally for I think 6 months and the manufacturer was
| transparent from the beginning that it would be a year or two
| before they are available. I think all of 2022 is already
| reserved.
| mbreese wrote:
| I'd say consistency and long term availability would be the
| fundamental requirements. The Pi foundation has always seemed
| to have that part figured out.
|
| I don't think we should necessary judge availability of any
| part based on the current environment.
| pyb wrote:
| I am not referring to the current environment, from what I
| remember of the last few years, Pi parts have not been
| _consistently_ available. Or am I misrepresenting?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Until late 2020, maybe early 2021, I could always find the
| Pi model I needed from _somewhere_. And usually the local
| Micro Center had at least partial inventory of all the
| range of Pi models.
|
| Even midway into 2021, I could find at least a couple of
| each model at Micro Center, and more than half the SKUs
| would be in stock at most online retailers.
|
| As 2021 progressed, though, it became impossible to even
| find the less popular varieties in stock, to the point I
| haven't seen a Pi 4, CM3+, or CM4 in stock at my local
| Micro Center since September. I'm glad I picked up a couple
| spares and placed orders for a few 8GB modules in January--
| otherwise I'd still be waiting indefinitely.
|
| Pis are only one of many devices that are basically screwed
| by supply chain issues this year. Eben Upton mentioned that
| they're producing more than ever this year, but they've
| sold through and are still going to be fighting supply
| issues until 2023 [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/20/raspberry_pi_sup
| ply_e...
| pyb wrote:
| But, beyond the short term, what do you reckon of the
| availability over the last 5 years?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Over the last 5 years, availability was often spotty for
| the quarter or two post-launch, but stock always caught
| up. In fact, I remember in late 2020, the Micro Center
| near me had an end cap with over 100 Pi Zero W's hanging
| on it, a bunch of Pi 3 B+s below, about 30 Pi 4 model B's
| in a case (you had to ask for them), and about 25 CM3+'s
| on a shelf.
|
| Those were heady times; the pandemic (demand for hobby
| computers spiking) then the parts shortage were a 1-2
| punch and now it seems only the Pi 400 can be reliably
| found in stock, along with some expensive kits that
| bundle a ton of things with the Pi 3 B+ or Pi 4.
| antattack wrote:
| If one is making a board for CM4 module: how does one solder
| those two connectors to be perfectly aligned? Are manufacturers
| using some kind of jig for each board going through reflow?
| geerlingguy wrote:
| The pins are sufficiently small and tightly-aligned that the
| connectors seat themselves nicely centered during reflow.
| Though a few of the boards I've tested do seem to be _very_
| slightly off, but you can still pop the Pi into the connectors.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| ARM SBC's will always lag Intel in the single most important
| factor - software.
|
| Unless some large corporation(s) get serious about spending on
| money on first class Linux implementations - and there's no sign
| of that.
|
| The best ARM software is the community developed ARMbian, but
| that's not enough to tempt me to buy anything except Raspberry
| Pi.
|
| Raspberry Pi's greatest strength is its first class software.
|
| The weird thing is that none of the ARM device vendors seem to
| realise that "it's all about the software".
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > The weird thing is that none of the ARM device vendors seem
| to realise that "it's all about the software".
|
| Pine64 basically exists to ship (mostly ARM) hardware with good
| open source software support.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > The Pi, despite its warts, has two things going for it: a
| company that devotes a lot of time to testing, documentation, and
| bug fixes, and an active and broad community [...]
|
| True, but lets not forget another non trivial one: advertising.
| I'm lucky if I can spot a new board discussed in a few sites,
| while every time a new PI is launched, the news resonates like
| someone set their feet on Mars. If manufacturers want to build a
| community and have more developers/ports/bugfixes etc. they
| should allocate some resources where it's appropriate. Not easy
| since the PI is pushed by Broadcom themselves, I know.
|
| Also, I would avoid the term "clones", which gives a bad
| impression of the products. There's no such thing as a Raspberry
| PI clone, unless having similarly placed connectors in some
| models counts as cloning. The hardware is (thankfully) vastly
| different. Also, Broadcom doesn't sell the PI processors to
| anyone else ensuring that cloning them is impossible, as is
| building any product using the same technology, short of hosting
| it in the form of a compute module, which may not be the
| ideal/cheaper solution in many contexts. Not a big issue since
| there are much more powerful platforms out there, but few know
| about them for the above reason.
|
| Personally, if I see an interesting board, my 1st and 2nd stops
| to see if and how well they are supported are the Armbian and
| DietPI boards and forums (other suggestions highly welcome!).
|
| https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported
|
| https://dietpi.com/#download
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Do you know of a board with a gpu, that is a bit better, than
| what the Pi offers?
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Does it have to be ARM based? Most old laptop (you probably
| already own) can do everything a Pi can, but better at
| negligible energy cost. If you want to stream, you can remote
| control an old android for instance. If you want something
| similar with good graphics, Jetson Nano is good.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, size and battery life is important, when you want to
| use it as the heart of a robot for example.
|
| And yes, a android device (with broken and deactivated
| screen) is maybe the way to go for small size mobile
| computing power.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| What does "heart of a robot" mean? If it just needs to be
| remote controlled you can do that with simpler hardware
| like arduino. Do you need computer vision? Jetson has
| good support for that. Do you want it to be for edge
| computing? It just has to relay info to a server.
|
| What is your project? The Jetson is probably the best
| choice. Saying GPU is very vague, there are GPUs that are
| good at decoding video for instance that might not be
| useful.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| No concrete project as of now, but different ideas around
| semi-autonomous robots. And since they require heavy
| computation sometimes, I would like to offload that to
| the gpu if possible.
|
| Jetson sounds interesting.
|
| But mobile phones offer many sensors, computing power and
| a battery all packed together, so I might start with
| that. Or rather, have a smartphone for computation and
| remote connection and a arduino for directly controlling
| the servos. Or a lego mindstorm. Or both.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You'll want a breakout board to connect it to motors, or
| see other projects. It's possible to make a separate
| mobile platform for the sensors on the phone and have it
| gather info.
|
| You're going to want to look for NPUs and probably not
| GPUs. If you don't have any idea check this out for
| inspiration. https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.10934 The DJI
| founders wanted engineers to be seen as hero's instead of
| sports stars. He sponsors engineers to complete here, the
| prize is their dream job. https://www.robomaster.com/en-
| US
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Well, I have seen and done some projects already, too.
| And tons of ideas for new ones, but am currently occupied
| with something else. What I am doing right now is looking
| what is out there.
|
| So I am quite open about plattforms, but actually I would
| prefer simplicity. But powerful.
|
| Something that has the potential to run WebGPU in a
| decent way (once that becomes stable).
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You definitely want the Jetson. Great support, decent
| hardware, CUDA, Linux, etc. I was called a shill for
| being sad that ARM and Nvidia didn't merge but I think
| this is the best quality device, and has tons of support.
| djrogers wrote:
| > advertising. I'm lucky if I can spot a new board discussed in
| a few sites, while every time a new PI is launched, the news
| resonates like someone set their feet on Mars.
|
| That's not advertising, that's marketing and name recognition.
| [deleted]
| Havoc wrote:
| Encountered this too with Asus Tinkerboards. The ecosystem is so
| comparatively weak that the (at time) better hardware isn't
| enough to tip the balance
|
| Any crappy IoT tutorial will work on a rasp...other boards you
| better have troubleshooting skills
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| I don't like Pi for IoT, its too heavy, a fucking OS for IoT is
| heavy, no way am I using that for controlling light bulbs.
| rbanffy wrote:
| It'll be awesome now to get a laptop chassis with one (or a
| couple) connectors for these. If this becomes a long-term
| standard, we'd be able to upgrade laptops without throwing the
| old one out (or passing it to someone who needs it).
| flyinghamster wrote:
| It seems like the CM4 design was almost made with laptops in
| mind. The main issue is cooling, though. The case would need to
| insure that some sort of heat sink would maintain physical
| contact with the SoC, and some thermal paste would be a good
| thing as well, so this might be a little more than "drop in a
| new module." Otherwise, throttling will be an issue with any
| sustained work. How much of a problem that becomes depends on
| the intended use.
|
| It wouldn't be an M1 Mac, but an 8 GB CM4 could still be the
| heart of a nice low-power laptop, with the bonus of GPIO pins,
| as long as the cooling is sorted out.
| officeplant wrote:
| The Pinebook pro just uses a thermal pad touching the IHS and
| the magnesium bottom panel. It works fairly well but will
| still throttle significantly under a full load for long
| enough.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Could you just air cool it? I thought pis were supposed to
| tolerate passive cooling in general, so I would think it
| would be enough to have a fan to offset the case
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Running at 1.5 GHz, air cooling is enough. The Pi 400 has a
| massive but thin heat sink that keeps it running well at
| 1.8 GHz (and I overclocked to 2+ GHz with no ill effect or
| throttling).
|
| If you have ambient temps under 80degF and a light breeze
| past the bare SoC it doesn't seem to throttle unless
| overclocked to 2+ GHz.
| toast0 wrote:
| Laptops don't always get a lot of air. A good thermal
| connection to something reasonable can go a long way.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Whats wrong with laptops now? You can of course 3D print that.
| justin66 wrote:
| A replacement board for the Framework laptop would be nifty.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Didn't think of that, but yes - a CM4 carrier with the same
| connector layout as the Framework would be awesome.
|
| A 100% Apple-free, 100% x86-free, almost 100% Windows-proof
| laptop would be a great thing.
| ggm wrote:
| Breaking out PCIe in ways you can add lots of m.2 SSD is
| interesting for people who feel throttled behind USB based disk
| io.
|
| There are 4x carrier cards. Each m.2 gets a lane. You get closer
| to HBA class saturated device speeds.
|
| ZFS home NAS
| zokier wrote:
| One thing that makes RK3566 notable is that its GPU (Mali G52) is
| supposed to have decent open source driver support:
| https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/panf...
| officeplant wrote:
| As a Pinebook Pro user I can confirm that the panfrost drivers
| make it a vastly more usable platform ever since that team
| released them. Its not perfect, but its better than nothing.
| edko wrote:
| I wish there was a board that focused on providing a VS Code
| server to iPads over USB-C, with all the cost allocated to
| processor and memory, and very basic (or no) display hardware. It
| feels strange that such a powerful tablet would need such a thing
| but, if the board was powerful enough and got out of the way, it
| would be a nice option to overcome the restrictions that prevent
| iPad from being a more general mobile software development
| machine.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Jailbreak it, my iPhone is a mobile Unix OS. Relevant CLI has
| been ported, APT since iPhone 2G. I have neovim for instance.
| You can use VNC. Here is some Unix tools
| https://github.com/ProcursusTeam/Procursus
|
| Or consider this: https://en.jingos.com/jingpad-a1/
| marcodiego wrote:
| Now, make a notebook capable of accepting this form factor and
| we'll have something more upgradeable than the framework
| notebook.
| opan wrote:
| https://www.pine64.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/MNT-Reform...
|
| Here's an adapter to use a SOQuartz in the MNT Reform laptop,
| mentioned in today's Pine64 blog post.
| filleokus wrote:
| I'm not sure if I've asked on HN before, but I so wish for
| something RPI-esque that use usb-c both for power and display
| output (and actual usb as well).
|
| It would be really cool to have a bus-powered thin client I could
| just chuck in to the usb-c cables attached to monitors at work.
| Have it boot really quickly and just open up VNC/RDP/[?]Citrix...
|
| But no, the only one I've found is the pretty expensive Intel
| based Lattepandas, although I see they currently run a
| Kickstarter for a new one[0]. But sooner or later someone must
| build a ARM-based one with some usb-c magic chip on them that can
| concatenate power/video/usb in one port.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lattepanda3delta/lattep...
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| You can buy an android phone with usbc vid out to do that.
| karmicthreat wrote:
| Hopefully these boards have better availability. Normally I would
| use a Pi Compute Module or just a regular Pi to build a product.
| But I'm designing things around ESP32s now because I can actually
| get those.
| GhettoComputers wrote:
| Isn't ESP32 generally better for most products? Pi is so heavy,
| ESP32 S2 is nice too.
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