Author Topic: Pi "foundation" gets fatter  (Read 8155 times)

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Offline etiTopic starter

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Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« on: September 23, 2021, 12:15:50 am »
https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/raspberry-pi-gets-45m-to-meet-demand-for-low-cost-pcs-and-iot/

Great. Now they can sack their useless "team" and hire some real staff. Then, they can ditch all these toys and start making ... oh, hang on a sec, what else could they make apart from silly toys that pretend to "relive the 80s bedroom programmer years"?

Wow. I can see that money always goes to the right people then

BIG "/s"
 
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Offline AntiProtonBoy

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #1 on: September 23, 2021, 03:02:01 am »
I hope they succeed. The more consumer facing Linux centric hardware there is, the better.
 
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Offline etiTopic starter

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #2 on: September 23, 2021, 03:16:32 am »
I hope they succeed. The more consumer facing Linux centric hardware there is, the better.

They’re fools. They need to hand the reigns over to someone competent, or just dump the whole thing.
 

Offline amyk

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #3 on: September 23, 2021, 04:10:03 am »
I hope they succeed. The more consumer facing Linux centric hardware there is, the better.
There's already tons of the latter, and a great majority of people carry one with them all the time, although most people aren't aware.

 

Offline AntiProtonBoy

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #4 on: September 23, 2021, 04:31:27 am »
There's already tons of the latter, and a great majority of people carry one with them all the time, although most people aren't aware.
Sure, we can be pedantic and claim that just about every embedded device and its dog runs Linux, or whatever, but obviously that's not what I meant.

What Raspberry Pi (and related products) offer is an alternate desktop environment to Windows or macOS. In other words, they create direct consumer exposure to the Linux platform. The more such devices exists, the better it is for all of us. If that means making more "silly toys", as OP suggested, then so be it. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having fun.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2021, 04:35:43 am by AntiProtonBoy »
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #5 on: September 23, 2021, 05:53:23 am »
And it's such an incredibly useful and versatile little machine. If someone can find me a similarly powerful micro PC that runs a full fledged *nix OS, has a full development environment, consumes under 5W idle with a similar level of hobbyist support at a similar price point I'm all ears. Despite its warts I love the RPi and have used a pile of them in various projects, they've proven themselves to be exceptionally reliable, the very first original generation 128MB RPi I bought back when they first came out was still working when I finally upgraded it to a Pi4 about 6 months ago. They aren't perfect, but I haven't found anything similar that works any better. The RPi has hit critical mass so it's going to be hard for anything else to touch the amount of software support it has.
 
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Offline AaronLee

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #6 on: September 23, 2021, 06:07:13 am »
What Raspberry Pi (and related products) offer is an alternate desktop environment to Windows or macOS. In other words, they create direct consumer exposure to the Linux platform. The more such devices exists, the better it is for all of us.

That's a matter of opinion, to which some of us would disagree. I use Linux regularly, but I've also been a long-time user of Windows, and MS-DOS before that, and recently came back to using Mac OS again. They each have their place, and given there's no cost for most versions of Linux, it's definitely carved out it's niche in that market. But if I personally could have all my software running on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, I'd absolutely have chosen Windows in the past. I use Linux when I need to, but find it overly clunky to get things done. That may be heresy to some hard-core Linux programmers, but for me, Windows just works, even with it's numerous problems, and my almost daily mumblings about how retarded some things are in Windows. Windows may be retarded, but Linux I find to be way more retarded. I have some personal reasons for having become disenchanted with Mac OS way back in about the first year or so after the Mac was first introduced (1985 or so). I refused to touch it since, but last year with the introduction of the M1, am taking a fresh look at it, and if I was more proficient with Mac OS, I might even choose it over Windows, given the same condition that all software runs on all three platforms.

Of course, all software doesn't run on all three platforms, so for some of us we need to use two or more platforms. The fact that Linux is free is great if you're making some system that needs an OS, but is very cost sensitive. For my personal computer though, or my company's computer, the $100 or so additional to pay for a computer with an OS is meaningless in my opinion. My computer gets used many hours each day. Over the life of my computer it's likely to be used upwards of 10,000 hours, which means the cost per hour for the actual OS is maybe only 1 cent. My time, and increased productivity in using Windows over Linux is worth FAR more than one cent an hour.
 
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Offline etiTopic starter

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #7 on: September 23, 2021, 06:47:56 am »
If you want to scare someone away from Linux FOR LIFE, make them endure the train wreck that is the HORRIBLE, buggy, janky "Raspberry Pi OS" and use it as a Desktop - it's a TOTAL MESS. I used a Pi 400, as a seasoned Linux user of 18 years, as my main Desktop for FOUR MONTHS... ugh. It is ghastly. The completely idiotic, weak argument that "It's only thirty pounddddds!" is precisely that (and the Pi 400 has the nerve to try and convince buyers that it is capable of "replacing a PC")

They NEED to stop, take the rose tinted specs off, and realise that NORMAL PEOPLE don't understand all this bullshit, and won't tolerate it. A BBC Micro IT AINT!!
« Last Edit: September 23, 2021, 06:49:53 am by eti »
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #8 on: September 23, 2021, 07:03:52 am »
I’m with eti here. RPi foundation are damaging morons drowning in marketing hype leveraged by some intangible link to a history of computing failures promoted at successes here in the UK. I’ve had a couple of run ins with the asshats over the years and they’re a complete joke. I’ll write up a thread with references at some point.
 
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Offline etiTopic starter

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #9 on: September 23, 2021, 07:09:32 am »
They’re the testing arm for Broadcom’s new SoC products (which just happen to stop off for testing in the pi, and then move on to their intended markets) and the “customers” are the guinea pigs, plus the “foundation” (I hate saying that, it makes me feel immoral, makes me cringe) make a profit.

There’s nothing special about it except they’ve convinced the whole kidult “maker” and “tinkerer” (ARGHHHHHH!!!!!) world that they’re the bottom line, the “gold standard” - they’re the RUST STANDARD, and the usual justification is “the amazing community”

It’s an eternal cycle of self-congratulation, smugness and brainwashed fans who stop there and aspire no higher, as they have swallowed the hype and didn’t think to test it through reasoning and critical thinking. Duh.

The icing on the cake is that the SoC is proprietary and the silicon cannot be revealed - so much for learning - they’re not teaching ANYTHING specific to their crappy products, they’re just parroting half-baked Linux experience, and the “advice” on the forums is laughable, and always comes from the same cronies.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2021, 07:18:23 am by eti »
 
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Offline rstofer

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #10 on: September 23, 2021, 03:21:30 pm »
And it's such an incredibly useful and versatile little machine. If someone can find me a similarly powerful micro PC that runs a full fledged *nix OS, has a full development environment, consumes under 5W idle with a similar level of hobbyist support at a similar price point I'm all ears. Despite its warts I love the RPi and have used a pile of them in various projects, they've proven themselves to be exceptionally reliable, the very first original generation 128MB RPi I bought back when they first came out was still working when I finally upgraded it to a Pi4 about 6 months ago. They aren't perfect, but I haven't found anything similar that works any better. The RPi has hit critical mass so it's going to be hard for anything else to touch the amount of software support it has.

Absolutely!  I have a bunch of PIs of various generations and 3 Pi 400s.  I like them all and, at the moment, one of the 400s is being used as a desktop.  It's nowhere close in speed to my tower or even my laptop but how much do I need for browsing and tinkering?  It's about the IO header!  There is no reasonable way to get at hardware IO on my tower or my laptop.  Any attempt at external IO will involve more hardware than there is on the PI, in total.

If I want to play with machine vision on a movable robot, the tower is pretty useless.  I have seen people use a laptop for this application but that was years ago, pre-PI.

Another SBC that is interesting is the NVIDIA Jetson Nano.  What these folks are doing with the CUDA units is amazing.  One of these days I'm going to buy one of their high end graphics cards just for the CUDA and Tensor units.

For those who are down on Raspberry PIs, why not just use the competitor's products?  Why all the whining and sniveling?
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #11 on: September 23, 2021, 04:01:29 pm »
I started a technical thread on their forum regarding the power issues and SD reliability issues early on in their product cycle. I kept it nice suggesting fixes. This was met with denial and questioning my credentials.   I suggested that I would not use their products in future because of these problems. After a couple of days all my posts were deleted and my account on the forum deleted. I continue not to use these products because they are denialists and censor criticism and technical issues. I have seen several people reporting this.

That’s reason enough to be bitter and explicitly warn people away from their products.

I have other reasons as well related to the relationship between Cambridge university, the raspberry pi foundation and Broadcom as well which is a corrupt little circle of hell. (Have also had to deal with BCM professionally before).  There is a lot of preferential treatment and cronyism in the group. First and second hand experience there for ref.

Also it’s STB junk. I need reliable storage for any computers and SD cards or USB mass storage is not it. Minimum SATA or NVMe.

The applications I used the Pi for were better serviced with embedded PC platforms and repurposed Lenovo Tiny desktops. Any IO can be hooked on slave processors (arduino for example).

Really the Pi sits in a grey area between embedded and proper computers. It’s better to push the problem to either side than take on the compromises it forces upon you.

Edit: don't get me started on the "makers" bollocks either. Their marketers worked out how to hook into "identity marketing" only. First you create a group of people, name it and try and make it an intentionally naive movement. Then you start hard selling to their identity, not to their needs. This itself is a disease of society which needs to be cured as soon as possible. It disempowers people and no one benefits educationally in the end.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2021, 04:23:08 pm by bd139 »
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #12 on: September 23, 2021, 04:27:53 pm »
I hope they succeed. The more consumer facing Linux centric hardware there is, the better.

Got to be honest here this is a stupid comment.

There are literally skip fulls of consumer centric Linux hardware everywhere. Every damn computer shop is full of it. Gumtree, ebay, garages eveywhere. Computers are ubiquitous junk these days and Linux mostly works on all them them 100% better than it does on some low ball POS ARM board.

If they cared about access to computing they would be selling recycled guaranteed PCs with an easy to use Linux distribution. No they are selling BCM SoCs stuffed on the lowest part count board they could get away with and Liz is drinking a lot of wine.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2021, 04:32:21 pm by bd139 »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #13 on: September 23, 2021, 04:57:37 pm »
You seem exceptionally bitter about this thing, for what I suspect are political (in one sense or another) reasons. My experience with the product does not reflect yours at all, I have had a grand total of *one* SD card fail in what, 10 years? This is 24/7 service of a handful of RPis. I've had a few power supplies fail but that isn't the fault of the pi. It isn't enterprise grade gear but for a <$50 computer these things are fantastic, there's nothing else like them on the market, it seems perfectly natural to me that they've been a smashing success and sold hundreds of millions of units and I think any one of us would love to be able to say we had delivered a product that reached an order of magnitude less success. Yes there are loads of other Linux devices out there but there is absolutely nothing I can think of that has put Linux in the hands of so many end users, in a tangible form rather than hidden away in the core of some consumer device. If it doesn't meet your needs there are other choices, but the RPi is a fantastic product in my mind and despite what I may think about the company itself I wish them continued success and I will continue to buy their products as long as they continue to deliver something that I want.

Recycled PCs are worthless to me for any of the things I use a RPi for. The power consumption is far too high, replacing an old PC with a similarly powerful RPi will pay for itself in short order on energy savings alone. For embedded applications a proper industrial embedded platform costs an order of magnitude more and makes no sense at all for a hobbyist project.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2021, 05:03:04 pm by james_s »
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #14 on: September 23, 2021, 05:42:01 pm »
You seem exceptionally bitter about this thing, for what I suspect are political (in one sense or another) reasons. My experience with the product does not reflect yours at all, I have had a grand total of *one* SD card fail in what, 10 years? This is 24/7 service of a handful of RPis. I've had a few power supplies fail but that isn't the fault of the pi. It isn't enterprise grade gear but for a <$50 computer these things are fantastic, there's nothing else like them on the market, it seems perfectly natural to me that they've been a smashing success and sold hundreds of millions of units and I think any one of us would love to be able to say we had delivered a product that reached an order of magnitude less success. Yes there are loads of other Linux devices out there but there is absolutely nothing I can think of that has put Linux in the hands of so many end users, in a tangible form rather than hidden away in the core of some consumer device. If it doesn't meet your needs there are other choices, but the RPi is a fantastic product in my mind and despite what I may think about the company itself I wish them continued success and I will continue to buy their products as long as they continue to deliver something that I want.

This is a lot of turd blessing I hear.

Sample size one for you. That's not reality.

This is heavily marketed as an educational tool. My daughter's school bought 50 which ended up in a big cardboard box because the two hour lesson slot was debugging raspberry pi problems. Broken connectors, complete failures, SD corruption, boot problems.

It's terrible terrible terrible. Unless you like meddling with shit and fix it all the time which is not an education.

Recycled PCs are worthless to me for any of the things I use a RPi for. The power consumption is far too high, replacing an old PC with a similarly powerful RPi will pay for itself in short order on energy savings alone. For embedded applications a proper industrial embedded platform costs an order of magnitude more and makes no sense at all for a hobbyist project.

Nope.

Lenovo M600 Tiny. Runs x86-64 Linux. 2 passively cooled Celeron cores. Upgradeable RAM 4-8Gb. SATA M2 SSD port. 2x displayport connectors. 6x USB connectors. Runs of 19V DC. Built in WiFi, serial, parallel. Comes with its own enclosure. 6 watts idle. 12 watts under load which it can sustain 24/7/365. will last 5-8 years. Has been able to render 4k video longer than the Pi has  :-DD.

Costs ~£109 a go with an actual real RAM (4Gb) and a proper SSD in it (120gb) and it works reliably out of the box every time running headless debian.





I had a whole kubernetes cluster running on 4x of them  :-//

That whole cluster cost me £24 to run on electricity for an entire year...

Or buy an arduino.

The problem here is they are marketing it into the space of professional computing and the outcome is dissapointing as hell.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2021, 05:44:57 pm by bd139 »
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #15 on: September 23, 2021, 05:59:57 pm »
Ok so more than double the power consumption, 3x the cost (used) and physically at least 4 times the size, none of the IO, not even in the same class of product at all, total non-starter for most of my applications and the used/refurb market would dry up instantly at a small fraction of the RPi volume. A lot of things the Pi gets used for a PC like that would be totally inappropriate, handheld video game console or the 12" tall mini arcade cabinets my friend builds with them? Not gonna happen. Wall mounted device for home automation? Not gonna happen. Robotics? I guess if your robot is big enough and you don't mind kludging the IO by adding external hardware, but that excludes a huge range of smaller robots. Autonomous drone? Good luck with that. Wearable device? Yeah right. I built a multi channel video streaming device with a stack of 6 Pi Zeros, all six of those fit in a space much smaller than a single mini PC, natively produce the required composite video and the total cost was lower as well. There is a huge gap between a fullblown mini PC and a microcontroller that you seem totally blind to because it is not a need you personally have.

My own sample size is small yes, but TENS OF MILLIONS have been sold and they continue to sell like hotcakes, new versions regularly sell as fast as they can pump them out. The educational market they originally targeted is a tiny portion of what they actually sell to. People clearly love these things, it isn't just me. You are the exception, not the norm and one of the few people I've heard moaning about them. If they're marketing in the space of professional computing that's news to me, everyone I know that uses them is a hobbyist. It's a $40 toy, not an enterprise grade computer, I've said that before.
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #16 on: September 23, 2021, 06:09:51 pm »
We have other boards ranging from simple STM32 to full 64 bit ARM. That’s my point as well.

They sell because of marketing, not because of merit.

It’s the wrong tool for nearly every job it’s pitched at you’ve put out.

And millions of them end up in in a drawer, shed and eventually e-waste  :-//
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #17 on: September 23, 2021, 06:31:38 pm »
Frankly I don't think there's any debating with you on it, you have something in the way of a pathological hatred for the whole thing and you will never understand what makes it popular and you will never change your mind. It does a lot of things reasonably well and it's cheap. It has reached critical mass, there is no other similar platform that is even remotely as well supported in the hobbyist community, and as with anything of this sort the software availability and support will make or break it. Same reason the Arduino is a smashing success, it is not the best at nearly anything, it has plenty of flaws, but it is extremely popular and widely supported. The fact that there are no bargains to be found on used RPis does not support your assertion of millions of them ending up as waste, even used ones are still in demand, if someone offered me a pile of old RPis I would happily accept them and put them to use, but that has never happened because even the old ones are still useful and people hold onto them. Every device will of course eventually end up as waste, nothing lasts forever, but a 10 year old Pi will have retained a much greater percentage of its original cost than a 10 year old PC.

Like I said before, if there's a viable alternative I'm all ears, here are a handful of my constraints:
Price under $50 brand new
Size comparable to or smaller than the RPi
Power consumption under 10W full load, 4W idle, lower is better
Onboard ethernet and wifi
Runs a full Linux distro
Built in GPIO, including SPI, I2C and 1wire
Built in USB
Easy out of box experience, I can have a Pi up and running in <20 minutes so I want something comparable
Widespread support, either from the vendor or from the external community

As far as I can tell, there is nothing. There are a few Pi clones that come close, but they are not appreciably cheaper and they are lacking in the support.

But again, I suspect this is futile, you aren't the target market, you wouldn't understand.
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #18 on: September 23, 2021, 06:40:31 pm »
I've stated my reasons clearly. I don't think I need to go over them again. Your argument with support is flawed because they delete the negative scenarios.

But you're still missing the point.

Start with the application requirements and work back to the device.

Not start with the specification which doesn't matter initially when you start a project of any kind. I don't give a bananas what the Pi does on paper, only if it fits the requirements for the project compared to other devices.

Hell the last embedded thing I worked on an AVR was sufficient and the AVR-gcc toolchain is a lot less of a pain in the ass than even bootstrapping an STM32. But I've seen someone ram a raspberry pi in the same requirements hole and run 8 lines of python on it at the cost of a 100x fold in complexity and power requirements :-//

It's popular because it's cheap. It's not. The cost comes later.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2021, 06:42:04 pm by bd139 »
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #19 on: September 23, 2021, 08:28:16 pm »
ebay. There's a metric shit ton of them NOS on the market thanks to the collapse of the POS market in the last couple of years.
 

Offline thm_w

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #20 on: September 23, 2021, 08:32:18 pm »
No one is forcing you to run a raspi from a cheap SD card.
Either buy a quality high endurance/SLC SD card or run it off USB SATA adapter.

If you ran a full PC from a cheap microSD card the same problems would occur.
Profile -> Modify profile -> Look and Layout ->  Don't show users' signatures
 
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Offline Just_another_Dave

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #21 on: September 23, 2021, 08:47:39 pm »
And it's such an incredibly useful and versatile little machine. If someone can find me a similarly powerful micro PC that runs a full fledged *nix OS, has a full development environment, consumes under 5W idle with a similar level of hobbyist support at a similar price point I'm all ears. Despite its warts I love the RPi and have used a pile of them in various projects, they've proven themselves to be exceptionally reliable, the very first original generation 128MB RPi I bought back when they first came out was still working when I finally upgraded it to a Pi4 about 6 months ago. They aren't perfect, but I haven't found anything similar that works any better. The RPi has hit critical mass so it's going to be hard for anything else to touch the amount of software support it has.

Absolutely!  I have a bunch of PIs of various generations and 3 Pi 400s.  I like them all and, at the moment, one of the 400s is being used as a desktop.  It's nowhere close in speed to my tower or even my laptop but how much do I need for browsing and tinkering?  It's about the IO header!  There is no reasonable way to get at hardware IO on my tower or my laptop.  Any attempt at external IO will involve more hardware than there is on the PI, in total.

If I want to play with machine vision on a movable robot, the tower is pretty useless.  I have seen people use a laptop for this application but that was years ago, pre-PI.

Another SBC that is interesting is the NVIDIA Jetson Nano.  What these folks are doing with the CUDA units is amazing.  One of these days I'm going to buy one of their high end graphics cards just for the CUDA and Tensor units.

For those who are down on Raspberry PIs, why not just use the competitor's products?  Why all the whining and sniveling?

A company called Adapteva had an interesting board (parallella) that included an FPGA and a RISC processor with 16 cores (not the most impressing one that Adapteva was able to manufacture according to their website). Unluckily they didn’t release any improved version of that computer
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #22 on: September 23, 2021, 09:10:45 pm »
Start with the application requirements and work back to the device.

Ok here's an application I used them for. 6 channel "cable headend in a box" for simulating old style TV channels on vintage TV sets. Requirement is 6 composite video streams, priced at <$30/channel including storage. Low power is very important, as there's 6 of them, very small size also important, they need to fit in a rack of mini RF modulators. Must have readily available free software that will do what I want to do, I'm not a software developer and didn't want to waste time developing something. Low cost is the absolute top priority after being capable of doing the basic job.

Here's another application, Plex media streaming client, max cost $50, must fit inside an existing ~6"x4" enclosure from an obsolete streaming device. Onboard network, WiFi and HDMI a must, as is availability of a SPDIF output device for audio and ability to connect IR remote, max average power consumption 5W, must be silent and fanless, and again I don't want to develop any software, I just want to throw something together and have it work.

Another one: Mini desktop arcade game cabinet, must be able to run MAME and interface to small TFT or OLED display, max power consumption ~5W, "off the shelf" FOSS, I don't want to mess around with trying to develop software for it.

Home Assistant server, max cost $75 all in, including memory, storage and zigbee, average power consumption 5W max. Silent and fanless.

Interface between Davis weather station and internet, max cost $50, must have WiFi and run Weewx or other off the shelf FOSS, USB required for interface to weather console. (I'm using a Pi Zero W)

Connect to internet and parse RSS streams, displaying them on scrolling LED message board, off the shelf commodity hardware, mostly off the shelf free software, compact enough to fit behind the LED panels. Ability to either SSH or web interface to configure the device and update software remotely.

These are all real world applications either I or a personal friend are using RPis for, if you think you can come up with a solution for each of these that is equal or cheaper in cost, power consumption, physical space than a RPi then please clue us in. You might notice that in all of these applications, cost is the absolute #1 priority (these are all hobby projects), followed by power consumption and physical size. The Pi's have been at least as reliable for me as any other computing devices I own so that's total a non issue. The fact that you've seen someone use a RPi for something an AVR could do is irrelelvant, I've seen someone hammer in a nail with a pair of pliers, that doesn't mean pliers are useless junk. You're not going to stream MPG video on an AVR, and I think you'd be hard pressed to do any of these applications I've mentioned on any microcontroller without spending a great deal more time and or money and for what reason? A religious aversion to the RPi? To avoid imagined problems? How many RPis have you actually personally used that have had SD card failures? You seem to be really fixated on industrial/embedded/enterprise stuff where reliability is paramount, cost is no object and support is expensive and not grasp that there are millions of applications with different priorities. Decent quality SD cards work just fine as mass storage, I've had enough of them doing just that for long enough that it is a significant enough sample size for me.

Please do point me to all these bargain priced RPis flooding ebay because I can't find them, all I see is stuff like this https://www.ebay.com/itm/313677239921 which is an old model that is selling for more than the price of a brand new one, probably because the Pi3 has some advantages like lower power consumption.

Or this one https://www.ebay.com/itm/324799462677 that's what I'd consider a bargain at that price but it has 6 days left, it will go for more.

Model 2 is a bit cheaper, but this is like 8 years old. https://www.ebay.com/itm/274932788422
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #23 on: September 23, 2021, 09:22:30 pm »
Where do you want me to send the consultancy invoice?  :-DD

Only joking. Will reply when I get a few minutes.
 

Offline rstofer

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Re: Pi "foundation" gets fatter
« Reply #24 on: September 23, 2021, 09:27:10 pm »
A company called Adapteva had an interesting board (parallella) that included an FPGA and a RISC processor with 16 cores (not the most impressing one that Adapteva was able to manufacture according to their website). Unluckily they didn’t release any improved version of that computer
If they can actually do 1000 Tflops, they blow the doors off the NVIDIA RTX3090 which can only do about 35.6 Tflops of 32 bit floating point or 147 Tflops of 16 bit floating point.  With that much horsepower, I wonder just how long it would take to factor a large number.  A thousand or so cards working together might make it a lot faster than advertised.

I tried the store but the web site is dead in the water.

We got to the Moon with machines capable of a couple of mega flops.  Of course, the CDC 6400 (and its cousins) had a 60 bit word size.

10,490 CUDA Cores in the RTX3090 will still make an impression when training a neural network.  I'm not up to speed with what to do with 328 Tensor Cores.

Next time I have $1500 to blow on a graphics card...

 


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