RPi 4 / STM32 / ESP32 / Teensy 4 / RISC-V GAZPACHO

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

With 1, 2 or 4GB RAM, for 35, 45 and 55 £ respectively, and

- 1 * Gigabit Ethernet
- 2 * HDMI ports (4k)
- 2 * USB3 ports
- 2 * USB2 ports
- WiFi + Bluetooth + etc as before.
- 1 * USB C for power in (OTG?) Draws ~ 13 Watts: 2.5 Amps @ 5V.

Who knows if all those USBs + the ethernet port are still hanging off a hub from a single USB port like in the old ones? The "schematics" are here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/schematics/README.md but don't help much because they're incomplete "(REDUCED)".

A video:




Edit: Sorry Dave, I read this too late: "Use the Embedded Computer section for single board computers like Raspberry Pi etc"

[Berni]

That is very nice!

From the benchmarks it looks like Ethernet now works at a full gigabit as advertised:
https://core-electronics.com.au/tutorials/raspberry-pi-4-vs-3-model-b-performance-benchmark.html

Something that most people glance over tho is the RAM upgrade. The older Pi 2 and 3 used DDR2 memory and the poor memory bandwidth on that made for pretty bad 2D performance of the GPU. The GPU inside of a pi is actually pretty fast, but asking it to just simply plonk down a few large textures makes it gasp for data trough the narrow bus to the RAM. Hopefully this should be less of a problem with the much more modern LPDDR4 memory.

I'm really not a fan of those micro HDMI connectors and i don't think many will need two display outputs so i would have rather seen them keep the single full sized HDMI.

[dr.diesel]

Although I understand their decisions, i was really hoping for an M.2 version on the P4!

But WooHoo on the 4G of DDR4!

[Monkeh]

Who knows if all those USBs + the ethernet port are still hanging off a hub from a single USB port like in the old ones? The "schematics" are here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/schematics/README.md but don't help much because they're incomplete "(REDUCED)".

Their blog post made it quite clear. The USB ports are all (except I think the USB-C as it's OTG) handled by a VLI controller hanging off PCIe, so no more crappy Broadcom USB, and the ethernet is a dedicated PHY for an internal MAC. Much improved, it's beginning to look like a real and usable computer. It's just missing a decent storage option now - a good EMMC would be fine..

[coppice]

I'm really not a fan of those micro HDMI connectors and i don't think many will need two display outputs so i would have rather seen them keep the single full sized HDMI.

I was skeptical of those micro HDMI connectors when I first saw them, but they seem to work pretty well on the numerous cameras which use them. You need to keep them clean, but they seem more robust than they look at first sight.

[mark03]

I wonder if they will finally transition the supported/approved OS to 64-bit?

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

Their blog post made it quite clear. The USB ports are all (except I think the USB-C as it's OTG) handled by a VLI controller hanging off PCIe, so no more crappy Broadcom USB, and the ethernet is a dedicated PHY for an internal MAC. Much improved, it's beginning to look like a real and usable computer. It's just missing a decent storage option now - a good EMMC would be fine..

What blog post, please?

I'd want eMMC and a RTC. And a power manager with lipo charger... Why did they swap the ethernet/usb positions on the PCB? And 13 watts are too many. All my RPis run headless, and they've put TWO HDMIs, cool, thank you very much. Meh. Do'h. Grr. LOL.

[ehughes]

Who knows if all those USBs + the ethernet port are still hanging off a hub from a single USB port like in the old ones? The "schematics" are here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/schematics/README.md but don't help much because they're incomplete "(REDUCED)".

RPi is an interesting datapoint for the OSHW zealots.     There has never been full schematics and you can't get a CPU manual (easily).   It has always been the darling of the maker community.

Cheap always wins.  Then comes usability (which it seems people will trade for cheap in the hobby market).     
In the end, no one really cares about "open".

[Monkeh]

Their blog post made it quite clear. The USB ports are all (except I think the USB-C as it's OTG) handled by a VLI controller hanging off PCIe, so no more crappy Broadcom USB, and the ethernet is a dedicated PHY for an internal MAC. Much improved, it's beginning to look like a real and usable computer. It's just missing a decent storage option now - a good EMMC would be fine..

What blog post, please?

Shockingly, https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/

I'd want eMMC and a RTC. And a power manager with lipo charger... Why did they swap the ethernet/usb positions on the PCB? And 13 watts are too many. All my RPis run headless, and they've put TWO HDMIs, cool, thank you very much. Meh. Do'h. Grr. LOL.

RTC would be good. They moved the ports for practicality.

[mark03]

RPi is an interesting datapoint for the OSHW zealots.     There has never been full schematics and you can't get a CPU manual (easily).   It has always been the darling of the maker community.

Indeed.  But the sad truth is that there aren't the open alternatives there once were.  After TI got out of the high-end applications-processor market the choice has come down to nasty US semi mfgs (Broadcom, Nvidia, ...) and cheap Chinese stuff (Rockchip, Allwinner).  Oddly, I do get the sense sometimes that the Chinese chips are a little more open, but usable documentation is generally lacking.

Maybe RISC-V will save us

[oPossum]

The USB ports are all handled by a VLI controller hanging off PCIe, so no more crappy Broadcom USB, and the ethernet is a dedicated PHY for an internal MAC. Much improved, it's beginning to look like a real and usable computer. It's just missing a decent storage option now - a good EMMC would be fine..

Crappy Broadcom USB replaced by crappy VLI USB. Still crappy.

Maybe Pi 5 will have Renesas USB and m.2

[mac.6]

RPi is an interesting datapoint for the OSHW zealots.     There has never been full schematics and you can't get a CPU manual (easily).   It has always been the darling of the maker community.

Indeed.  But the sad truth is that there aren't the open alternatives there once were.  After TI got out of the high-end applications-processor market the choice has come down to nasty US semi mfgs (Broadcom, Nvidia, ...) and cheap Chinese stuff (Rockchip, Allwinner).  Oddly, I do get the sense sometimes that the Chinese chips are a little more open, but usable documentation is generally lacking.

Maybe RISC-V will save us

You forgot i.MX family, no problem getting RM and git trees/mainline integration. Altough there are still binary blob GPU/VPU

[james_s]

Who knows if all those USBs + the ethernet port are still hanging off a hub from a single USB port like in the old ones? The "schematics" are here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberrypi/schematics/README.md but don't help much because they're incomplete "(REDUCED)".

RPi is an interesting datapoint for the OSHW zealots.     There has never been full schematics and you can't get a CPU manual (easily).   It has always been the darling of the maker community.

Cheap always wins.  Then comes usability (which it seems people will trade for cheap in the hobby market).     
In the end, no one really cares about "open".

Open is nice, but in the end I don't really care if it's completely open so long as it's open enough that I can make it do what I need. The RPi is perfect for all sorts of projects, I don't really care that it isn't fully open source because it's open enough and documented enough that I can tweak nearly anything I'd ever need to tweak. I'm not going to build my own variant anyway and frankly I think the fact that the community isn't fragmented into 500 different semi-compatible variants is a good thing. It's also already so cheap that I doubt anyone else would be able to under-cut them without serious cutting of corners. I'm happy to not have the market flooded with Pi knockoffs that may or may not work well. If it cost 2-3 times as much as it does then I'd be advocating for a cheaper open source alternative. Open hardware prevents price gouging by allowing competition and so far I haven't seen evidence of gouging with the Pi.

[NiHaoMike]

Their blog post made it quite clear. The USB ports are all (except I think the USB-C as it's OTG) handled by a VLI controller hanging off PCIe, so no more crappy Broadcom USB...

If it can do USB device and host at the same time (any confirmation if that's the case?), it looks like a great alternative to the Beaglebone Black for USB analysis. And either the USB 3.0 or Ethernet can send the traffic (at least up to USB 2.0) to an external storage device without any real problems.

[PCB.Wiz]

Has anyone seen speed specs for the IO connector ports.
It mentions up to 6 i2c and 6 UARTS, and 5 SPI, but is sparse on if those can run faster than Pi3 ?

[Siwastaja]

RPi is an interesting datapoint for the OSHW zealots.

Indeed, it's a very interesting case, it would be worth some historical/cultural research.

Raspberry Pi has absolutely nothing to do with open-source hardware, never did. The Raspi foundation are not even claiming that, it would be ridiculous. Quite the opposite, they use things like DRMs to close their product down. If anything, Raspi is the polar opposite of OSHW.

I do have an impression (but don't have the proof) that they originally did the guerilla marketing for the first model by injecting rumors about a new OSHW computer. This tactic was great, of course; the phrase still lives after a decade, and you don't need to actively lie, at least not using your own name.

Raspberry Pi Foundation has "blood" in their hands, they are partially responsible for destroying the concept of OSHW. Back in maybe 2005'ish, the word did have some meaning. Now "open source hardware" is nothing else but a marketing buzzword completely empty of any meaning, can be applied to any totally closed hardware product.

Basic IO pin mapping is not a schematic, it has to be provided for any embedded device to be useful, of course. So by using terminology like this, they are still actively lying.

Raspi4 is great news, we are offering the possibility of using either Raspi3 or Odroid XU4 in an embedded thing which requires quite some oomph to run its software. The idea was to both prevent vendor-lock-in, and to offer two different performance options at different prices. Now it seems the gap between them almost closes, so both options can offer almost the same performance. The only issue left is the SD card (Odroid has EMMC).

Why is this topic in the microcontroller section? We now have the very specific section for Raspberry Pi exactly.

[brucehoult]

RPi is an interesting datapoint for the OSHW zealots.     There has never been full schematics and you can't get a CPU manual (easily).   It has always been the darling of the maker community.

Indeed.  But the sad truth is that there aren't the open alternatives there once were.  After TI got out of the high-end applications-processor market the choice has come down to nasty US semi mfgs (Broadcom, Nvidia, ...) and cheap Chinese stuff (Rockchip, Allwinner).  Oddly, I do get the sense sometimes that the Chinese chips are a little more open, but usable documentation is generally lacking.

Maybe RISC-V will save us

Maybe, but any cheapish RISC-V board you see in the next 12-24 months will be around Pi 3+ or Odroid C2 A53 performance. No one has yet even announced anything at A72 levels.

[brucehoult]

Maybe, but any cheapish RISC-V board you see in the next 12-24 months will be around Pi 3+ or Odroid C2 A53 performance. No one has yet even announced anything at A72 levels.

Since you are in the trade, do you happen to know if some huge players like Huawei or Samsung will roll some wicked powerful Risc V chips in near future?

If they were, they wouldn't tell us :-)

If Huawei needs to replace their current Kirin application processors, no one has RISC-V cores in that class yet. And Kirin is (so far) using purely off the shelf ARM cores, unlike Exynos or SnapDragon or Apple An where companies have developed their own cores in at least some recent cases.

Huawei has developed their own ARMv8.2 core for the new Kunpeng 920 64 core chip.

I've seen some Chinese news sites speculate that as Huawei bought a perpetual ARM Architecture License they may be able to continue developing their own ARMv8.2 (if not later) chips as long as they want, even with bans.

If not, their fastest route to a similar performance RISC-V would be to just swap out the ARM instruction decoder in the Kunpeng for a RISC-V instruction decoder -- a task simple enough that amateurs have been doing this with things such as the LEON SPARC core to make ReonV. Most of the back end register and pipeline stuff could remain unchanged at first -- the biggest essential change would be adding support for RISC-V's "compare and branch" instructions, though a temporary hack could be to expand those to two uops in the decoder.

They could then incrementally strip out all the stuff that RISC-V doesn't use, to save power and area. The condition codes would be the first to go :-)

One difficulty is they'll need some equivalent for NEON, which RISC-V doesn't yet have standardised. They could come up with some custom RISC-V opcodes that hook up to the existing NEON hardware, but long term they'll want to implement the RISC-V V extension. Well, with Huawei's resources "long term" should mean "12 months" or less. I don't know if they had any plans to implement SVE, but if so then making that do RVV instead would not be difficult.

[Kjelt]

Indeed.  But the sad truth is that there aren't the open alternatives there once were.  After TI got out of the high-end applications-processor market the choice has come down to nasty US semi mfgs (Broadcom, Nvidia, ...) and cheap Chinese stuff (Rockchip, Allwinner). 

missed that one, so TI is out, does that mean no more possible new beaglebone developments ?

[GeorgeOfTheJungle]

I've seen some Chinese news sites speculate that as Huawei bought a perpetual ARM Architecture License they may be able to continue developing their own ARMv8.2 (if not later) chips as long as they want, even with bans.

What bans? You mean USA bans? I think a rich japanese dude bought ARM, no? In any case, ARM was british, wasn't it? Sorry if I'm being dense :-)

[Kjelt]

Broadcom and Chinese chips manufacturers are willing to sell chips at silicon cost plus ARM core cost and a diminishing margin, with all peripherals designed in-house to reduce the last fraction of cent on IP licensing.

The one and only time I dealt with Broadcom was a couple of years back.
They were developing a new Arm based chip for a networkswitch and we discussed to add some options so it would be usable for our products as well.
The price they named in the first meetings was droolingly low, with a few 100k quantity it was  about a fourth of what an off the shelf chip from ST would cost in millions quantity and the Broadcom was faster more memory etc. However there were many issues, even with NDA you don't get all the info, you're code is locked to that chip (peripherals API) so you are dependent on them forbthe next product. And after a few additions from our sides their first quote already doubled and we are not talking about big add ons, just some few extra peripherals.
It would not surprise me if they have a strategy to hook on new customers with low prices and after the customer built their product the prices will increase etc. but I can not be sure since that deal bounced on the ever increasing costs and difficult communication (one meeting it was yes, the bext it was no, then yes etc.)

[HoracioDos]

I wonder if they will finally transition the supported/approved OS to 64-bit?

Still 32 bits. Raspbian Buster needs to be backwards compatible with older pi versions. Raspbian (32 bits) can address up to 4Gb. There is no need to change to 64 bits

[NiHaoMike]

Still 32 bits. Raspbian Buster needs to be backwards compatible with older pi versions. Raspbian (32 bits) can address up to 4Gb. There is no need to change to 64 bits

Could they do autoselection of 32 or 64 bit kernel while the userspace remains 32 bit? By understanding of that arrangement is that individual processes are still limited to 4GB, but combined they can use as much as the system has. (And tmpfs, being kernel level, would also not be subject to that limit.)
https://hackaday.com/2019/06/25/is-4gb-the-limit-for-the-raspberry-pi-4/
I wonder if there were plans to release an 8GB version, but delayed due to software not being ready to use it.

The Pi Zero and Zero W are really what's holding back a full 64 bit distribution. Perhaps it's time to make a branch for Pi 3 and newer and a legacy branch for everything else?

[brucehoult]

I've seen some Chinese news sites speculate that as Huawei bought a perpetual ARM Architecture License they may be able to continue developing their own ARMv8.2 (if not later) chips as long as they want, even with bans.

Yes and no. They have perpetual ARMv8 architecture license, but if the ban continues, they won't be able to get new official cores like A77. So A76 would be their last core licensed directly from ARM reference design.

I know that. I was talking about developing their own cores, as they have done with Kunpeng.

[brucehoult]

I've seen some Chinese news sites speculate that as Huawei bought a perpetual ARM Architecture License they may be able to continue developing their own ARMv8.2 (if not later) chips as long as they want, even with bans.

What bans? You mean USA bans? I think a rich japanese dude bought ARM, no? In any case, ARM was british, wasn't it? Sorry if I'm being dense :-)

Whatever you may personally think about ARM's ownership and who has influence over them, they seem to think they need to stop dealing with Huawai:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14373/report-arm-suspends-business-with-huawei