The Orange Pi 5: a Fast Alternative To The Raspberry Pi 4 (phoronix.com) 81
"With an 8-core Rockchip RK3588S SoC, the Orange Pi 5 is leaps and bounds faster than the aging Raspberry Pi 4," writes Phoronix:
With up to 32GB of RAM, the Orange Pi 5 is also capable of serving for a more diverse user-base and even has enough potential for assembling a budget Arm Linux developer desktop. I've been testing out the Orange Pi 5 the past few weeks and it's quite fast and nice for its low price point.
The Orange Pi 5 single board computer was announced last year and went up for pre-ordering at the end of 2022.... When it comes to the software support, among the officially available options for the Orange Pi 5 are Orange Pi OS, Ubuntu, Debian, Android, and Armbian. Other ARM Linux distributions will surely see varying levels of support while even the readily available ISO selection offered by Orange Pi is off to a great start....
Granted, the Orange Pi developer community isn't as large as that of the Raspberry Pi community or the current range of accessories and documentation, but for those more concerned about features and performance, the Orange Pi 5 is extremely interesting.
The article includes Orange Pi 5 specs:
The Orange Pi 5 single board computer was announced last year and went up for pre-ordering at the end of 2022.... When it comes to the software support, among the officially available options for the Orange Pi 5 are Orange Pi OS, Ubuntu, Debian, Android, and Armbian. Other ARM Linux distributions will surely see varying levels of support while even the readily available ISO selection offered by Orange Pi is off to a great start....
Granted, the Orange Pi developer community isn't as large as that of the Raspberry Pi community or the current range of accessories and documentation, but for those more concerned about features and performance, the Orange Pi 5 is extremely interesting.
The article includes Orange Pi 5 specs:
- A 26-pin header
- HDMI 2.1, Gigabit LAN, M.2 PCIe 2.0, and USB3 connectivity
- A Mali G510 MP4 graphics processor, "which has open-source driver hope via the Panfrost driver stack."
- Four different versions with 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB of RAM using LPDDR4 or LPDDR4X. "The Orange Pi 4GB retails for ~$88, the Orange Pi 5 8GB version retails for $108, and the Orange Pi 5 16GB version retails for $138, while as of writing the 32GB version wasn't in stock."
In 169 performance benchmarks (compared to Raspberry Pi 4 boards), "this single board computer came out to delivering 2.85x the performance of the Raspberry Pi 400 overall." And through all this the average SoC temperature was 71 degrees with a peak of 85 degrees — without any extra heatsink or cooling.
Experience (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking as someone who has used many of their previous products, I would not suggest betting the farm on this. OrangePi have, in the past, had a lot of power issues (as in, wanting to draw up to 4A from a standard USB port) as well as flaky corruption issues that have made them not a great choice.
Since swapping to NanoPi (using the NEO3 family) I have had far better stability and "doesn't cook itself"ness.
Re:Experience (Score:5, Informative)
To be fair, the Raspberry Pi is well know for power issues too. This is a curse of trying to run a SBC from a small underpowered USB outlet well before USB PD actually provided a standard way to supply such power.
Doesn't run Raspbian (Score:5, Informative)
If it doesn't run the same OS image as the Raspberry Pi and have the same API to the GPIOs (it doesn't) then it's not a Raspberry Pi alternative, it's just another single-board computer.
The Libre Le Potato is about as close as it gets to a Raspberry Pi -alternative-. Le Potato needs grub to boot (raspberry pi boots differently) but it can otherwise runs the same binary OS image. And you can make an SD card that you can shuttle back and forth.
Re:Doesn't run Raspbian (Score:4, Insightful)
If it doesn't run the same OS image as the Raspberry Pi and have the same API to the GPIOs (it doesn't) then it's not a Raspberry Pi alternative, it's just another single-board computer.
The Libre Le Potato is about as close as it gets to a Raspberry Pi -alternative-. Le Potato needs grub to boot (raspberry pi boots differently) but it can otherwise runs the same binary OS image. And you can make an SD card that you can shuttle back and forth.
For me, if it doesn't have a 40-pin connector, PoE pins, and MIPI DSI for a display (and, ideally, MIPI CSI for a camera), then it's not a Raspberry Pi alternative. Le Potato has only one out of five (no PoE, no DSI, no CSI, no 40-pin connector). Sadly, that means that there basically aren't any real alternatives other than *maybe* the still-vaporware BPI-M6 or various Rock Pi models. And even the latter require such jury rigging to get PoE because of different pin placement and the consistent unavailability of Rock Pi's PoE boards that they aren't particularly practical.
I'm eagerly awaiting the BPI-M6 to see if it is plausible.
Re: (Score:2)
Depending on what one needs it for. For example, for me, usually the most important part is the Ethernet port as I use them as mini-servers or mini-routers (built-in Ethernet port, USB Ethernet port and some sort of VPN). Earlier RPi models were fine, later ones are more expensive (and faster, which does not matter to me, usually the CPU is not the bottleneck).
Re: (Score:2)
no 40-pin connector
Le Potato has a 40 pin connector matching the pinout, board location and voltages for the Raspberry Pi's connector, with the intent of being compatible with the myriad Raspberry Pi Hats. Programmatic access to the GPIOs on the identical 40 pin connector is not quite the same. In particular, none of the deprecated methods for accessing Raspberry Pi GPIOs are supported.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, sorry, I got it confused with the one described here, which has a 26-pin connector. Still, without PoE pins fro the the Ethernet connector's center taps, it fails for a surprising number of use cases.
Supposedly Le Potato V2 will add PoE support, but that's also still vaporware, last I checked. And annoyingly, they reportedly also didn't put the PoE pins in the same place as Raspberry Pi. Why design something with meticulous compatibility on the 40-pin connector and then cut corners on the position o
Re: (Score:3)
Yep. That's why I described it as "about as close as it gets." To get much closer, the Raspberry Pi folks would have to authorized third parties to manufacture Raspberry Pis.
For PoE you can always buy a poe usb splitter. They sell starting at $9 on Amazon. Cheaper in quantity.
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. That's why I described it as "about as close as it gets." To get much closer, the Raspberry Pi folks would have to authorized third parties to manufacture Raspberry Pis.
The Rock Pi 4C+ is much closer. I'm pretty sure it meets all the requirements other than the PoE pin positioning being very wrong. Were it not for the fact that the long-pin version of their PoE board seems to not actually exist in the real world (and the short-pin version means you give up all your GPIO), it would be a good candidate, ignoring all the headaches from not supporting some Raspberry-Pi-specific GPIO libraries, inconsistent kernel support merging, etc. that seems to be common to pretty much
Re: (Score:2)
The Rock Pi 4C+ is much closer.
How do you figure? Best information I can get, the Rock Pi can't run native Raspberry Pi software images. The Libre Le Potato can; you just have to add the grub bootloader to the flash card.
Binary compatibility with the software image is the the top compatibility issue, followed by compatibility with the GPIO pins.
I am starting to see a few beefier ones now that do 4A, which is plausible.
Only the new 802.3at adapters and then only if your wiring is high enough gauge to support it, which not all network cables are. The 802.3af injectors can only produce 15.4 watts before cable loss
Re: (Score:3)
The Rock Pi 4C+ is much closer.
How do you figure? Best information I can get, the Rock Pi can't run native Raspberry Pi software images. The Libre Le Potato can; you just have to add the grub bootloader to the flash card.
Binary compatibility with the software image is the the top compatibility issue, followed by compatibility with the GPIO pins.
In terms of hardware feature equivalence, it is much closer. In terms of software, it is very different. The problem is, if you don't have the hardware you need, no amount of software compatibility will help, because you can't realistically redesign the board. By contrast, if the hardware is equivalent, you can change the software to make it compatible. So from my perspective, having all of the Raspberry Pi hardware features is way more important than boot image compatibility, though the latter is highl
Re: (Score:1)
But it's woefully underpowered in terms of CPU and memory, I'd love to upgrade but all the newer stuff has gone down the 26 pin route for no apparent reason. It's like they forgot that these boards are for hobbyists and electronic developers, and not just for someone wanting a computer on a small footprint.
Re: (Score:2)
If you think that's bad, try a Banana Pi. No power issues, but the documentation is, to say it friendly, spotty. And about as informative as reading the Pravda, i.e. some is true and some is not.
Had tried it once (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Had the same problem, and I was using specially designed 5v 6A USB supplies (and tested them at their rated draw, they were solid).
I moved to NanoPi instead and have had no such problems.
There's a big container here somewhere with OrangePi units in it and I glare at it every morning before appreciating my NanoPi cluster.
Re:Had tried it once (Score:4, Funny)
Instability due to seemingly random power draw led to frustration that never ended. Switched back to RaspberryPi, rock solid. So, thanks, but no thanks.
Was is the Orange Pi 5 or a previous Orange Pi N with N strictly smaller than 5?
Re: (Score:2)
For what it's worth my OPi5 hasn't had any power draw issues that I know of, even when running on a USB cable plugged into another computer, and running HDMI to a 2k monitor. I've not done anything serious with it yet, and I have some heat sinks I want to stick on the chips because some cooling is definitely required for serious use.
Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't it a RaspberryPi that would be rebooted by a flash going off? Glass houses and so on.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The problem with the Raspberry Pi though is for all intents and purposes it just doesn't exist.
Unless you're willing to pay 3x RRP from scalpers then it's an absolute dead end. They've not been able to stock it in years for average consumers. You can make it your full time job to watch rpilocator for stock of course, or you could just use an alternative and actually get on with building your project for likely a significant fraction of the scalper prices you'll have to pay. Even on the rare off chance stock
Re: Had tried it once (Score:2)
You can also place an order on Digi-Key and wait. Retail price, no scalpers, but you wait a while.
Missing the point (Score:1, Insightful)
Raspberry Pi wasn't ever meant to be just fast. It was supposed to be cheap (35 dollars vs 90ish matches performance per dollar to this) and easy to hack. Add to that a huge community, and it's clear why most people wanting to just tinker around and try things are staying Raspberry.
Re:Missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)
Raspberry, like Arm, are British companies and have the associated dickhole-ness [...] There are a ton of proprietary tweaks on the Pi
Apparently, you don't understand the "market" they are in. The reason why the Raspberry Pi came about in the first place was because the founders thought the computing industry lacked an entry level computing device to cheaply learn the basics of modular electronic devices. The trend to have "high powered" SoC device boards is merely a money making opportunity in an extremely niche market.
Their dickishness comes from depending on thieving Chinese to "assemble" those boards "cheaply", and those undisclosed proprietary tweaks are the only way ARM can maintain their presence, until their Chinese counterparts completely copy every aspect of those boards, and then put out their knockoff boards at a cheaper price, without having invested in its development costs. But a commie like you apparently doesn't understand how unregulated capitalism works.
Re: (Score:3)
Their dickishness comes from depending on thieving Chinese to "assemble" those boards "cheaply", and those undisclosed proprietary tweaks are the only way ARM can maintain their presence, until their Chinese counterparts completely copy every aspect of those boards, and then put out their knockoff boards at a cheaper price, without having invested in its development costs. But a commie like you apparently doesn't understand how unregulated capitalism works.
The problem is that because we don't have knock-offs of Raspberry Pi available for next to nothing like you with Arduino, when Raspberry Pi Ltd. got into trouble with manufacturing volume, there were no near-exact knock-offs available that could be used as an alternative, so when they shifted all of their manufacturing to commercial customers, people like you and me and educational customers were shut out of the market entirely.
IMO, as long as Raspberry Pi Ltd. tries to be a commercial entity, Raspberry Pi
Re: (Score:2)
True dat.
Re: (Score:2)
I totally agree and feel the pain of the current non-availability of Raspberry Pi's. It is *really* frustrating.
But I guess the current situation was rather difficult to
Proprietary tweaks? (Score:2)
The full schematics are published. What can possibly be proprietary? The chips use some binary blob drivers but that’s about the extent. You can always go with a fully open source cpu like RISC-V.
Re: (Score:3)
It was also supposed to be readily available, which has always been a problem with the Raspberry Pi. It always seems to be out of stock when you order one from retail channels, meaning that you probably have to pay twice as much to a scalper if you want one right now.
I won't accept COVID supply issues as an excuse for that anymore, as it's been an ongoing issue since the original Pi launched.
It's also about the software (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Very much this. This is the absolute biggest drawback to any ARM SBC other than Pi, and the OPi5i s no different. Unfortunately it also appears RISC V SBCs will be no better.
Wake me up when I can boot stock Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora on an ARM SBC. Then the support issue because a mostly non-issue because it will be a matter of distro and kernel support for a CPU type, not a vendor who has moved on to the next shiny thing. ARM SBC vendors have created a lot of e-waste over the years. I have a draw full o
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Wake me up when I can boot stock Debian, Ubuntu, or Fedora on an ARM SBC.
You do realize that Debian, Ubuntu, & Fedora isn't designed to operate in 512MB of RAM? Making those distros work on an SoC ARM requires incorporating a lot of compromises which has to be done by someone much brighter than you. Perhaps you're not even aware that code on a different chip architecture does things a different way, and that's why you can't boot Intel machine code on an ARM device.
Customer support costs money, and there's not a lot of it available for a $35 USD device. Besides, with an En
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize that Debian, Ubuntu, & Fedora isn't designed to operate in 512MB of RAM?
The smallest real Raspberry Pi board (ignoring things like the Pico) has 1 GB, and most have 2 GB or more. That's true for most of the other devices in this space, too. Why would anyone shave just pennies off the BOM cost to produce something that is far less useful?
Re: (Score:2)
You do realize the OPi5 has 4-32GB of RAM right?
Besides that fact, Debian very much is designed to and can run on 512MB ram. For that matter so can Fedora if it's headless.
You completely misunderstood my comment. I'm not referring to customer support either from the distro maker or the hardware maker. I'm referring to standardization. Standard boot loaders, hardware trues, and storage support. You know like what EFI provides linux on x86.
Furthermore such standardization reduces the costs of support to the
Re: (Score:2)
I'm referring to standardization. Standard boot loaders, hardware trues, and storage support. You know like what EFI provides linux on x86.
Why do you believe manufacturers would waste their profit margin on adding hardware (thus cost) in order to conform to an arbitrary boot loading standard biased towards Intel architecture?
>Furthermore such standardization reduces the costs of support to the vendor because they no longer have to build custom kernels and make special distros.
You're not getting it. Standardization costs money to achieve. ARM doesn't standardize on a competitor's hardware any more than Intel standardizes on a competitor's
Re: (Score:2)
Who said anything about adding hardware? You're not getting it either.
All I can say is without standardization, neither ARM no RISC V will ever make any progress against the Intel hegemony, especially in the Linux world. Yet many people would like an energy-efficient competitor to intel.
Sure the Pi has its place in the embedded world. But even there it's hobbled by requiring custom kernels, custom distros, etc. I think it's odd how much apologetics goes towards this problem.
Outside of embedded space (and
Re: (Score:2)
Who said anything about adding hardware? You're not getting it either.
No, you're not getting it. How do you think interfaces are devised? Its based on the hardware its communicating to. Either you're writing software/microcode to unique hardware, which then has to bloat to conform to an abstract standardization model, or you have to put in circuits (make hardware) to do it the same way. Standardization for standardization's sake will make manufacturers broke. They make their money by making a component 1/10th of a cent cheaper, and then lining up manufacturers that will
Re: (Score:2)
Re: It's also about the software (Score:2)
Indeed - I have run Linux in 4MB!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've run a "full-on distro" (think it was SLS, installed from a binder full of 5.25" floppies) in 4 MB of RAM, with an X server and everything (think I was using twm with it). It was on a 386SX with 120 MB of disk and 4 MB of RAM, and it was probably the better part of 30 years ago now, but it was doable...even usable, as I recall, at least by the standards of the time.
Re: (Score:2)
If one skips the GUI, none of those distros would have any difficulty running in 512MB of RAM.
What would be OP's point in insisting on a conventional linux distribution, if he couldn't get work done conveniently in 512MB of RAM? For all we know, being able to run a graphical web browser might be his "requirement" in order to use a raspberry pi.
You're talking to a guy who once worked using a Sparcstation LX, which only came (stock) with 16MB of RAM; Xwindows with an OpenLook(?) GUI (windowing manager, if I remember my terminology correctly).
People here seem to give the impression that the primary pu
Re: (Score:2)
Whether the purpose of the Pi is to be a desktop replacement (and yes it was marketed as this back in the day) or as an embedded electronics workhorse, or even as an educational tool, being able to boot stock mainline kernels is absolutely the best course for everyone.
Having to use special distros and special kernels with the Pi and other boards is a real liability long term.
As for intel replacements, Pine64 has tried to build a business around using ARM as an Intel replacement, which as you say, is silly a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The reason I chose my sentence was to convey a concept which (almost) everyone understands, which is that distributions are designed for much more "powerful" and resource abundant hardware than a raspberry pi. Of course you can get a working popular linux distribution working in 512MB of RAM; it just works like crap once the computing tasks exceeds its 512MB RAM usage. That's why I brought up the example of the Sparcstation LX with 16MB of RAM. If you want to distort my statements to imply something I wa
Spend more money, get more power, okay. (Score:1)
The RaspberryPI is built to price.
Obviously you can get more power if you're willing to spend 2x-3x the price.
It's not an alternative, it's an entirely different product with entirely different goals.
The biggest reason the PI is lagging on CPU power is because of heat. It needs to run reliably even with passive cooling. A more powerful device is going to need a spinning fan to keep cool and that's a moving part that can and will fail.
Re: (Score:3)
Isn't the whole thing that RPis just aren't available at reasonable prices? Then it seems reasonable to pay a bit more for a more capable solution than paying scalping prices.
Re: (Score:3)
The RaspberryPI is built to price.
Which is coming down again, but has been exorbitant for several years and still is.
Obviously you can get more power if you're willing to spend 2x-3x the price.
Yep. But you can also get lots more power while spending less. For example, the Orange Pi Zero is scads more powerful than the "comparable" Raspberry Pi, and half the price.
The biggest reason the PI is lagging on CPU power is because of heat. It needs to run reliably even with passive cooling. A more powerful device is going to need a spinning fan to keep cool and that's a moving part that can and will fail.
Not in /my/ experience. Again, looking at the OPi Zero, it's more powerful than the RPi Zero, and nearly as powerful as the 3B and 4, and both runs and idles /much/ cooler. Even under some not-inconsiderable (computational) load and some moderate GPio load
Been using one for a while (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure what the other posters talking about power fluctuations have actually used the Orange Pi 5. I'm running mine currently headless, using an 802.3af power adapter. Haven't had any power fluctuations. In that sense it works fine and I don't see any problems replacing a Raspberry Pi with this.
The OPi5 can boot sd card, USB, or M.2 SSD. It's fairly easy to install Armbian or Ubuntu to the SSD (and performance is as good as PC), although it's not a simple process. OpenGL support is possible but requires using some random guy's fork of Mesa through a PPA. Sound over HDMI is also possible, but again requires some custom forked packages that can cause dependency problems. However with them the OPi5 can run a modern GUI desktop quite such as Gnome 3, KDE, Mate or Cinnamon quite well. It's at least as fast as my five year old desktop PC. And with 8 GB of RAM or more it's no slouch.
However all ARM SBCs I've ever bought left me with a vague sense of disappointment, and this one is no different. The RK3588 cpu is not yet mainlined in the kernel, so you can't just build your own kernels, or use the latest stock kernels from Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. So I'm stuck with the kernel that OPi shipped with their Ubuntu image. The graphics driver situation is not great either. Like I said it works with a random guy's fork of Mesa. Apparently he's rather hostile to the Mesa developers and I'm not sure when official Mesa will support the Mali 610 GPU. The forked packages he provides caused me several dependency issues with Ubuntu since he does not quite keep it up to date with the Ubuntu packages, so apt won't install some packages related to gstreamer that I needed.
Finally the nail in the coffin for me using the OPi5 as a desktop was that I need x86 binary support for a couple of proprietary applications I need to run under wine for configuring and controlling some devices I work with. Box64 and Box86 are pretty close to working for this (and fast), but alas with the latest version of wine they fail completely. Once Box64 and Box86 can run the apps I need, then there's no reason I can't use ARM. Rosetta can be run under Linux and it will work on non-Apple CPUs, but there's no legal way to do that.
I keep hoping that one day ARM will get its stuff together and let me stick in a stock Fedora, Ubuntu, or Debian installer usb and install a standard kernel and have a good experience. But I don't see this ever happening. And even worse, Risc-V is no better.
Re:Been using one for a while (Score:5, Informative)
Take a look at the unofficial UEFI firmware for the RPi 4 [github.com]: it lets you do exactly that. I have one running plain arm64 Debian, installed using the official Debian installer. No special boot images or unofficial repos needed. (I'm using it headless, though, so I don't know whether standard Debian includes GPU drivers for the RPi 4.)
Despite being called "firmware", btw, you don't have to flash anything: it loads from a FAT partition on your SD card or USB disk. So, it's pretty low-risk to try it out; you're not going to brick anything. (The default, non-UEFI "firmware" works the same way. There's some early-stage ROM firmware that implements FAT support to load the main firmware from disk.)
(Note that the RPi4 has no NVRAM, so firmware configuration settings are stored in a file on that same FAT partition. Upgrades can reset the configuration to defaults due to overwriting the file. Not a big problem, just something to be aware of if you change any firmware settings, e.g. to disable the default 3GB RAM limit.)
Re: (Score:3)
That's awesome! All arm sbcs need to support a compatible UEFI firmware. I don't want to run armbian, or any custom distribution and custom kernel. I want to run a mainline distro and run the same image on all my devices just like I do with x86.
TBH the performance is fine (Score:1)
I really don't have any complaints about the processing grunt of the RPi for any of the IOT tasks I've used 'em for. In fact, the Zero W has met the requirements of most of what I've tinkered with, and the RPi4 actually seems a bit overkill. My only real complaint about the RPi is the damn shortage and that I refuse to pay scalper prices for them.
Re: (Score:2)
The OPi5 is not in the same field as the Zero, nor intended for the same purpose. In many ways, they OPi5 is gunning to be a desktop-capable board, to run a kiosk, or even a workstation. And for me it nearly succeeded at that. However in the end it's going to end up running as a headless server for me, so in that it's only an overpriced Raspberry Pi. But it does have a lot more CPU, RAM, and storage than the Pi, so as a server it should have some serious muscle.
cheap vSphere/vSAN cluster? (Score:2)
Orange Pi? Nope. (Score:3)
Bought one of these years ago when it had just shipped. Overheating problems almost as bad as BeagleBone AI, buggy drivers or no drivers, old versions of linux, support stopped in less than a year... Won't repeat, sorry.
$150 is not an alternative (Score:2)
Why can't companies play to their strengths rather than trying to compare themselves to something they are realistically nothing like. Congrats you built a SBC. When you do it for $40 (and have supply issues) then you can compare yourself to the Raspberry Pi.
Re: (Score:2)
The Raspberry Pi 4 is not $40.
I found the 1 GB version for $160, while a 4GB kit is at $240 in my go-to online shop.
Re: (Score:2)
The Raspberry Pi 4 is not $40.
I found the 1 GB version for $160, while a 4GB kit is at $240 in my go-to online shop.
Your personal inability to find right at this moment from your very sources the RPi4 for $40 has zero relevance to the RRP. I got one for $40 before the supply crisis. The RRP is that low, meaning after the supply crisis it will go back to being $40. On the flip side the RRP of the OrangePi is well over $100.
They are not in the same class or price category, stop pretending they are simply because they are out of stock for you right now.
Need something with good ML acceleration (Score:2)
Imho the future is with edge machine learning. With hackers getting the llama models (which if upgraded with the stanford stuff and some good prompt design make a respectable ChatGPT clone) I can see theres going to be a push into "actually" smart devices. Talkie toasters, devices that can actually make "decisions". Whats missing is portable tinkerer devices with decent tensor accelorators that can actually run the models.
That combined with the usual ML box of tricks (finding patterns in sensors etc) you ca
If its CPU benchmark speed you want ... (Score:2)
But for me, the power of the CPU and/or the amount of RAM (above a few GB) is immaterial. What makes Pi''s uniquely usable are the hardware interface pins and all the libraries for peripherals that use them.
85C is too hot (Score:2)
Yes, itll work, but dont expect it to last. And once you put it in some embedded enclosure it'll simply cook itself. We had this issue with the Pi4. Worked fine on the desk, but it inside some equipment and it was soon throttling and one of them failed altogether
Re: (Score:2)
A pity (Score:2)
RK3588-based SBCs would have been great about . . . two years ago? At least that's now long some people have been waiting for something like this. But not as a replacement for a Pi4 (per se).
Nowadays it almost makes more sense to get a Qualcomm WARM machine and try booting Linux on that instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Two years on and still no mainline kernel support yet. This is one of the biggest problems with ARM. And it appears to me that RISC V is going to be no different. It's discouraging to say the least. I keep watching Pine64 and their neat devices, but alas I can never buy one because I know I'll be disappointed yet again.
We'll have to see what happens when Windows on ARM becomes more common if perhaps that kind of standardization will make it easier for Linux to support it. I suspect that currently Linux
Re: (Score:2)
Eww, didn't know the bootloaders were locked. Can you at least run a vm?
The major appeal of the RK3588 was getting a proper armv8 home machine for code profiling on hardware of a generation newer than A72. There are and have been plenty of A72-based SBCs. But never anything A76/A78/etc.
The horsepower is not an issue (Score:2)
Is it image compatible? (Score:2)
Can I run a Raspberry Pi image on it? If no, why bother.
The big advantage of the Raspberry Pi is that it's a fairly stable hwardware platform. That means that whatever your favourite operating system or Linux distribution is, it's likely to run on most Raspberry Pis.
Alternative? But it's 3x more expensive (Score:2)
Hot take: it's never news when a substantially more expensive computer is faster than a cheaper one.
The Orange 5 is not an alternative to the Pi. It's an alternative to other $100+ SBCs.
"The Ford F250 is so much more powerful than the Ranger!" isn't news -- it's a more expensive pickup, and of course it's bigger and has a bigger engine.
The scalper price is NOT the price range to aim at (Score:2)
Folks, I can't speak for everyone, but the first key selling point of a RasPi is price. Not feature list. Yes, you can't get a RPi4 for under 200 bucks today, but that doesn't mean that this is the price your "competitor" should be aiming for. How much would the OPi5 cost if it was unobtanium? 500 bucks?
If you want to show me a competitor for the RPi4, give me a SBC for under 70 bucks that matches its features. Then you have a competitor. Else you just have one 'til the prices return to a saner level, and e
Software support and ecosystem and reliability (Score:3)
I've tried OrangePi stuff once before.
Trying to use the wifi caused it to reboot; software support sucked, supplied Linux didn't work properly, supplied Android was terrible. And that was back when they were selling them. (This was back in 2017, and it was the "Orange Pi Lite with Quad Core 1.2GHz
512MB DDR3 WiFi Mini PC" Can someone point me to an up-to-date Linux for it?
Whereas current RaspberryPi OS is compatible with all Pi models (maybe you want 64bit with a Pi3 or Pi4). Software support matters, and without it the extra horsepower of the OrangePi stuff is useless. And for most of my uses I'm happier with my Pi2's which are less fussy about their power supply than the Pi3 and Pi4. (The Pi3 struggles with a supply other than the official one, whereas the Pi2 is happy with a typical 5V2.5A phone charger socket).
Maybe it's better, but frankly it costs more than I can get a refub old Thinkpad off eBay, and I find the latter (running Kubuntu) to be way more useful as computing devices. And if you want GPIO pins, then Pis and Arduinos are plenty (for many I/O uses, i.e. not running a desktop OS, a Pi1 is fast enough -- I still have my original 256MB Pi1, though I don't use it).
Re: (Score:2)
I totally agree that buying a used x86 machine for a desktop PC is going to be more cost effective and useful than an OPi5.
Wireless and ethernet both working great on the OPi5. Running Ubuntu 22.04. Kernel is a bit behind, though, 5.14 or something. Thanks to the proprietary nature of ARM chipsets, getting mainline support is an unending problem that ARM has no interest in solving.
The OPi5 can run a modern desktop like Gnome 3, KDE, Mate, or Cinnamon at the same speed you'd expect from a slightly older des
Amateurs.. lol (Score:1)
These posters on here are hilarious.
RPI is a joke.
I've stopped using them ever since they couldn't figure out simple logistics.
Orange Pi 5 is not only superior in every way, but it also has NPU, great Armbian support, NVMe speeds that are decent (the only thing faster is Rock 5B at the moment).
If you are going to make an argument for its downsides, you should be talking about the fact that it doesn't have 2.5G ethernet like Friendly Elec R6C does, or that Mali g610 drivers are run by some Chinese dude. Asid
Re: (Score:1)
An ADC/DAC is a bad example for a board of this size and capability.
You are conflating MCUs and real time embedded things like pico/STM32 and a full blown linux system capable of running any FOSS system in use today.
I use my RPI4/RPI Zero/OPI/Rock5B clusters for running Ceph, Postgres, Plex, nginx, Golang apps, k8s, etc services. These are powerful enough and yet power efficient to run 24/7 and provide value.
degrees? What are the units? (Score:2)
Get a mini-pc or NUC (Score:2)
If you're looking for computing power at a price, you can get a more powerful mini-pc for about the same price. Especially after adding a case, cooling, and power adapter to the Pi.
The only reason to go for a Pi is if you really need the GPIO pins, the tiny form factor, or lower power draw.
The problem with Raspberry Pi is Broadcom (Score:3)
The key reason for the shortages of Raspberry Pi products is their SoC supplier, Broadcom. That company is incapable of or unwilling to supply enough of the SoCs used in the Pi to meet demand.
The core business lines of Broadcom include 802.11 wireless modems and SoCs for routers. They have never been in the business of marketing general purpose SoCs for other products. Raspberry Pi ended up using them in their original product because Broadcom originally sold them the chips well below the company's usual pricing to assist their educational mission. (Broadcom also gave the Pi Foundation design support for the board.) After one run of a competing Kickstarter project, Broadcom refused to sell the BCM2835 SoC used on the original Raspberry Pi to other single board computer makers, and they have never offered the SoCs used in later Pi models on the open market.
Broadcom's product line has evolved in the direction of more integration for their core businesses like routers. The BCM2835 came at one moment of product integration, and Broadcom no longer makes anything comparable (an Arm SoC with lots of general I/O but no specialty features) for anything other than the Raspberry Pi products. The Pi chips are likely less profitable for Broadcom than their other product lines, so they're not really interested in diverting their leased fab capacity to make more of them. (Broadcom does not own any fabs.)
The supply issue is not about board manufacturing capacity; currently the boards are all being made in the UK facility, but if necessary they could partner with board makers in China again as they did in the past. There have likely been other component shortages as well, but the key one is the supply of Broadcom SoCs.
The missions of Broadcom and Raspberry Pi have now diverged sufficiently that I suspect the companies will stop working together in the future. The Raspberry Pi Foundation still claims to be about its educational mission, but currently most of their boards are going to OEMs that have designed them into their products rather than to the STEM educators and hobbyists they are supposed to be for, and those big OEM sales pay the bills so it won't change until they can increase supply. My guess is that the next generation of Raspberry Pi products will use chips designed by the Pi Foundation itself, and will be manufactured for them by TSMC just as their RP2040 microcontroller (the first chip designed by the Pi Foundation) already is. The challenge will be maintaining compatibility with the older products, because a Pi-designed processor will need new peripherals and possibly a different integrated GPU. (All Pi boards with a GPU use a VideoCore GPU from Broadcom; Pi could license that, license a Mali GPU from Arm, or go with something else.)
Issue in this space is availability (Score:2)
The biggest thing any pi alternative can have right now is the ability to actually order them right now, and some assurances that the supply chain will remain stable for a while.
In the current environment that is difficult for anyone to achieve, though having any sort of supply would put them ahead of the pi right now.