Raspberry Pi 4 Thread - general discussion

[PeterO]

I just noticed the supported open GLES version has gone up to 3.0
PeterO

[Fleshreaper]

Hoping someone makes a reasonably priced laptop shell for this. The performance is getting to a usable level for a light laptop now.

[fruitoftheloom]

Hoping someone makes a reasonably priced laptop shell for this. The performance is getting to a usable level for a light laptop now.

PiTop will likely be your best option, but cheap, not likely.

Very basic Windows 10 Netbook or a Chromebook £150.00+

[Gavinmc42]

I was totally out in the predicted Pi4 time frame but got close to guessing the rest
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... n#p1141774

Two HDMIs, did anyone predict that?

Q1) Are we going to get a peak at all that engineering work that went into the VC6 and BCM2811?
Q2) How much was Broadcom and how much was RPT?

Brain dump, insert marker here #VC6 , google will find this 6 months from now as a reminder to check
Time to drag out Arm's Compute library and do a recompile with OpenCL now?
Wonder how much improvement we will get for OpenCL AI/ML/NN coding?

[spock]

Functionally, eMMC is identical to SD cards (same bus protocol) it's just soldered to board, instead of being in a slot.

how is soldering on flash memory a good idea? sounds horrible to me if you have to throw away your computer just because the flash chip had too many rewrites.

[laurent]

Functionally, eMMC is identical to SD cards (same bus protocol) it's just soldered to board, instead of being in a slot.

how is soldering on flash memory a good idea? sounds horrible to me if you have to throw away your computer just because the flash chip had too many rewrites.

It is mandatory on some markets. Connectors are costly, and exposes to potential mechanical issues. The best practice for industrial applications is to avoid writes on flash as much as possible.

[jamesh]

I was totally out in the predicted Pi4 time frame but got close to guessing the rest
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... n#p1141774

Two HDMIs, did anyone predict that?

Q1) Are we going to get a peak at all that engineering work that went into the VC6 and BCM2811?
Q2) How much was Broadcom and how much was RPT?

Brain dump, insert marker here #VC6 , google will find this 6 months from now as a reminder to check
Time to drag out Arm's Compute library and do a recompile with OpenCL now?
Wonder how much improvement we will get for OpenCL AI/ML/NN coding?

1) Doubt it, that would require spending time which is in short supply, and probably much is confidential.
2) Some and some.

[okenido]

Hi,
I have a product using the raspberry 3B+ with bare metal code... I'm using quite a lot of things currently : MMU, NEON SIMD, I2C, I2S, framebuffer access (software rendering), USB mass storage, EMMC read/write access, interrupts...
How hard would it be to get it running on the raspberry 4 ? I'm wondering how compatible is the new SoC relative to the previous one.

[laurent]

Congratulations to the Pi staff for this work, and many many thanks for this brand new Pi !!!
I have so many questions but I have no doubt they will find answers soon - the best is coming.

I'm glad that so many user requests are satisfied in this new Pi, I wonder how user's feedback are took in account in the design of any new Pi ?

it's fun that a feature I was expected for the 3A (OTG and power on the same plug) is now on the 4B ( https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 4#p1403416 )

Thanks to the staff, which is very present on the forum, that's directly contributes to the community strength. Their presence is precious and plenty count in the educational purpose of the foundation.

[hojnikb]

Functionally, eMMC is identical to SD cards (same bus protocol) it's just soldered to board, instead of being in a slot.

how is soldering on flash memory a good idea? sounds horrible to me if you have to throw away your computer just because the flash chip had too many rewrites.

Well, every smarthphone, tablet uses that exact type of memory and you dont exactly see mass defects because of that. If properly designed, its a non issue. Good wearlevelling and ECC and ill take 10s terabytes of rewrites to exhaust p/e cycles.

As in the case of rpi, its even better. Stick a eMMC module and set boot priority as last. If for some reason emmc ever dies, you can still stick a flash drive or sd card and boot off that, just as you could till now. It's really no reason why rpi shouldnt offer this as an optional extra.

[jamesh]

Functionally, eMMC is identical to SD cards (same bus protocol) it's just soldered to board, instead of being in a slot.

how is soldering on flash memory a good idea? sounds horrible to me if you have to throw away your computer just because the flash chip had too many rewrites.

Well, every smarthphone, tablet uses that exact type of memory and you dont exactly see mass defects because of that. If properly designed, its a non issue. Good wearlevelling and ECC and ill take 10s terabytes of rewrites to exhaust p/e cycles.

As in the case of rpi, its even better. Stick a eMMC module and set boot priority as last. If for some reason emmc ever dies, you can still stick a flash drive or sd card and boot off that, just as you could till now. It's really no reason why rpi shouldnt offer this as an optional extra.

eMMC is a nightmare of pain to implement (HW and SW) and costs a lot. We are more than happy with the SD card approach. It's cheaper, easier to use, and easy to fix when it breaks.

[jamesh]

I'm glad that so many user requests are satisfied in this new Pi, I wonder how user's feedback are took in account in the design of any new Pi ?

TBH, we are all aware of the limitation of the products we sell, so a lot of the features added were pretty obvious, and were considered 3 years or so ago when the chip was architected (yes, it does take that long!). These were clear from the outset - more memory, faster I/O, HEVC support, 4k output support, better USB hardware (the USB on the previous SoC's required a lot of TLC). Faster 3D was a given as the VC5/6 were already designed.

So it actually unusual for user feedback to highlight anything we hadn't already thought of, but I do pass on anything that I see that is new and interesting.

[hojnikb]

how is soldering on flash memory a good idea? sounds horrible to me if you have to throw away your computer just because the flash chip had too many rewrites.

Well, every smarthphone, tablet uses that exact type of memory and you dont exactly see mass defects because of that. If properly designed, its a non issue. Good wearlevelling and ECC and ill take 10s terabytes of rewrites to exhaust p/e cycles.

As in the case of rpi, its even better. Stick a eMMC module and set boot priority as last. If for some reason emmc ever dies, you can still stick a flash drive or sd card and boot off that, just as you could till now. It's really no reason why rpi shouldnt offer this as an optional extra.

eMMC is a nightmare of pain to implement (HW and SW) and costs a lot. We are more than happy with the SD card approach. It's cheaper, easier to use, and easy to fix when it breaks.

just curious what kind of software does eMMC need, that isnt already there for sd cards?

[k-pi]

Will get a 4GB RPi4 when they are (back ?) in stock - by then, hopefully it will be able to boot from USB3 SSD - & that should make for a decent desktop replacement.

[hojnikb]

Will get a 4GB RPi4 when they are (back ?) in stock - by then, hopefully it will be able to boot from USB3 SSD - & that should make for a decent desktop replacement.

Get a fast A2 sd card, no need for an SSD, unless you're planning on doing some serious I/O

[Heater]

laurent,

It is mandatory on some markets. Connectors are costly, and exposes to potential mechanical issues. The best practice for industrial applications is to avoid writes on flash as much as possible.

Yes indeed.

The Pi is not in that market.

[smed]

Is there an easy way to distinguish how much ram the device has without booting it? My 4gb unit arrived this morning but can't see any numbers printed on it telling me the size.

[hojnikb]

Is there an easy way to distinguish how much ram the device has without booting it? My 4gb unit arrived this morning but can't see any numbers printed on it telling me the size.

you could probably check dram model number and work from there.

[HawaiianPi]

Get a fast A2 sd card, no need for an SSD, unless you're planning on doing some serious I/O

Don't waste money on an A2 card. Unless the device is A2 certified it will be slower than an A1 card. I and several others have already learned that lesson the hard way.

[jamesh]

Will get a 4GB RPi4 when they are (back ?) in stock - by then, hopefully it will be able to boot from USB3 SSD - & that should make for a decent desktop replacement.

Makes a decent desktop just running from an SD card. I've been using Sandisk A1 16GB.

[emilfr]

Will get a 4GB RPi4 when they are (back ?) in stock - by then, hopefully it will be able to boot from USB3 SSD - & that should make for a decent desktop replacement.

maybe you should try this:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 0#p1484530

I stil use good old method for my 3B+: the firmware and configs are on microSD, then root=/dev/sda2 in cmdline.txt. I think this should work for RPi4 too. The advantage is: I can move my SSD from one RPi to another still having different configs on these Pis

[LTolledo]

@jamesh

I dont know if this has been asked and answered in this thread (or other threads) before but let me ask it again...

is the device limit for USB drives (before it was max 6 drives only, due to hardware limitations) been upgraded on the RPi4B?
if so what is the new limit?

[jamesh]

@jamesh

I dont know if this has been asked and answered in this thread (or other threads) before but let me ask it again...

is the device limit for USB drives (before it was max 6 drives only, due to hardware limitations) been upgraded on the RPi4B?
if so what is the new limit?

I think it's now 32, IIRC from something jdb posted yesterday. The USB HW is completely new, and connected to the SoC via PCIe so high speed.

[DavidS]

@jamesh

I dont know if this has been asked and answered in this thread (or other threads) before but let me ask it again...

is the device limit for USB drives (before it was max 6 drives only, due to hardware limitations) been upgraded on the RPi4B?
if so what is the new limit?

No such limit on any RPi. I have hooked up dozens of drives to an RPi on a number of occasions. Yea it can be a bit of a bottle neck, though it is USB, a star network with up to 255 devices of any supported kind (so long as you have the hubs and power).

[LTolledo]

before, on my RPi3B+ (and also on the RPi3B) I tested connecting my HDD clusters of 12 self-powered 4TB USB3.0 drives, in a single 13-port self-powered USB 3.0 hub.

only 6 of the 12 drives appeared, and in random order.... every-time I connect the cluster to the RPi3B+
all drives appear and in order when I return the connection to my w10laptop
jamesh commented then that it could be a hardware limitation of the RPi3B+ and RPi3B, not of software...

thus am asking if that limitation was superseded in the RPi4B