Raspberry Pi 4 Thread - general discussion

[rpdom]

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

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

thus am asking if that limitation was superseded in the RPi4B

I did ask this question yesterday and jdb said that the USB controller has changed and has a maximum of 32 devices with a number of endpoints each. The old controller had a maximum of 6 endpoints total.

[PeterO]

The demos in /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/ all (well the ones I've tried) print "This demo application is not available on the Pi4"

Will they be updated ?

PeterO

[jamesh]

The demos in /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/ all (well the ones I've tried) print "This demo application is not available on the Pi4"

Will they be updated ?

PeterO

Maybe. It's whether it's a good use of engineering time. If anyone out there wants to do it and provide a PR, I am most welcoming!

[fanoush]

you may try to switch to old non-MESA closed source GPU drivers via raspi-config and see if it helps?

[LTolledo]

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

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

thus am asking if that limitation was superseded in the RPi4B

I did ask this question yesterday and jdb said that the USB controller has changed and has a maximum of 32 devices with a number of endpoints each. The old controller had a maximum of 6 endpoints total.

Thanks rpdom for asking the question, and the great answer you got!
"32 devices" is a "good number"!

Once I get my RPi4B (probably a 1GB or 2GB for this server) I can finally retire my W10 laptop ( as its current use is just to serve those 16x4TB USB HDDs to the network, and run synctoy occasionally)

[mikerr]

Have my hands on a pi4 now - yay !

So onto some quick power draw tests

Idling on raspbian desktop:
562 mA

4 cores in use *
1005 mA

Shutdown with sudo shutdown -h
20 mA

*Quick way to busy the 4 cores:

Code: Select all

cat /dev/zero >/dev/null &
cat /dev/zero >/dev/null &
cat /dev/zero >/dev/null &
cat /dev/zero >/dev/null &

That 20 mA shutdown is far better than previous 100mA on pi3 (without a hack https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 9#p1286828)

[bunklung]

What an amazing engineering achievement! Great to see the usual well thought out evolution of the RPi. I'm glad the Videocore is still part of this SOC too. I assume full backwards software compatibility for Videocore/dispmanx support? Is 3D MVC support still in the chip?
Was concerned about it still only having the SD for storage with performance issues but hopefully booting to USB3 SSD will resolve this.

Should all be backwards compatible. Note, that MP2 and VC1 HW decode support has been removed - this can now be done in software and therefore needs no licence key.

3D MVC? What is that?

SD card should be about twice the speed.

What type of performance hit would we expect from decoding in software vs hardware now? Will this effect desktop performance or are we talking like 10% utilization?

Initial reviews show very poor video playback.

Any insight into the idea of the foundation supporting official passive CPU cooling heat sinks?

Thanks and awesome work to all involved. This is a nice surprise.

[JumpZero]

Awesome, a Pi4 sooner than expected!
I'm really impressed by one thing that nobody mentioned yet in this thread: The huge quantity of people involved in the process of preparing the Pi4, refer to the "credits" list of persons at the end of Eben's post in the blog, + all the resellers everywhere in the world. That's a big number and...
No leak!
The announcement tooks us by surprise.
That means a very professional team.
When you see the quantities of leaks in the smarphone world...

I've also downloaded and tested the latest Raspbian Buster, the first time setup menu has also changed in very accomplished way, also very professional.
Only good things, our Raspbian is great now!
Such a long way, with so many things done since the first Pi !...
Thanks Raspberry Pi team and keep this way!

[PeterO]

The demos in /opt/vc/src/hello_pi/ all (well the ones I've tried) print "This demo application is not available on the Pi4"

Will they be updated ?

PeterO

Maybe. It's whether it's a good use of engineering time. If anyone out there wants to do it and provide a PR, I am most welcoming!

Do you know why they don't work on the Pi4 ? I've just found that my own openGLES2 code doesn't work any more but I've not yet looked what has broken it.

PeterO

[fr3sh]

Does anyone know is there will be a 4B+ version?

[DarkPlatinum]

What is the RAM speed of the Pi 4? What advantages would the faster speeds have over other Pi?

[DarkPlatinum]

Does anyone know is there will be a 4B+ version?

the 4B was just released and you are now asking for an upgrade

[bunklung]

Anybody tested fullscreen youtube playback? If this works smooth, even with 720p, this is a board worth upgrading for casual web browsing.

Initial reviews say video playback on the desktop with YouTube is poor unless the window and resolution is reduced.

[bunklung]

Some DVB-T TV channels use MP2 (e.g. in Sweden) and this could mean that playback is worse on Pi 4 B than on Pi 3 B+. I have not bought a license key for MP2 so I'm not using the hardware decoder anyway. I use e.g. VLC to watch TV using TVHAT on Pi 3 B. Denmark, which is close to where I live, uses MP4 for DVB-T and that runs much smother in VLC.

I've tested raw BluRay MPEG-2 and VC1 with LibreELEC on Pi4 and both played fine with software decode.
Broadcast TV tends to be a much lower bitrate so there shouldn't be a problem.

What kind of CPU utilization did you observe? Did this effect desktop performance?

[jamesh]

Some DVB-T TV channels use MP2 (e.g. in Sweden) and this could mean that playback is worse on Pi 4 B than on Pi 3 B+. I have not bought a license key for MP2 so I'm not using the hardware decoder anyway. I use e.g. VLC to watch TV using TVHAT on Pi 3 B. Denmark, which is close to where I live, uses MP4 for DVB-T and that runs much smother in VLC.

I've tested raw BluRay MPEG-2 and VC1 with LibreELEC on Pi4 and both played fine with software decode.
Broadcast TV tends to be a much lower bitrate so there shouldn't be a problem.

What kind of CPU utilization did you observe? Did this effect desktop performance?

What part of desktop performance? Of course, the CPU's are going to be busier, so there are less CPU cycles to run 'the desktop', but on the whole, a desktop is mostly idle anyway.

[alphanumeric]

Does anyone know is there will be a 4B+ version?

Yes, almost certainly. The Pi Foundation won't comment on it though. You won't know its real until its actually released to the public. Thats SOP for the Foundation. I'm more interested in a 4A for my headless setups. Replacements for my 3A+'s. Not going to ask as they won't say anyway. You'll just have to wait and see what comes down the pipeline like everybody else.

[dom]

Do you know why they don't they work on the Pi4 ? I've just found that my own openGLES2 code doesn't work any more but I've not yet looked what has broken it.

When running with the legacy GL driver you needed proprietary setup to create a surface for GL to render to (the dispmanx calls).
With the arm side driver that isn't required, and any standard X GL apps should work without modification.

e.g. a quick search and I found this:
https://wiki.maemo.org/SimpleGL_example

which works without changes on Pi4 (or earlier Pi's with fkms enabled).

[jamesh]

Does anyone know is there will be a 4B+ version?

Yes, almost certainly. The Pi Foundation won't comment on it though. You won't know its real until its actually released to the public. Thats SOP for the Foundation. I'm more interested in a 4A for my headless setups. Replacements for my 3A+'s. Not going to ask as they won't say anyway. You'll just have to wait and see what comes down the pipeline like everybody else.

Really? I've not heard of one.

But REALLY, we release a blindingly good product, and all people can do is ask when SOMETHING ELSE is being released? Grr. Can't you give it a week, so we can enjoy the fruits of the last two years labour, before we start on something else?

[hippy]

[DELETED]

[PeterO]

Do you know why they don't they work on the Pi4 ? I've just found that my own openGLES2 code doesn't work any more but I've not yet looked what has broken it.

When running with the legacy GL driver you needed proprietary setup to create a surface for GL to render to (the dispmanx calls).
With the arm side driver that isn't required, and any standard X GL apps should work without modification.

e.g. a quick search and I found this:
https://wiki.maemo.org/SimpleGL_example

which works without changes on Pi4 (or earlier Pi's with fkms enabled).

Thanks dom, that's very helpful.
PeterO

[ces]

Hy, does somebody know if DRAM controller is single or dual channel?

[jamesh]

Does anyone know is there will be a 4B+ version?

Possibly. The RPT are unlikely to conform future plans. It's hard to predict how a 4B+ would differ from a 4B but I imagine there's something in reserve to make a future Pi appealing, or to fend off competition if they somehow find a way of keeping up.

My guess would be it would be mostly cosmetic, 4 x USB 3.0 for example, gaining another PCIe bus or supporting eSata etc, maybe another ramp-up in CPU cores. Four 4K HDMI outputs wouldn't surprise me as it's mostly duplicating silicon.

More interesting to me is whether there will be a 4A variant.

For the previous Pi's the job of creating an A variant was relatively easy; just rip the LANxxxx chip out and expose the SoC's USB bus. On the BCM2711 it is not clear there is any such USB bus.

A 4A which had no USB, only WiFi / Bluetooth and GPIO connectivity might however be useful enough to warrant that. And there may be other buses which could be exposed rather than USB, eg PCIe.

But, whatever happens, we'll have to wait and see.

Do you know what? I find talking about what you want in the the next product the day after we release a brand new product we have been working on for years quite disrespectful to the engineers involved. It's like say "Yeah, whatever, you should have done this". Can people not just be happy that we've released the biggest upgrade to the Pi range ever, we've released it 6 months earlier than expected, it's loads more powerful, and we've kept the same price, and it's basically pretty awesome?

[PeterO]

Seems Rapid Electronics have a few (50 at this moment 14:30 on Tuesday) ) of their Pi4 Starter kits in stock.
4Gb http://email.rapidonline.com/c/11u93FrGUDYbV6aTEQB9ZXx
2Gb http://email.rapidonline.com/c/11u91zz5CLyWBZq1P0vRXfb
PeterO

[PeterO]

Do you know what? I find talking about what you want in the the next product the day after we release a brand new product we have been working on for years quite disrespectful to the engineers involved. It's like say "Yeah, whatever, you should have done this". Can people not just be happy that we've released the biggest upgrade to the Pi range ever, we've released it 6 months earlier than expected, it's loads more powerful, and we've kept the same price, and it's basically pretty awesome?

+1

PeterO

[Mikael]

This is an awesome release and every bit as good as you could expect. Congratulations to everyone involved! Really looking forward to tinkering with my 2GB version once I get it.

EDIT: And to be honest, I can hardly believe some of the criticism I've seen here and on Reddit (although most people seem positive). I'm a hardware designer myself and I can see how it's frustrating when people want everything without any compromises. Especially when you've spent a lot of time and effort on really trying to make the best compromises you possibly can.

One thing I've been wondering: Can we get any more information on the expected computational capabilities and performance difference of the VC6 GPU compared to the VC4? I don't think I've seen anything concrete, except for one benchmark (OpenArena). Or do we simply need to wait for benchmarks to start coming in?