Raspberry Pi Zero overclocking

[Palmpje]

I have browsed trough the internet, but yet can't find anybody that has does the trouble to push the zero to the edge of stability. I would like to know if the zero is a better overclocker then the standard product. This has ignite my interest because I could push my 700 mhz raspberry pi b up to 1100mhz. This was the border of stability. The zero however has been launched as a 1000 mhz product. Could this mean it can actually be clocked higher when changing the config file above "Turbo" values or not?

Could anybody give me some advice? Maybe anybody has already tried to find the frontiers of the stability of this product?

Thank you very much in advance

Kind Regards

Palmpje

[Palmpje]

http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/qu ... -of-pizero

This source is now actually stating that there is a bug in the zero rendering overclocking impossible.
They are stating this would be corrected in the next batch.
Hopefully this is true, as I plan to overclock it.

[gregeric]

See http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid ... pid2171907

It appears that the silicon is now being produced consistently such that there so few parts rejected when they test them at 1GHz that they can afford to toss them. It implicitly does not mean that you can overclock in excess of 50% as before on the 700MHz rated parts (that was always pot luck), but the upper limit may be the same, with rare parts getting to 1200MHz. So maybe a 20% overclock if you are the lucky owner of fast silicon, more likely hardly any worthwhile overclock at all

[hansotten]

http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/qu ... -of-pizero

This source is now actually stating that there is a bug in the zero rendering overclocking impossible.
They are stating this would be corrected in the next batch.
Hopefully this is true, as I plan to overclock it.

To prevent misunderstandings:
Not a bug in the Zero, but in the overclocking sw. Fixed in next release, not next batch of the Zero.

Quoted from the blog comment by SImon Long:

On Pi Zero, you should just leave overclocking set to “None” (which selects the default clock speeds set for the device in the firmware, i.e. 1GHz on the Zero) – all the other options will actually slow your Pi Zero down! This will be corrected in the next release – Pi Zero basically comes out of the box running as fast as it is safe to run it.

It runs a 1GHz!

[Palmpje]

Thanks everybody for the replies. I understand that potential overclock possibilities could be in pair with already existing Models, with only a higher official released frequency and less potential headroom for overclocking. This however is not sure. I can't wait to get my hands on the next batch to try to squeeze 1200 or 1200+ stable MHz out of the "5 dollar".

If the bug is not hardware related, but sw related like mentioned, what does this actually mean?

Thank you for the highly appreciated replies. I believe there is a lot of knowledge on this quality raspi forum!

[Heater]

A software bug can be fixed and an upgrade released for you.

A hardware bug in the chip itself world be, well, hard. A permanent unfixable "feature" of your Pi.

[Jim Manley]

Note that the upper limit for overclocking varies from device to device, and you will have to go through hundreds, probably thousands, maybe even more, to find one that will reliably go to 1.2 GHz. It's a random distribution, with a relatively narrow "bell curve" now, as they've tweaked the manufacturing process to yield about as many higher-clocking devices as it's ever going to produce. Good luck collecting all of those Zeroes when demand is so extremely high, and will likely remain so until the Foundation pulls another rabbit out of its HAT!

[Palmpje]

Is there anybody that knows when the next software will be available? Are we talking about a new raspbian release? Or is this not a major but small update that will be released probable soon?

Thanks!

[rpdom]

It'll probably be both - a software update that can be installed with "sudo apt-get update" then "sudo apt-get upgrade", and soon after that an updated release of Raspbian. Either method will work, so there will be no need to wipe your system and start again if you don't want to.

[Palmpje]

Any progress on this guys? (and girls )

[texy]

Really if the Zero is not quick enough then you need a Pi3
The Zero is already running at 1Ghz. I'd be surprised if it'll go much higher, reliably, and repeatably.

Texy

[dom]

To prevent misunderstandings:
Not a bug in the Zero, but in the overclocking sw. Fixed in next release, not next batch of the Zero.

Just to clarify this is purely an issue with raspi-config (and the GUI Pi config utility which uses raspi-config).
You are free to manually edit config.txt. "arm_freq=1100" will work just as it always has in the past.

[wouterds]

You are free to manually edit config.txt. "arm_freq=1100" will work just as it always has in the past.

And is that supposed to work just like that? I ended up with a Pi Zero (latest revision, Pi Zero W) that doesn't boot anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯..

[klricks]

You are free to manually edit config.txt. "arm_freq=1100" will work just as it always has in the past.

And is that supposed to work just like that? I ended up with a Pi Zero (latest revision, Pi Zero W) that doesn't boot anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯..

No amount of OC is guaranteed to work. You need to get a handful of SD cards and experiment until you find what works with your RPi.

[PiGuy05]

Can you over clock a pi zero w? (sorry for not making a new thread) My RPI0W runs at 700 MHz. (as does all zero w I assume) Also is there going to be an update to the raspi-config to allow for zero w to be OC without editing the config.txt?

[dom]

Can you over clock a pi zero w? (sorry for not making a new thread) My RPI0W runs at 700 MHz. (as does all zero w I assume) Also is there going to be an update to the raspi-config to allow for zero w to be OC without editing the config.txt?

It runs at 700MHz when idle and 1000MHz when busy (the core is above 50% utilised).

[PiGuy05]

So at 100% load it runs at 1.2 ghz? edit: I see so it runs at 1000 mhg when over 50 load. Thanks

[HermannSW]

I did not know on the possibility of overclocking Pi Zero because I relied on the raspi-config message that overclocking is not possible.

Now I added "arm_freq=1100" as proposed to /boot/config.txt and rebooted:

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pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq 
700000
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq 
1100000
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ 

The first frequency was reported without activity (as told above). The second while running simple load in 2nd ssh session:

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ for((i=0; i<10000; ++i))
> do
> echo -n "" 
> done
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ 

But I would be sceptical based on my Arduino Due posting "Overclocking Due over 102MHz gives nothing ":
https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=407592.0

Arduino Due default CPU frequency is 84MHz, and you can overclock to well over 200MHZ, but that has no measurable effect above 102MHZ. So overclocking for at least Arduino Due is not worth the effort for me.

Hermann.

Unchanged default Arduino "Blink" example run on three DUEs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuj38HiWcXY

[HermannSW]

I did test overclocking with 1100/1150/1200 compared to default (1000) with bottom simple for loop time test:

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ gcc -pedantic -Wall -O6 million.c -o million
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ 

With default 1000MHz CPU frequency:

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ./million 
min=3511us, avg=3574us, max=5236us        
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ./million 
min=3512us, avg=3577us, max=5264us        
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ./million 
min=3511us, avg=3581us, max=5449us        
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ 

With 1100MHz:

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ./million 
min=3191us, avg=3256us, max=5168us        
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ./million 
min=3191us, avg=3257us, max=5180us        
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ./million 
min=3191us, avg=3258us, max=5183us        
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ 

This seems to make really sense:

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ bc -ql
3577/3257
1.09824992324224746699
1100/1000
1.10000000000000000000

But with 1200 I did not get login, neither over ssh nor on HDMI monitor (I connected that in order to see the boot messages).

Even worse with 1150, after a lot of normal boot messages I saw some hex dumps(?) and a lot of kernel messages, and HDMI display was totally crazy.

Hermann.

Code: Select all

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ cat million.c 
#include <time.h>
#include <sys/time.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <math.h>

#define N 1000

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  struct timeval start, end;
  int i,j,k,mi=999999999,ma=0,su=0,t;

  for(k=0; k<N; ++k)
  {
    gettimeofday(&start, NULL);

    for(i=j=0; i<1000000; ++i) { j += i; }

    gettimeofday(&end, NULL);

    t= (end.tv_sec * 1000000 + end.tv_usec)
       - (start.tv_sec * 1000000 + start.tv_usec);

    mi = (t<mi) ? t : mi;
    ma = (t>ma) ? t : ma;
    su += t;

    printf("\r%dus (%d)           ", t, j);
  }

  printf("\rmin=%dus, avg=%dus, max=%dus        \n",mi,su/N,ma);

  return 0;
}
pi@raspberrypi:~ $ 

[cookrx7]

Thank you Hermann! Very useful utility.