Still 100MBit Ethernet
The rest of the spec looks promising. I may get myself one as a "birthday present" to see if it can finally be usable as a desktop
As rumoured last week, the Raspberry Pi Foundation is celebrating its fourth birthday today with the release of the Pi 3, packing a 1.2 GHz 64-bit ARM Cortex A53, 802.11n Wireless LAN capability and Bluetooth 4.1. The Raspberry Pi 3 The Raspberry Pi 3 We spoke to Pi head honcho Eben Upton last week ahead of the unleashing …
That BPI-M3 certainly looks nice. But I do notice the SATA is just a USB-SATA adapter hung off a USB hub on board, so not necessarily any better than a USB HDD plugged into a Pi. (Though you do have the option of not sharing that USB2 line with anything else and still having another port available, unlike the Pi).
8 cores, 2GiB ram and 8GiB eMMC are very nice, though.
However, until I see decent PowerVR 3D drivers in OSS, I won't be there.
1gb of ram isn't enough. i used till last year an ancient netbook with 1gb as my main system. web browsers need more. 2gb would be better but i suspect 3gb would be needed before it stops hammering virtual memory. you can use lite browsers. midori, qupzilla, but those have sites they won't work properly on or just crash when loading.
i'll still buy one when i can find a shop in dublin selling them. the added bt and wifi is most welcome as it frees up usb ports and reduces space it needs without those been occupied.
i used till last year an ancient netbook with 1gb as my main system. web browsers need more
An Intel-based netbook running (presumably) some variant of Windows and Internet Explorer is a completely different beast to an ARM-based Pi running a reasonably optimised Linux (Debian - Raspbian) with a lightweight desktop (LXDE) and an efficient web browser.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, a Pi 1 with single-core processor and 512MB RAM was useable for many desktop tasks, and until I upgraded them to a Pi 2 my boys did most of their schoolwork on one. The Pi 2 is so much more usable with its quad-core processor and 1GB of RAM that nowadays they only use the "family" Mac Mini if a: they both need to use the computer at the same time or b: they need to access a website which uses Flash.
Albeit the Mac Mini is an old 32-bit Core Duo model, it often feels like treacle compared to the Pi 2.
I am 75% sure than when we finally have to retire the Mini I'll install a Pi 3 or two instead (maybe there'll be a slightly enhanced next model). The family is already storing most files on the file server rather than locally.
Yes, I do have another computer which is a bit more beefy for those things neither the Pi nor the Mac can handle such as video editing ;-)
M.
the netbook was running xubuntu, also tried lubuntu but stayed ultimately on xubuntu in the end.
browsers eat memory. their biggest weakness. run a browser for 3-4 weeks on a system that is up 24x7 and see how that memory lasts. on the netbook i needed to restart the browser to free memory 4+ times a day as it started to slow down. using midori sorted that mostly but for wacky reasons theregister site makes it crash hard. the new 64bit arm would probably be beefier than the ancient atom but i don't see it solving the memory problem with the browsers.
don't get me wrong, i'll be buying one but if there was one feature i wanted to see upgraded it was memory more than anything else. with 2gb i could easily see me replacing current wonky laptop at home as main system.
browsers eat memory. their biggest weakness. run a browser for 3-4 weeks on a system that is up 24x7 and see how that memory lasts
I'm not denying that, but honestly, how hard is it to restart every now and then on a desktop machine? Keep it on all day, switch off at bedtime - perform updates as necessary - switch it on again in the morning. The Pi 1 could handle half a dozen tabs open on sites like BBC news, Hornby, a1steam, The Register, duckduckgo and still be (just about) usable. The Pi 2 has no problem at all.
Horses for courses, if you need to have 37 tabs open on multiple graphics- and script-heavy websites, a Pi is not the computer you need. Neither is an Atom-based notebook to be honest (I have an EeePC 901 with 2GB RAM) but crumbs, for £30 I can put up with a little bit of being sensible!
It's a flippin' long way up from saving files to cassette tape and AMX Pagemaker (later Stop Press) having to "page" strips of an A4 page to floppy disc every time you scrolled.
<insert usual "kids these days" gripe >
<grin>
M.
Anecdotal evidence, possibly not relevant to Linux, please feel free to correct me:
Using some old Windows XP desktops with around 1GB of RAM, I found Chrome too memeory hungry, so I installed Opera. My reasoning at the time was that each Chrome tab was a sandboxed instance, so using resources. Whether I was right or wrong, Opera worked better than Chrome on these underpowered machines.
A Pi2 can handle TheRegister, internet shopping, and the enormous attack surface required for internet banking. I am sure there are sites that will bring it to its knees, but a do not visit sites that try to mine bitcoins with javascript. Openoffice did the minimal tasks I require of it (convert docx and xls to odt and csv). Cropping and scaling a 6Mpixel image to 1920x1080 with the gimp required patience.
1gb of ram isn't enough.<p>your problem is that you are using Firefuscked and probably KDE... stick to using the default browser on RPi and LXDE or XFCE or enlightenment or blackbox as the desktop and you're well in...<p>Personally, I'd love to see KDE 2 or Gnome 2 running on this... I had a 900 MHz laptop with only 256MB of ram back in 2002 and it was fine running those..
Beyond the NIC still running connected via USB, the other major limitation is storage. The Pi 2 was a dramatic improvement over the first gen iterations, but even the Pi 3 will suffer the same, very low IOPS performance that will render the unit unusable for many people.
So long as one as proper expectations, the Pi 3 will be more capable than the Pi 2. For me, I tried to stand a couple up as DHCP/DNS servers at home and they failed miserably. The storage performance just wasn't good enough, even moving the rootfs to a USB flash drive.
Bad at DNS and DHCP?
Ive used a Pi B+ as a stand in DNS box (BIND) for whilst I was performing maintenance. The DNS server it stood in for was authoritative for 150+ domains and countless subdomains. It handled it with ease.
Mind you, I changed the defsult memory split and applied a moderate overclock.
Oh and its also worth spending a few quid extra on a Class 10 or better SD card.
I think the Jesus Phone beats that hands down, depending on the definition of a "computer", CPU, GPU, RAM, ROM, keyboard, programmable (even inside a walled garden), peripheral expansion and the additional advantage of a screen and a modem. Seems to check a lot of boxes for a "computer".
debateable, but to me programmable means i can use itself to program it. the ios platform needs a real computer to write the programs. a real omission to my mind as it is powerful enough to have some level of programming built in.
but then i was spoiled by having a psion organiser in 90s which allowed me to write apps in opl on the device.
but then i was spoiled by having a psion organiser in 90s which allowed me to write apps in opl on the device.
Very much so. And I loved how long Psion 3a lasted on its batteries. I did prefer the 5mx that I upgraded to. The keyboard was so much better.
debateable, but to me programmable means i can use itself to program it. the ios platform needs a real computer to write the programs. a real omission to my mind as it is powerful enough to have some level of programming built in.
Pythonista is excellent, if you're on an iPad of any variety.
I'm afraid to say that I've bought all the Bs so far, including both versions of the original logic board. I think I might be a bit of a Pi fan boy. They're all used too - some of them as loaner units for my friends. Will I be buying the 64 bit version? Hell yeah! I only wish that decent cases like the Plusberry were easier to come by.
A board that connects to networking via USB (on-board) isn't exactly router material. For that purpose you're better off with one of the OpenWrt-running boards (about 15Eur at Olimex IIRC) which are built with... surprise... using the chips that normally go into routers. Or, you know, just buy a router that can run OpenWrt to get something that comes in a box directly...
I think if you can get it to interface with an Arduino, then you can get a really good system to run as a robot controller with the Pi doing the processing and the Ardruino interfacing with sensors.
By the way, what is the speed of the latest Raspberry Pi like? Is it like a Celery or an Atom or faster?
"I think the Jesus Phone beats that hands down"
There has been 12 different major models so far - and with the different storage configurations that's how many models, 30 or so? Which one has been the highest selling model and how many millions have been sold? I'm genuinely curious.
RPI has now had 6 different models, with altogether 8 million units sold.
Commodore 64 had two models, but I don't know how many C-64c models were sold. C64c was really the same model with a redesigned chassis, but how many of each model was sold, I can't say.
1GB RAM is not enough for a 64bit OS (let alone a server running a LAMP/ownCloud/open-X-change stack) even on ARM - not for /my/ purposes anyway.
In fact, 1GB RAM isn't even sufficient to run a 32bit desktop OS these days - unless you're a masochist.
<sigh> I can add a wireless dongle if I want/need to, but I'll never get 1Gb/s out of either network connection on this - and even if I could, there isn't enough RAM to do anything sensible with it :|
"In fact, 1GB RAM isn't even sufficient to run a 32bit desktop OS these days - unless you're a masochist."
Well I've had a pi 2 for a few days now and I've never seen more than 400MB used - more if you count caches etc certainly.
I've got a browser with BBC main news page, LibreOffice calc with a 23000 row * 20 col. spreadsheet with all cells occupied with calculations, filemanager, taskmanager, terminal window and synaptic package manager all open on the desktop and and a lightweight webserver running too - memory usage is ~370MB
pi@raspberrypi ~ $ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 948120 933348 14772 82056 24104 539240
-/+ buffers/cache: 370004 578116
Swap: 102396 4 102392
@Someone_Somewhere
> there isn't enough RAM to do anything sensible with it
Oh I don't know, I have one Model2 running the SimpleMetal printer via OctoPrint and an old 256MB modelB running SimH which runs RSTS, RSX11, rt11 and VaxVMS
That is 3 PDP/11's and a VAX off one old ras-pi
I would stop using badly written, memory hogging programs, if there /were/ any.
Okay, I'm being unfair - the biggest culprit on my desktop is Fireofx, but since the only other options are Google (and its clonewars spawn), MS or Apple, I don't really have much choice in that regard.
Also, it isn't just the software that's at issue - no matter how good the software, audio and video production just requires /enormous/ amounts of RAM to do properly - latency simply isn't an option.
Moreover, as I said, slice it any way you like, 64bit means more RAM is required than is for 32bit for the same operations.
So a 'pocket'-production-studio isn't gonna be an option with 1GB on /any/ system.
Which actually doesn't make a huge difference - its what they point to that is important.
Oh, and if you want to do heavyweight audio of video production - why on earth do you expect to do it on a $35 SBC? People buy Macs at $1000 for that, with as much memory as Apple can get away with charging for.
>its what they point to that is important.
AND how, but I'm prepared to be reassured, if you know more than I do and can explain it. :)
> Oh, and if you want to do heavyweight audio of video production - why on earth do you expect to do it on a $35 SBC?
I don't - I have a lot of /very/ expensive kit for that.
But I travel a lot and bulk/weight is an issue. Yes even a laptop makes a difference when you're hiking through some of the more far-flung parts of the world in order to meet your clients/collaborators, as I often have to.
Moreover, I'm working on a 'startup' project with a couple of people, for which a more powerful Pi-type device would be more suitable than a laptop/desktop could ever be - it just needs more RAM and gigabit ethernet to be what's required, not a supercomputer - acting as a portable/'pocket' server for clients who don't have/can't afford Internet access.*
> People buy Macs at $1000 for that, with as much memory as Apple can get away with charging for.
Some do, yes - those using ProTools/Logic.
Those using Cubase**, however /don't/.
Nor do those using Ardour.
Not all A/V is produced in Abbey Road/Hollywood and that which is often needs to be recorded elsewhere first*** - so the lighter the kit, the better :)
* and even those who can, can't necessarily make use of it on top of a mountain, in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest or deep in the heart of the Serengeti
** who vastly outnumber the ProTools/Logic contingent in my field.
*** the price conscious seldom set foot inside a studio and preprocess as much as they can first before they spend hundreds/thousands of $ unnecessarily - even small studios can cost not inconsiderable sums.
Sorry, but I have to call BS on this one. Nowhere that requires you to 'hike' in requires fancy AV manipulation. Bring a modern smartphone instead and record your photos, video and audio (and get free GPS and communications thrown in) and do the AV processing when you get back to civilization. Saying the Pi can't do it because it only has 1GB is like saying Google is a useless search engine because it doesn't know where you left your keys.
>Sorry, but I have to call BS on this one.
No, you're not and, no, you don't, but you /are/ entitled to be as opinionated as you like.
I'm not troubled by your opinion because I do what I do and know what the facts of the matter are - and no amount of wishful thinking on your part will change them.
> Nowhere that requires you to 'hike' in requires fancy AV manipulation.
I didn't say it did, I said I need something more portable than a laptop to act as a server, so that I could meet with clients/colleagues and rcord/preprocess material collaboratively - prior to fancy A/V manipulation upon my return to base, where all the serious kit is.
> Bring a modern smartphone instead and record your photos, video and audio (and get free GPS and communications thrown in)
When I can get reliable, free GPS and comms in the middle of the Sahara, I will be only too happy to do exactly that - until then, however, I'll have to do it differently.*
But, no, my mobile phone will /not/ provide the recording quality of an Earthworks SR-30, so I'm not going to waste time even thinking about that option.
> Saying the Pi can't do it because it only has 1GB is like saying Google is a useless search engine because it doesn't know where you left your keys.
I didn't say it couldn't do it, nor did I say the Pi wasn't an amazing bit of kit, I just said it wasn't suitable for /my/ needs (yet) - nor those of the project I am working on for which (had it just that bit more RAM and faster ethernet) it /would/ be.
You seem to be putting words in my mouth for some reason that I can't really fathom: the Pi3 is great for /your/ needs, not for /mine/ and that's really all there is to it, so, unless you had a hand in designing it and therefore feel slieighted by my comments, I really can't see what you're so upset about; each to their own, live and let live and don't make assumptions about others - I do what I do and you're in no more position to call BS on what I do (about which you know no more than the tiny hints I have given you**) than I am about what I don't know about anything you might say about /your/ occupational requirements.
Enjoy your PI.
And I'll look forward to the next iteration - that might be just what I need.
Simples. :)
* I can't even get a signal in Whitby, let alone many of the places I travel to for my work.
** I'm sure you don't want to be bored with the details, so, I haven't done so.
When I can get reliable, free GPS and comms in the middle of the Sahara, I will be only too happy to do exactly that - until then, however, I'll have to do it differently.*
GPS is freely available all over the Sahara, as well as the Gobi and Atacama deserts, Greenland, Namibia, and whatever inaccessible location you feel you have to hike into and out of.
Comms may be unavailable, but that's neither the smartphone's fault nor will it be solved by taking a Pi. And lack of comms won't stop a smartphone from working as a camera and an ad-hoc file server.
No. NO. And isn't this a tech site or something?... NO!
Unless you are addressing memory as an absolute address over +2G* or relatively over +/-2G away from where your are, you will use the CPU's native 4 byte pointers. The vast majority of jumps and references will be rolled into 9-12 bit pointers burried in with the 32-bit op-code.
* 2's-compliment negative absolute addresses (which use the MSB that would otherwise get you to 4G) are generally reserved for kernel space.
Sheesh. Are people who haven't even glanced at an op-code sheet in their lives considering themselves CPU experts now? Of course they are! Even the 6502 had 8-bit varients of its addressing modes - this isn't a new idea!
>Unless you are addressing memory as an absolute address over +2G* or relatively over +/-2G away from where your are, you will use the CPU's native 4 byte pointers. The vast majority of jumps and references will be rolled into 9-12 bit pointers burried in with the 32-bit op-code.
>* 2's-compliment negative absolute addresses (which use the MSB that would otherwise get you to 4G) are generally reserved for kernel space.
Thanks for the lesson.
>Sheesh. Are people who haven't even glanced at an op-code sheet in their lives considering themselves CPU experts now? Of course they are! Even the 6502 had 8-bit varients of its addressing modes - this isn't a new idea!
Oooh, you know something someone else doesn't - and you're so humble about it too!*
* You must be /very/ popular - I bet you get invited to /all/ the parties.
Apart from my A/V production needs, I'm looking for something I can use as a VM server for my business - not quite cloud server farm, but the same principle.
Sure, they're small and cheap enough to use real hardware instead of VMs, but then there are other issues I face when I need to take my business on the road - my needs are indeed /very/ specific and, in all fairness, the Pi wasn't really conceived for them, but I can dream, can't I? ;)
I have one of the earliest RasPi models (from before they started building them in Wales) in my lounge - unfortunately, it's gathering dust, as I find it's just too underpowered for the few uses I could put it to. (We already have a Synology NAS and a Roku player, so the Pi wouldn't be needed for those tasks.)
That said, I get the idea the RasPi 3 is quite a bit more powerful than OldPi, and with four USB ports and built-in Bluetooth and WiFi, I can imagine it making a useful always-on Linux box at home.
Hopefully, there's no problem installing Arch Linux ARM on the RP3 - time to query the Pi forums...
Thanks! :-)
Actually, I should've clarified my question - my OldPi usually runs off Arch Linux ARM (and has done since the beginning. I was wondering if ALARM needed rebuilding in any way, due to the new Broadcom SoC, the new WiFi/Bluetooth hardware, etc.?
Hopefully not, but you can't take these things for granted...
I was a little concerned that it would suffer the same fate as the Pi Zero as another victim of The Australian Tax. (The Pi Zero was last seen here advertised for AUD19 or about £9.50 plus postage! Currently neither RS nor Elements 14 have it advertised.).
The good news seems to be that it's going to be between about AUD50 and AUD69, so I can live with at least the former.
To misquote Fleetwood Mac, "You Make Computin' Fun"
I am still waiting for the Compute Module to be updated and what is holding off my purchase. If they can get the compute module with this 64 bit processor and 2GB RAM minimum (preferability 4GB) then I would buy a version 3.
At this point, as I have a Wifi dongle with a Pi2B, the Pi3 is kind of a no need at the moment. Pi foundation, please update your compute module.
- S.A
I have just bought a few RPi3B's to play with, they do seem to be available this year at launch which is a nice change. Stated current requirements seems to have crept up to 2.5A @ 5V1, so I had to buy something a bit beefier than old cellphone micro-usb chargers, just in case we're not talking about 2500mA 'fully loaded'.
Last year, whilst training people on Linux SBC programming & e-mail security, it was quite nice to see the look on their face when told that after a few days of training on this small PC that they could actually take it home with them (leaving the keyboards & monitors)
Maybe the new Pi will be able to reliably decrypt Proton Mail messages, the Pi2 was a bit marginal. . .
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Hmm, I suspect you might be a bit of an arsehole. *
Who doesn't know the definition of a computer, which has nothing to do with binary blobs.
Or really doesn't get 'education' where anything that entices people to learn is a great thing.
* Changed my mind. Complete arsehole.
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Are brilliant for what they were designed for. EDUCATION! Try and use it for something else and it may work, but it may not. So you should do what you were (presumably) taught early in your careers, and choose the device to suit your needs. Not complain that your needs don't fit a perfectly good device. That is childish.
The Raspberry Pi community has produced a huge volume of tutorials, and content for the older devices. I can only see this adding to the foundations success.
Yes, I have just ordered a RasPi3. I also have a number of RasPi2s and a few RasPi B's. I also have a number of Arduinos, and Atmel chips, Which have been selected for various projects.
And @AC above, The Raspberry Pi is actually a real computer. Just not one of the type you're thinking of.
Seems like it "has't got"s are down to 2+Gb of Ram and GB Ethernet, but I'm not sure thats really that important, for allot of applications other than desktop PC it's processor is overpowered.
Whilst it seems reasonable that a version that will support faster bus USB3, GB Ethernet is in the pipeline, its now pulling 2+A at 5v now, so your likely looking at a 15 Watt device that is not going to last long on small batteries
I think a more mature line up would include lower power, lower profile units (which seems to be the plan) for IOT and low power robotics and control, and likely sell a lot of units, vs a higher power unit which starts to compete, once you add a screen and peripherals with budget pc and similar commercial devices.
To me the family aspect of it becomes more important, we know there are similar fruit inspired products that trump the RPi on features and performance, if Raspberry want to grow the commercial aspects low power, low cost, low footprint, customisable is the way to go, rather than (or as well) as micro PC.
From what I understand from the Element 14 Launch that is pretty much what they are doing.