What we don't know is whether 4GB or 8GB Pis will get the tweaked chip design.
    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      21 days ago

      It’s a tough call, because while their decision to go IPO sucks, they’re one of the few SBCs with consistent kernel support.

      I’ve heard about a lot of headaches people have with other SBCs due to lack of support.

      As much as the Pi Foundation sucks noodles, the levels of software support for the Pi is currently unequaled.

      Anyway, here’s hoping it gets equaled, and fast.

      • leisesprecher@feddit.orgEnglish
        0·
        21 days ago

        What really bothers me is that rpi seems to have “lost its way”.

        I’d argue, there are essentially two camps here. The close-to-x86 camp, who want powerful, but efficient small machines, and the tinker-board camp, who want cheap machines with barely any power needs, basically a microcontroller on steroids, that you can buy an entire school class worth of for a few bucks.

        Rpis started in the latter camp. 35€ for reasonable performance, great software for kids to tinker with, hardly any requirements, everyone has a usb mouse/keyboard.

        But nowadays pis are in the no man’s land between. They’re priced above cheap N100 PCs, but are not as powerful, and simultaneously way too expensive and involved for throwing them at children - like it was initially intended.

        I’m not sure, how that’s supposed to be sustainable.

  • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmy.worldEnglish
    01·
    21 days ago

    Cross-post comment:

    Geerling also demonstrated that the 2GB Pi 5 comes with a couple of unexpected benefits that Upton didn’t mention in his announcement—that the 2GB Pi 5 runs a little cooler and uses a little less power than the 4GB and 8GB editions. The 2GB Pi used just 2.4 W or power at idle and 8.9 W during a CPU stress test, compared to 3.3 W and 9.8 W in the 4GB version. The SoC of the 2GB Pi measured 30° Celsius at idle and 59° under load, compared to 32° and 63° for the 2GB version. Those are all small but significant differences, given that nothing has changed other than the SoC.

    As to the exact functionality that was removed from the chip for the 2GB version of the Pi, the company hasn’t gotten specific. But Geerling speculates that it’s mostly related to functionality that’s being handled by the custom RP1 I/O chip—RP1 handles the Ethernet and USB controllers, display interfaces, and GPIO, among other things.

    So is it worth stepping down to a 2 GB Pi 5 just to get the simpler D0 chip? No. But is it cool to have a cheaper 2 gig option exist? Yes. Just make sure you have a use case for it that doesn’t need a ton of RAM.[1]

    1. [1] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/new-2gb-pi-5-has-33-smaller-die-30-idle-power-savings ↩︎