Slashdot Mirror
$5 Raspberry Pi Zero Compared To Intel's NetBurst CPUs & Newer (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Curious about the performance of a Raspberry Pi Zero, Phoronix has published a number of Raspberry Pi 2 + Pi Zero performance benchmarks with paired power consumption data. They found the Pi Zero performed slower than even an Intel Celeron 320 from the NetBurst era, but that the Raspberry Pi 2 was performing between that Celeron and a Pentium 4 "C" 2.8GHz CPU from 2004. While the Raspberry Pis didn't win in raw performance, the performance-per-Watt of the Raspberry Pi 2 was 220x greater than the Pentium Northwood. The Pi Zero had an average power consumption of 2.7 Watts and the Raspberry Pi 2 was at 3.5 Watts; however, compared to newer Broadwell and Skylake processors, Intel's low-end parts delivered greater power efficiency while the Raspberry Pi had the best value.
Yes it was. The Pentium M was derived from the P6 architecture in the Pentium III Tualatin. The Pentium M then evolved into the Core Solo and Duo mobile processors. Everything else went on from there, as far as I know.
Yup, rough lineage:
P5: Pentium -> Pentium MMX -> nothing for a long time -> early Atom -> MIC
P6: PPro -> P-II -> P-III -> Pentium M -> Core/Core2 -> Nehalem/Westmere -> Sandy/Ivy -> Haswell/Broadwell -> Skylake
P68: Pentium4
Have not played with one of these but I have several A and B+ being used daily.
One is my voip system using Nerd Vittles PIAF http://nerdvittles.com/?p=1015...
The other does my weather station
http://weewx.com/
The other does my BBQ controller
https://github.com/CapnBry/Hea...
Sure there are many more uses.
The new board may save a bit in my new builds will see...
All running quite fine...
So yes they have their place, low power, and reliable, no fan.
They're just a way to make slower chips look better when they really aren't. If it gets the job done faster, what's the real issue?
Not every task needs huge computing power. If the Pi gets the job done fast enough while burning less power than the cooling fans in your P4 system, taking up a fraction of the space and only costing ~$60 (by the time you've added a case, PSU and SD card), what's your issue?
I've got an original Pi running DNS, DHCP for my home network, and a Pi2 hooked to my lounge TV as a media center frontend served by a PC in the spare room (I suspect the Pi chipset was made for set-top-box use - it can decode 1080p mp4 without breaking a sweat) - the Pi 1 struggled a bit with the i/o throughput but the Pi2 handles the necessary with ease. Dedicating a P4 to either of those tasks - or making your toy robot twice as big so it could take the weight of a P4 heatsink - would be ridiculous unless you also needed to supplement your central heating system.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
The Intel NUC's do have way better performance and power usage. But, the Raspberry Pi price point makes it pretty damn good as well. Depending what you're doing, making a information display would cost me in excess of $300-$400 using the NUC (You realize you have to buy memory for some of the devices?), vs just under $100 with the PI. Not only that, the PI breaks (Never had one break yet), it's pretty trivial and cheap to get a replacement. So really depends what you need. Both are pretty good.