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$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.
This is my main problem with the Raspberry Pi. It's very well suited to certain tasks. But there are many places where it falls behind even very old technology.
I had one that I wanted to use as to download my torrents. It turns out that downloading to the SD Card caused the thing to lock up because it was writing data faster than the device could handle it. I was able to get around this problem by writing to a USB stick. It no longer crashed, but there was still a bottleneck writing to disk, which caused the torrents to download significantly slower than they did on my desktop.
It wasn't even due to bad memory stick or SD card. It was similar SD card and memory sticks that I used on my tablet that allow full speed torrent downloads. But something about the architechture of the Raspberry Pi that caused any kind of extensive writing to the SD or USB to cause a CPU spike every few seconds.
These tiny ARM computers probably have enough CPU and RAM at this point to run as a desktop. But until they get proper interfaces for hooking up storage and networking, they won't be of much use to anybody.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
If you had enough Pi boards to use the same amount of electricity as the Pentium 4, the stack of Pis would have 220 times as much computational power.
One P4 runs a bit faster than a Pi, and uses a LOT more power.
Of course that fact is probably not of any practical use. There are use cases for which a Pi is the right tool for the job, there are uses for which a typical desktop is the right tool for the job, and there are use cases for which the Arduino is the right tool for the job - and there isn't that much overlap. If you need a lot of computing power, you use a powerful processor, not a bunch of Raspberry Pi boards.
The power consumption does point out that there is virtually no good use case for a P4 - it's cheaper to buy a newer CPU than to power a P4.
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.
It feels like a learning-computer to me
Funny you should say that.
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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
More importantly the originally raspi is based on a chip that was intended for a different purpose. The bcm2835 was first and foremost a video processor capable of hd video encode and decode.
The arm(which everyone benchmarks) has a simple role to play in the intended configuration: Run linux, so that you can write simple GUIs and send compressed video data to the videocore. 3d Graphics acceleration was probably and afterthought.
You're comparing apples and oranges because the raspi community repurposed the chip. The raspi2 arm is a bit better. The biggest advantage now is the price, but this comparison is ridiculous.
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.
Nothing beats the newest Intel NUCs on performance per watt. I have a bunch of raspberry pi 2 boards and a I Pi Zero i was lucky enough to get, and i paid $5 + tax on it retail. When it came time to build a playback-only HTPC, i used a NUC. I paired the NUC5CPYH (braswell?) with 2 GB of RAM and OpenElec on a class 10 SD card. It also comes in a nice casing, wifi and integrated IR receiver all for about $150 retail. I could build up a pi 2 for about half that cost, but it wouldnt be nearly as performant, look as nice, or be as well integrated. The icing on the cake is that USB and the other internal busses are properly implemented (1GB ethernet vs 10/100, USB 3.0 with UASP vs USB 2.0) AND it can run x86-64 Linux and Windows....
Good-bye
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.