back to article Two new Raspberry Pi models emerge steaming from the oven

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has baked two new Pi. The new “Compute Module 3” and “Compute Module 3 Lite” are re-shaped versions of the Raspberry Pi 3 and are intended to give developers of embedded devices a way to use the RPi as the basis for their designs, without having to accommodate the rather bulky Raspberry Pi design …

Page:

  1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
    Linux

    A real dilema

    So much lovely stuff to play with.

    So little time for playing.

  2. The Onymous Coward

    Are they going to make sufficient quantities of these or are they going to be almost unobtainable, like the Zero?

    My experience of selling hardware based on a Zero does not endear me to further use of RPi products for my next venture.

    1. Anonymous Tribble

      "Are they going to make sufficient quantities of these"

      As the Compute Modules are designed as a mainstream commercial product for industrial scale use, yes they will be available in large quantities. That's kind of the point of them.

      "My experience of selling hardware based on a Zero does not endear me to further use of RPi products for my next venture."

      You're using the wrong product then. The Pi Zero was produced as a sideline for a (supposedly) small hobbyist market. It isn't mainstream at all and wasn't designed for people who wanted to market products around it.

    2. Mikel

      Horses for courses

      You do know that the purpose of the Foundation is education, right? Supplying your industrial controls development needs is an incidental sideline.

    3. Dabooka

      I'm sure they'll survive without you

      Seeing as you're clearly no the market they're looking for

    4. Stevie

      Re: are they going to be almost unobtainable, like the Zero? (4 T.O.C.)

      In the words of Edmund Blackadder: "Too many fat bastards eating all the Pi".

    5. werdsmith Silver badge

      If you want to buy a zero then you go on to one of the supplier websites and buy one.

      They took a bit of chasing when they were first released, but they are far from unobtainable now.

  3. Mikel

    Missing specs

    One would think if the clocks are mentioned you might also mention that there are 4 cores, they're 64 bit, there's a better GPU. You know, for completeness.

    But then comment posting on the forum is still hosed as well, so... Sigh. Your ad network or whatever appears to be locking the page until it completes a very slow media load on detection of a mobile browser. Which is counter to the general tech-savvy nature of the site. Aspiring to be the next Yahoo?

    It's a proper PC on a SODIMM. What a wonderful world.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Missing specs

      Your ad network or whatever appears to be locking the page until it completes a very slow media load on detection of a mobile browser.

      It's almost as if they *want* you to block ads, isn't it?

      That's one of the major pains with all this bespoke targeting - it means a site needs data on demand, and if ad networks are more bothered with flogging ads than make sure sites can get hold of the ads, the user will find yet again another reason to block them. If the data was NOT targeted, you could at least cache some of it.

      1. Bob Vistakin

        Re: Missing specs

        The Reg has ads?

  4. druck Silver badge

    Thermals

    The BCM2837 chip in the Pi3 does run very hot under load, which will be a challenge for some embedded uses. It's a shame the Pi2 chip (BCM2836) is no longer available, as that is the coolest running of all the variants at idle, and delivers good 4 core performance at reasonable temperatures, even when over-clocked to 1GHz. The Pi2 which is now being sold contains an under-clocked Pi3 chip and has WiFi and Bluetooth deleted.

    1. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Re: Thermals

      Concur.

      I tried to build a DIY timecapsule for off-site backups using it. It was quickly reaching 70C under load and starting to go all funny - processes dying, fs corruption, etc. Even clocking it down did not help.

      I ended having to replace the of Pi with a Banana for this reason. No thermal issues ever since. In fact, given a choice between the new Pi and a Banana I would always choose a Banana - significantly more reliable, especially for apps which do a lot of network or USB work.

      1. Scott Broukell

        Re: Thermals

        I feel the need to point out to the less IT literate folk who browse hereabouts, that the term - 'starting to go all funny' - is indeed a detailed and very technical term and one which you can safely ignore if you feel it went over your head, thank you.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Thermals

          To be fair, that's a pretty good way of describing an issue whose symptoms aren't repeatable. I had a similar experience with my first Pi, which was powered from a USB hub. It had a 2.5" hard drive connected and the current draw was well within the limits of the hub's supply. Worked fine for ages, then "went funny" - devices going offline, resets etc. Tried a different hub and drive, which worked fine until eventually the same thing started happening. Now I use a 3.5" drive with its own supply and the Pi is on a phone charger supply. All is well.

          My biggest wants are USB3 and Gig Ethernet. The Odroid XU4 seems to be the only thing out there that does this but seems to be a bit overpowered for my needs. I know this isn't what the Pi is for so I don't need anyone to point this out. I know it's for education and bandwidth isn't a priority. But I'd be fine with the CPU and RAM of my Pi 1, but better connectivity. I could live without HDMI too - rarely use it.

          I might just plump for the XU4 unless anyone has any other suggestions. I use Slackware on my Pis, and am happy enough building my own kernel so I can have root on btrfs.

          1. Bodge99

            Re: Thermals

            Have you seen the Orange Pi Plus 2?? It has wifi, gigabit ethernet and sata.

            CPU is a H3 Quad-core Cortex-A7 H.265/HEVC 4K. 2GB DDR3 ram. USB is only 2.0, unfortunately (four USB 2.0, one USB 2.0 OTG).

            I've bought a couple to play with..

            See https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Orange-Pi-Plus-2-H3-Quad-Core-1-6GHZ-2GB-RAM-4K-Open-source-development-board/1553371_32516755321.html

            1. jbuk1

              Re: Thermals

              I bought an orange pi (still in the post from China) but from all I've read I'm wishing I hadn't.

              Sounds like still very flakey support in the mainline kernel so most are using hacked 3.something kernel.

              Also, although it has twice as much ram as a pi 3, it uses, as you mention a cortex a7 to the pi3's cortex a53 which from all I can tell absolutely smacks the little a7 to pieces.

              You've quoted the lie the xulong keep repeating about the chip being 1.6ghz. It's not.

              It's 1.2ghz,

              1.6ghz is a factory overclock on their own dodgy linux distribution.

              The SATA port sounded like a nice idea for a little file server but the SoC doesn't support SATA so it's just a little USB to SATA bridge built in which apparently performs horribly compared to the ones you' get in your average external USB hard drive.

              So worse hardware, more expensive, less software support, mali gfx that will never make it to the kernel.

              If I knew what I know now, I wouldn't have bothered ordering one.

            2. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Thermals

              @ Bodge99

              That looks decent. Lack of USB3 is a pain but it does have SATA2. Do you know if that can get the full 3Gbit/sec bandwidth? Probably good enough for an external HDD.

              The biggest problem with the Raspberry Pi is everything hangs off the same USB hub, so writing data across the network to a connected USB drive gives pretty basic throughput. Fine for streaming videos across the network but if you have a lot of data to copy it can be quite painful.

              *edit @ jbuk1

              Thanks for the info. Using a USB to sata bridge makes it pretty much pointless for me. I expect it's a decent board for playing with, but I use my Pi as a central server - NAS, DLNA, VPN, DNS, DHCP proxy etc etc. All that consumes about 100MB or RAM when idle and 2 GB of storage for the OS. I could probably get that down a bit (another Pi I have does bluetooth audio and little else - 40 MB RAM and 300 MB storage)

              Of course, everyone's needs are different. Mine are very little CPU and RAM, but I'd like some bandwidth please.

          2. An nonymous Cowerd

            Re: Thermals

            I'm happy with my Bulgarian Olimex boards, no USB3 yet, but gig-ethernet whilst cool & silent running.

            I used the SATA interface for rotary HDD without problems, stuck a LiPo on as nano-UPS. can run Android or Debian. [Cortex-A7, DualCore, 1GHz, DDR3 1GB, 4GB NAND] ~75$/€/£

            https://www.olimex.com/Products/SOM/A20/A20-SOM-EVB/open-source-hardware

            https://www.olimex.com/forum/index.php?board=30.0

          3. Redstone

            Re: Thermals

            Asus (as in, the motherboard maker) have a Pi clone based on the Rockchip RK3388 quad core ARM Cortex A17 processor. There are Debian and KODI images available for it.

          4. billse10

            Re: Thermals

            goes up the price range a fair amount but I went with Toradex's Apalis / Ixora combination, gave GigE and USB3 no problem.

          5. Eddy Ito

            Re: Thermals

            I'm hoping the ESPRESSOBin winds up being available shortly.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Thermals

              >I'm hoping the ESPRESSOBin winds up being available shortly.

              That looks more like what I want. No video output but I don't need that. A serial console + SSH is absolutely fine. $49 isn't bad either, although shipping + import duties will add to that.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Thermals

          'starting to go all funny' - brings up images of Cissy & Ada...

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Thermals

          Not to be confused with the less serious "having a funny turn".

  5. John Styles

    Off topic (a bit) but...

    ... I thought of a perfect slogan for Windows 10 IoT on Raspbery Pi

    "The APIs

    That you despise

    Can now be run

    On Raspberry Pis"

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Off topic (a bit) but...

      @John Styles - which can be sung to the sirius Cybernetics Corporations anthem. Nice one!

    2. MyffyW Silver badge

      Re: Off topic (a bit) but...

      "There was a young man called Styles,

      Implemented upon Raspberry Pi's,

      A bitch of a thing,

      An OS that did sting,

      Windows? I'd prefer to get piles."

    3. cd

      Re: Off topic (a bit) but...

      "The APIs

      That you despise

      Can now be run

      On Raspberry Pis"

      Burma Shave

      1. Lotaresco

        Re: Off topic (a bit) but...

        > Burma Shave

        Iolo is that you?

      2. mjflory

        Re: Off topic (a bit) but...

        Burma Shave! We date ourselves a bit.

        I still remember the sequence of little red signs along the road to my grandparents' house in Wisconsin.

        "In this world

        of toil and sin

        your head grows bald

        but not your chin.

        Burma Shave."

        And fifty years later, I've found that they were right.

        1. Stevie

          Re: Burma Shave! We date ourselves a bit.

          In this world

          Gone scary hostile*

          Your head grows bald

          But not your nostrils.

          Burma Shave

          *Ike Eisenhower era, US pronunciation ('cos, well, US product).

    4. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

    A very serious question.

    What would you use the Compute Module for? It seems very underpowered to me, but no doubt somebody will come along and educate me.

    I have looked around and can't see any good justification for it. I'm sure it wasn't manufactured on a whim but I'm genuinely interested in how it could be or is being used.

    Thanks

    Rob

    1. imanidiot Silver badge

      Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

      Seems like an ideal platform for embedding it in industrial systems. Could be used for someone practising his cluster building skills. Whatever your imagination can come up with (Being a Mech. Engineer mine is rather limited when it comes to this type of equipment)

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

        If you are interested in cluster building, Pimoroni do a Pi Zero "Cluster Hat". Connect up to 4 x Pi Zero to a Pi3.

        1. batfastad

          Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

          > If you are interested in cluster building, Pimoroni do a Pi Zero "Cluster Hat". Connect up to 4 x Pi Zero to a Pi3.

          OMG - fugging awesome... https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/cluster-hat

          1. Will Godfrey Silver badge

            Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

            @ billse10

            The people I work for (just) have had customers specify serial comms in recent years, because of it's simplicity and high reliability.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

      I believe the Compute Model is aimed at those wishing to design/build there own embedded h/w using the Compute Module I/O board to test their designs and code.

      It's not aimed at the hobbyist/maker market, but at industrial/commercial use.

    3. BlinkenLights

      Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

      "What would you use the Compute Module for?"

      NEC use it for digital signage solutions...

      https://www.nec-display-solutions.com/p/hq/en/news/dp/Products/Shared/News/2016/PressReleases/Company/RaspberryPi/RaspberryPi.xhtml

      1. BlinkenLights

        Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

        Shortened URL for the NEC link if anyone's interested...

        https://goo.gl/QxYayI

    4. Redstone

      Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

      Hi Rob,

      There are any number of IoT applications that don't require masive computational power. Bluetooth based information beacons in 'smart' cities could be one application. Another application that I know Compute Modules are being used in is digital signage.

      I hope that helps.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

        Thanks that helps. I think that the word 'Compute' threw me. I expected a high powered device and its clearly not. The signage example helped.

        Rob

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

          "I think that the word 'Compute' threw me."

          I have a little box at home that measures sunlight, temperature and humidity and then computes the duty cycle of my greenhouse watering system. It definitely computes. It uses a couple of kilowords of ROM on a PIC, most of which is lookup tables. A Pi would be massive overkill.

          Any 64 bit microcontroller is capable of serious computing, and the ones in our phones exceed, I believe, the first few generations of Crays. Modern hearing aids are capable of acoustic processing which would have had Alan Turing screaming in frustration had he been able to foresee it while working on his telephone encryption system.

          Most computing, by function, is not about image processing, which means that an awful lot of function points can be squeezed into very little space.

          1. billse10

            Re: Whats this GUI thingy?

            also bear in mind a lot of industrial systems still use serial interfaces, and often require optoisolation and/or unusual electrical interfaces so you probably need custom electronics for that - but if beyond that you can then read a 9.6k serial link, and decode some (seriously wacky) proprietary protocols, you've got quite a few areas in which the Compute may be of use ...

  7. davidp231

    Raspberry Pi Electron?

  8. Lotaresco
    Coat

    Two new Raspberry Pi models emerge steaming from the oven

    You'll need to put them on the shelf for a couple of hours to cool off.

  9. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

    Raspberry, Banana, Orange....

    ...what's next? Moms Apple Pi?

    1. imanidiot Silver badge

      Re: Raspberry, Banana, Orange....

      Likely to get you in hot water with a certain Cupertino based merchant of electronic goods. Peach might be another option. Or Gooseberry. Maybe Ligonberry?

    2. hplasm
      Happy

      Re: Raspberry, Banana, Orange....

      Steak and Quince.

      1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
        Happy

        Re: Raspberry, Banana, Orange....

        How about pi 'n apple

Page:

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like