Raspberry Pi 5 announced

Posted by: @byron

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Posted by: @inq

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my Smart TV.  For all the downloadable apps for it, it doesn't seem to have the ability to do a simple browser. 

Ah, now you have prompted by to kiss goodbye to £80 for a new rp5.  I've been meaning to hook up something like an rp4 to my TV to provide decent browsing on one of its spare hdmi ports for some while.  And reading your post is a reminder of projects yet to come to pass.  So a new rp5 for my plaything, and a delegated rp4 for the tv browsing.  Or should it be the other way round 🤔   Bgr me, I better get 2 rp5,s 

Definitly 2 Rpi5's, but maybe wait for the 16GB model? Or don't wait and upgrade later. Not only is the leading edge bloody, it's costly.

Posted by: @zander

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Definitly 2 Rpi5's, but maybe wait for the 16GB model? Or don't wait and upgrade later. Not only is the leading edge bloody, it's costly.

2 it is then 😀 .  But I don't think I even need 8GB and 4GB would do just fine.  And I don't see the rpi5 as a bleeding edge, more a well considered, workmanlike, and a relatively inexpensive sbc.   My busiest rpi4 4gb that runs a mqtt broker, my home heating system, and a bunch of periodically firing up programs such as grabbing the latest weather forecast or programs listening for various messages to trigger some small action etc typically has two thirds of its memory free.  

The new rp5 appears to remove a few limitations with the rpi4 such as being able to fully run both the usb3 ports at the same time and output 4k to both the hdmi ports at full capacity.  I also like the fact that, as long as you get the new 5amp power supply, the pi is now capable of powering a lot more connected peripherals.  If you dont need this I understand the rp5 will be OK with the 3amp power supply.   But we need to full dronebot article to see what its full capabilities are.

So one for my TV browsing, and one, with a full 5amp power supply, to power my yet to be constructed outdoor large 4wd rough terrain superbot rover. (but definitely no AI, it will be a dumb as a Byron 😀 ) 

Hi @inq,

  Please understand, I am not selling R-Pi s .. just philosophy discussion, and I totally understand your viewpoint .. your amazing bot family is not a good match for them, it isn't a universal answer .. its a niche area.

As for design and manufacture...it is designed in Cambridge, with the University connection being a vital part of its origins,  and (mostly) manufactured in Sony's former TV assembly plant in Pencoed, Wales, both parts of the UK last time I checked!

Its roots were to make a small number of boards for education on a shoestring budget. It is now not only an educational tool, but has also been adopted by countless companies who make specialised products needing a computer at their core.

The first batches of R-Pi s were manufactured in the Far East, but they were brought 'back' to the UK, apparently as the initial economic arguments of 'Low Cost Country' manufacture proved to be flawed.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/raspberrypi

Although they are setting up manufacture of Picos in Kenya, for the local market - maybe partly as a social process?

https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/made-in-kenya/

The R-Pi 3  is still listed in the local distributor (Pi-Hut), at Model A £25 and Model B £40.  From my dodgy memory, Model A is still at launch price, and Model B increased from £35 to £40 in the middle of the chip drought, as a consequence of memory pricing increases.

Remember UK prices include 20%  tax (VAT), so US$1 to you is about £1 to consumers in UK.

R-Pi have an obvious link up with Broadcom, that dates back to the first R-Pi, which may sway the logic either way.

In some respects, the comparison with Intel/AMD PC chips is a little misleading .. Intel outsourced their chip manufacture and got caught out when AMD managed to source much more capable (smaller feature size) processes  .. Intel are now playing catch up after several years of chips that have a huge power efficiency downside.

The R-Pi is probably closer to the mobile chip manufacturers market, but a chip designed for an Android phone would probably be a poor match for R-Pi 5 -- the link with Broadcom means they can have a custom chip. I have the impression, RAM costs tend to dominate with the R-Pi, partly as they tend to go for one chip solutions, with innovative packaging, whilst PCs use more established sets of chips on DIMMs, etc.

I note that R-Pi wants 5V 5A power supply, which is a stretch from USB-C spec at 5V, but well within the USB-C power level at higher voltages. However, it is still only 25W maximum total available power, lower than Intel/AMD laptop processor dissipation levels, and the laptop has other chips like memory, which will also consume power. I suspect the average power consumption will be a lot less than 25W in most applications, but that is only speculation on my part.

So for applications that need a fair bit of I/O, and need to drive at least one HDMI hi-res monitor, with Linux or similar OS, the R-Pi looks to be in position which none of the ESP32/Arduinos, or the laptop PC chips, or the mobile phones aim at.

Of course, by implication, for applications that are well serviced by any of these alternatives, the R-Pi may well be a poor fit, as it is 'cluttered' with unnecessary overheads.

The general trends of electronics & computing getting cheaper in numeric terms, whilst performance improves, provides a different basis to virtually everything else, so when we see electronic items increasing in price with new technlogy, it seems very unwelcome. Yet certain markets, such as mobile phones seem to, partially at least, buck the trend. Personally, I mainly use my mobile as a phone, and occasionally for Google Maps/land navigation. My phone cost wasn't much more than R-Pi 5 8GB with minimal extras, whilst others, who may have successfully lived for decades before mobile phones became readily available will happily pay much more than I did.

Pricing, costing and value sometimes seem to live on 3 different planets.

As for production volume, R-Pi is certainly a player, but with sales of 40 million units over 10 years, it is not first tier, especially when compared to say Apple and Samsung mobile numbers.

So Inq, unless you want a DIY media centre, or something that the R-Pi's resources match well to, I would not expect you to even want to order one. As a wild speculation, might it be an engine for AI calculations that are beyond ESP32s, but below $1500 graphics cards? .. It will probably be unsuitable and outclassed by more specialised devices, but somebody will probably try it.

And of course, it will have competitors that may or may not be better value, higher performance, etc.

Best wishes, Dave

Hi all,

   I came across these brief press release articles on R-Pi 5 which might be worth a glance, if anyone is considering it .. apologies if it repeats what you have already discovered from elsewhere, as press releases will obviously be propagated by multiple sources.

https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/power-and-cooling-challenges-of-the-raspberry-pi-5/

https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/raspberry-pi-5-moves-to-disaggregated-architecture-with-in-house-silicon/

1st article includes

The Raspberry Pi 5 board consumes significantly less power and runs significantly cooler than Raspberry Pi 4 when running an identical workload, but the higher performance means peak power consumption increases to around 12W, versus 8W for Raspberry Pi 4.

which suggests it could be deployed as a more energy efficient R-Pi 4 upgrade.

Also, the 5V 5A supply appears to be based on having enough power for add-ons, like SSDs, etc., and also overclocking. Standard R-Pi 5 itself, with 600mA max USB drain from peripherals, can manage with standard USB-C 5V at 3 Amp.

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Second article includes:

The CPU is complemented by a faster GPU, the VideoCore VII, developed in Cambridge. This uses fully open source Mesa drivers from Igalia.

Obviously this is mainly aimed at graphics drawing, but I wondered if it might also result in the GPU being better supported for non graphics maths as well ... something that seems to have been theoretically possible with previous R-Pi's 0-4, but not widely explained and exploited... at least I found it hard  going, beyond spotting a few trivial examples, in a brief search yesterday, but this is well out of my experience.

Clearly its performance will be modest compared to high end graphics GPU cards, but could it be enough for some applications? Or is that just a pipe-dream?

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As before.. I am not selling or recommending it .. just passing on a reference to some bumph if you are interested. Take with as many pinches of salt as you feel is appropriate.

Best wishes, Dave

Posted by: @davee

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Standard R-Pi 5 itself, with 600mA max USB drain from peripherals, can manage with standard USB-C 5V at 3 Amp.

It might now be worth a look see!  I wonder if it can be throttled down even more.  Maybe, making it a real nice operator on batteries for a bot.  Maybe even to the point of a sleep mode that can be self awoken like when a bot is doing nothing but standing by waiting for a request.  

Posted by: @davee

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... something that seems to have been theoretically possible with previous R-Pi's 0-4, but not widely explained and exploited.

Thank you for the leg work on this.  I hadn't heard about being able to access the GPU for potentially doing some non-video work.  And although not as powerful as a RX4090, it might still be quite useful for some matrix operations... key to AI tasks.  😉 

Dave, you're a real asset to the forum.  Appreciate you!

@inq Also check out this video, performance comparisons AND PIP with power usage in some cases. Definitely not as bad as I first thought.

I saw somewhere yesterday that over-clocking was considered in that 5A supply, and each USB3 port can operate simultaneously as the other may account for the 5A spec. IF in fact, these are conservative numbers then a second look is indeed warranted.

Hi @Inq & Ron @zander,

  Hope the info was helpful. Thanks Inq for the kind comment, but please don't blame me if the GPU number crunching proves to be too limited or impossible to make it work properly ... it is only a suggestion to consider. My first (very brief) look at using the earlier R-Pi s as GPU engines made me feel like I was trying (unsuccessfully) to break into a secret society, but I sure you will do better than that. I am hoping that the claims that R-Pi have taken control of the GPU support means it will get wider attention, but that might be wishful thinking.

Ron, from memory, the first ref I quoted above noted that they had a 'cunning' feature, which limited the total current you can draw from the board, via the USB slots, to 600mA with a 5V 3A supply, but allowed it to deliver 1.2A, with a 5V 5A supply, the idea being, 600mA would be fine for say keyboard and mouse, but something more power hungry, like an SSD drive, would probably need the 5V 5A supply. The 5A supply also provided a little more headroom for overclocking and other peripherals.   

Best wishes, Dave

@davee I think we are saying the same thing. Bottom line is the 5A is max current, but it looks like 'normal' is still in the Pi4 or even better range. I am hopeful Bill @dronebot-workshop will cover this in his review. Meanwhile I hope you have seen the review done at https://forum.dronebotworkshop.com/introductions/raspberry-pi-5-announced/paged/2/#post-43075

Hi Ron @zander,

  Thanks, for your comment, and yes I did see that YouTube video.

Best  wishes, Dave 

@davee Good to know

I pre-ordered one yesterday. I'm glad they are building their own silicon chips in the UK. The Pi 4's finally came down in price, but I managed to resist buying another one. I wasn't sure when/if a Pi 5 would be released, so a month or so ago, I got a 16-BG one of these:

http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-5-plus.html

The initial testing has been positive. It has 8 cores, although only 4 run at full speed. Despite the "easy-peasy" YouTube videos, I had trouble getting Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS to work with it. It works well with Debian 11. I haven't had time to benchmark it properly yet, but it seems at least twice as fast as the Pi 4, maybe more so. I want to put it up against the Pi 5.

Paul VE1DX

🤣 🤣 😆 

🤔

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/raspberry-pi-5-successfully-uses-external-graphics-card