Introduce ROCK 5B - ARM Desktop level SBC

#436

For which reason? To make the few ‘I buy only as cheap as possible’ consumers on this planet happy who want to turn some Android e-waste product into a fully-fledged x86 PC replacement?

Have you ever tried to submit code to mainline Linux? Ever realized how long this takes? Ever thought about releasing a HW product at some point and telling your customers that ‘upstreaming drivers will be done in 2-4 years’?

Ever thought about frameworks and ABIs that do not even exist in Linux at the time you want to sell your nice and shiny new hardware so there’s no alternative than hiring some coders to hack proprietary drivers for your proprietary hardware so you are able to ship your cheap Android e-waste product with somehow working software at launch day. Nobody will care about software quality or openness since all that’s important in this Android e-waste world is ‘selling as cheap as possible’.

There is no market called ‘Linux on ARM’ (or at least this market is not part of this stupid SBC world here since those SoCs that are accompanied by a Linux SDK are for automotive/embedded markets and way too expensive to be used in the ‘Android e-waste’ and SBC world). Why would any SoC vendor right in his mind think only a second about Linux if all that’s important is shipping an Android product that needs drivers now and not in a few years?

And that pretty much is the reason why Linux on ARM is such a sh*t show. Since it’s completely irrelevant.

#437

Part of their profits are the licensing and agreements they make on sale of product.
Mediatek currently doesn’t have to have any focus on Linux as a poor mans Snapdragon they still had huge sales and are now also focusing on Chromebooks.
It may be a surprise to some that companies are market driven and that enthusiast geeks are a low target as the market in comparison is tiny.
Things are changing for Arm as its hit a scale where from server to desktop its starting to go main stream and the potential markets are huge.

No-one gives a shit about e-waste or the 6th mass extinction as otherwise change would of happened decades ago and that is just how things is with humanity being greed and hence market focused only.
So people have a choice and its either affirmative action or nothing, but breakdown rants in a forum have little worth to the reality we face especially when we are all queued up with R-codes waiting for some choice e-waste.

Rockchip is in a really good position and so is Linux but yeah Android & Chromebooks gets far more attention but for once Windows is quite far behind.

1 Like
#438

Have to take a diametrically opposed position to your point of view buddy. 64 bit operating systems or devices that allow for 64 bit abi’s isn’t arbitrary at all. This notion that consumers are ignorant is not in the context of single board computer consumers and folks who purchase these type of devices to do more than view media, folks who like to tinker for example. I myself like retro emulation the most. Particularly Ps2 era gaming. So I for one am an individual who prefers a 64 bit single board computer that is also equipped with operating systems that allow for 64 bit abi’s so I can play my games on top of tinkering and minor computer stuff. Just so you are informed in your opinion. Thanks

1 Like
#439

Hello

I wanted to ask if Radxa intend to work with VMWare to add support for the Rock5 to ESXi Arm Edition (virtual machin hypervisor)???

Currently there is support for the following boards but with the power, RAM and M.2 connector the Rock5 is even better suited for these purposes.

  • Raspberry Pi 4b - 4GB or 8GB Model
  • Raspberry Pi 400
  • NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit
  • LS1046A-based NXP Freeway
  • LS1046A-based NXP RDB
  • Socionext SynQuacer Developerbox
  • PINE64 Quartz64 Model A

Radxa should really think about it because it would gain some new customers.

2 Likes
#440

Interesting point of view you have. Question, if 64 bit operating systems are arbitrary, why can’t the Khadas vim3 or 4(at present) install and run Aethersx2 or Dolphin mmjr? If 32 bit operating systems are pulling their weight in the second half of 2022 why does every content creator who covers these devices complain once they see the instruction set line of 64 bit armv8 (32 bit mode) ?? I know because the difference between 32 bit operating systems and 64 bit ones isn’t a non issue at all. I love my khadas vim3. I’ve enjoyed it since march of 2020. That said, it sucks because for all of its cpu/gpu juice it’s underwhelming due to its main operating system(android) is 32 bit so no upper end emulation. But the raspberry pi 4 a much less capable system on a chip(spec wise) can run Aethersx2 and Dolphin. For me it’s all about ps2 era gaming. These not too expensive devices are capable of running the games I like most now. Just two years ago I would have needed a lattepanda alpha of expensive rig. So yeah

1 Like
#441

Maybe since Android developers are forced to migrate their builds to 64-bit only on 64-bit capable devices (no other reason than forcing devs to adopt new rules) while SoC vendor (Amlogic) ships only a 32-bit Android and board vendor (Khadas) lacks knowledge/resources for serious software development?

Honestly: couldn’t care less about Android (used it just few minutes of my life for a DOA check prior to sending Pine64 gear to a Linux dev for reverse engineering) and retro gaming (never wasted any time with that).

#442

Its not just Android as Arm is dropping 32bit support for application SoCs where 32bit is the new realm of the MCU (Microcontroller)
The Cortex-A76 changed things a little in that it supports 32-bit mode, but only for apps so with the likes of this thread you are going to be running a 64bitOS like it or not.
Vendors such as Qualcomm already have dropped 32bit Snapdragon 855 (or later) processor. Or a Kryo 4xx (or later) based processor (including the Snapdragon 480, Snapdragon 675, Snapdragon 720, Snapdragon 730, Snapdragon 765, Snapdragon 780G, etc.)…

SIMD with 64bit is 2x as fast as 32bit as it takes 1 instruction than x2 to pass 8x 8bit, 4x16bit or 2x32 data to co-processors such as Neon, NPU & GPU.

Cortex-X2 and the Cortex-A510 32bit dropped totally.

4 Likes
#443

https://source.android.com/setup/build/devices

I think so, why those boards are major?, why not supported rock？

#444

I hear or read what you are saying (typing) and I understand your disdain for android. That said I’m a consumer who needs my device to be capable of installing 64 bit apps. Linux is not optimized too well (up to community I guess) but android is like it or not. Khadas vim3 is 64 bit but it’s main os (android) is in 32 bit mode. It doesn’t make me or others ignorant or as you put it stupid because we want to maximize our experience. Rock5b is a game changer for this reason. Hopefully these other sbc makers will take note. Also, this narrative about boycotting certain brands is nonsensical. The move should be to encourage these folk to put out products that we want and we have the power since everything is money based. If we spend our money we have the inclination to get what we want

1 Like
#445

will you support Armbian to stay up to date ?
is there a posibility to use a NVME m.2 and a SATA Adapter ( M.2 Key B to SATA ) ?

#446

How many UART’s are aviable ?
is there any Information about the GPIO aviable ( pin assignment ) ?

#447

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=irony

Since you’re focused on Android you’re going to miss it anyway. But I was talking about Linux on ARM. And that’s simply a sh*t show for the reasons mentioned:

  • there is no market for ‘Linux on ARM’ (or to be more precise: the market is somewhere else and these SoCs – those with a Linux BSP/SDK targeting businesses in the embedded/automotive world – won’t show up on SBCs for the simple reason that they’re too expensive)

  • the business models around ‘Linux on ARM’ (e.g. Igor’s with his Armbian brand) don’t work.

#448

I am just laughing at how many clicks irony got, sorry all but pmsl

I managed to stop. Not that I intend to argue with Igor or you but your right about it was ill judged as aiming at the slim margins of board suppliers is prob not going to garner much.
The level higher with the SoC provider is where the $ is at whilst opensource hardware is parallel to its software partner and as far as I am concerned both should sell to users.
Its combination of support options from free to wiki style pay what you can, to fixed support options but always users and if that don’t pay, it doesn’t pay and enjoy your hobby.

Things are transitioning as we are on the cusp of where arm enters the realm of the traditional PC and server and when things are changing and you have services to offer and don’t manage to capitalise then your definitely doing something wrong.

#449

I feel attacked :slight_smile: (gearing up and grabbing my sword). I am a Linux user for about 14 years now. Both on server as wel on desktop. I have suffered and suffered even to this day (Nvidia, as an example for the present day). Money driven sure not arguing against that, however buying their stuff but waisting my money because of lack of support and having something expensive and not using it. Who is foolish then? Instead only trying to buy brands that deliver on both hardware quality as well as software support. I dont care about the price. Being cheap to me is not one of my criteria. So yeah boycotting is whats left.

These days especially as there are places made easy for companies to release their software support (ie flatpaks, Appimages or snap-packages, linux-firmware, github, gitlab etc). Often you hear companies complainig about diversity of Linux distro’s. How hard is it to at least release a flatpak version and possibility to compile the application your self? Keep those up-to-date and community will create deb, rpms, put it in to the AUR and give support if it wont work. However if that is not even being given why even bother buying it? An example of an software application (UltraISO) i would love to spend my money buying the software application, however no Linux version (now using a pirated version in a pirated windows version in a vm). In case about hardware. Look these days for example to still many wifi chipsets for complete lack of Linux drivers. The best and fastest and cheapset solution given by community is buy a wifi card that has Linux driver support and throw the other one in the trash bin.

1 Like
#450

Its all too much for me to bear so I clicked on irony

1 Like
#451

@jack mentioned above that it’s a standard M.2 E key slot with a single PCIe lane, USB and UART interfaces, so I would certainly hope so. They’re independent PCIe lanes, so you should be able to use a PCIe 3.0x4 NVMe SSD alongside something like this:
IO CREST 2 Ports SATA III 6gb/s to M.2 NGFF A Key + E Key A+E Key 22x30 2230 mm JMicron JMB582

#452

Would something like this 4-port powered USB hub offer similar options for something like a RAID/NAS setup?

As needed, carriers could be something like:

*I’ve no affiliation with Sabrent but have so far had good experiences with their products.

#453

AX201 is CNVio card, only works with specific Intel CPUs and if motherboard has CNVio implemented.

AX200 or AX210 will work on Rock Pi 5, AX201 won’t.

1 Like
#454

Short answer is no.
Even off a single host things are not great, try RAID (multiple disks) on a hub its bad.
Tried before and hence why people want RAID/NAS.
Maybe you could do a Snapraid that way but multiple disk standard RAID levels is a big no and hence why we have RAID/NAS.

So before anyone thinks great and orders a setup this way do some further research.

#455

If they also try to retain the $35 base model then we are a long, long time off.

Are we though? Optimistic tea leaf reading puts the Pi5 to 2024. That’s practically tomorrow. If that is 2026 then that’s the day after tomorrow.

A long, long time off would be around 2032. I don’t think it’ll take that long.

1 Like