Linux gods at last turn their gaze to Pi 400: Computer-in-a-keyboard receives mainline kernel support with v5.14
- Reference: 1623778393
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/15/pi_400_linux_support/
- Source link:
Taking the mainline
Support in the Linux kernel has been a little tardy for the Pi 400. We first looked at the computer-in-a-keyboard [1]back in November 2020 and came away impressed. Clocked at 1.8GHz instead of the usual 1.5GHz, the machine is nippier than its computer-only siblings ,although the 4GB of RAM felt a bit weedy (particularly when we swapped Raspbian for Ubuntu 20.10).
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Raspberry Pi 400 ports and all
Software options look set to increase with the arrival of mainline kernel support in Linux 5.14 with the addition of the Pi 400 into [3]DeviceTree (as reported by [4]Phoronix ) in the "for-next" branch.
It's not clear why this has taken quite so long, since the device is very close to the Raspberry Pi 4. No kernel driver tweaks seem to be on the cards, just DTS changes for the higher clock speed, updated Wi-Fi chip, power-off via GPIO, and the dropping of the activity LED.
The latter we noted in our review, where the power LED originally did double-duty for activity and looked downright odd. "It seemed like a good idea at the time," Pi supremo Eben Upton told us, but the notification was dispensed with in launch models.
Pi in the cloud
While the Pi 400 has received love from the Lords of Linux, its stablemate, the 8GB Pi 4 has been [5]added to the Pi cloud run by Mythic Beasts . Interestingly for Pi fans, as well as stock 1.5 GHz options, the team has also clocked the diminutive computers up to 2GHz (replete with some substantial fans to keep things cool).
Overclocking is a tricky game and brings with it all manner of operational issues – the power consumption increases as well as the need for cooling to stop the silicon from overheating. Pi 4s that show signs of instability during testing are relegated to the 1.5GHz cluster.
Customers can choose from the Raspberry Pi OS 64 or Ubuntu 64. The monthly cost of running the top-of-line overclocked Pi 4 with 10GB of storage starts at £12.50 (compared to £5.75 for a stock Pi 3). ®
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Get our [7]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/02/pi-400/
[2] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/10/29/rpi400back.jpg
[3] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/soc/soc.git/commit/?h=for-next&id=1c701accecf21932ebcbd8acacb4557af3797e77
[4] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry-Pi-400-Linux-5.14
[5] https://www.mythic-beasts.com/blog/2021/06/15/8gb-and-overclocked-raspberry-pi-servers/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YMki-0YBXZHqmVbBaGwSWgAAAAk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[7] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
A cloud rentable Raspberry Pi? Curious. ?
I'm hoping you mean cumulus!
Gotta go!
8GB Pi 4 Model B is showing as £73.50 inc VAT. chuck in an SD card and PSU and I guess we're at ~£85 a pop, plus the mess of extension leads for the PSUs. So if you're only doing something short term, or experimenting with say a cluster, then may be it is worth it. 'Course if you do buy them outright, you have to be wary of the damn things breeding - I seem to have 3 running full time at home doing various jobs plus the one I tinker with...
"Apart from the novelty factor and educational sector, is there a practical user application?"
Only sort of. There are two reasons I can see for using one of these, but neither are very strong. The best one is insulation--this is in a price range where the competition is likely a VM running on a server. That means you're sharing the hardware, although the hardware is better. If you were worried about a vulnerability in the hypervisor allowing someone to access your data, you might want to run your code on a dedicated server. However, this only sort of works because you're still using network storage and the cloud provider of course has access to anything on your disk if it turns out they're malicious. Most people who distrust hypervisors likely wouldn't accept those either. The second reason is software compatibility--if you had something which didn't work right on other Linux distros but did work on a Pi, this would let you run it. That's most likely to be something compiled for ARM which can't be recompiled for AMD64, although I haven't experienced anything of the kind myself.
"Is it cheaper?"
That depends what you're comparing it with. If you need a VM, then this is in the range but more expensive than the low end of the range. However, those VMs usually have different specs--you often get one virtual core at the low end but it's a faster core. The cloudy Pi 4s are pretty good since they have 8 GB of memory. As long as you can live with the slower processor (much slower on single-core, but the four cores make parallelized things work fine), then it could be price competitive.
Surely...
This is Pi in the Sky thinking?
Re: Surely...
Didn't know whether to upvote you or blow you a raspberry.
A cloud rentable Raspberry Pi? Curious.
Apart from the novelty factor and educational sector, is there a practical user application?
Is it cheaper?