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Thread: My ARM fleet

  1. #1
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    My ARM fleet, it ain't no Armada -yet

    My ARM fleet has grown over the years, but is as yet no Armada. What began with a single Raspberry Pi Model B+ and soon grew with Banana Pro and a BeagleBone Black to no less than four running ARM cores, was in the end of the 32-bit era a cluster-like stack of SBCs consisting of Raspberry Pi's 2, 3 and 4 (two examples of each), so 24 cores running, with the afore mentioned Raspberry Pi Model B+, Banana Pro and BeagleBone Black forming the reserve, together with a Cubieboard 4 that went out with a bang! due to overheating -and I still hope to be able to revive it -I hope it was the card or the PSU that went bang!, I can't find anything on the board. I must have a PSU that's able to deliver 5V-4A somewhere....

    Then the Raspberry foundation brought out their 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 Model, together with a 64-bit OS. So I went out and bought one, and I bought a 64-bit Odroid-N2+ as well -after my experiment with a 32-bit Odroid-XU4 went well.

    My 32-bit fleet now consists of two Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, two Raspberry Pi 3 Model B and an Odroid-XU4 (still 24 cores running, but a tad faster) with the Cubieboard 4 (8 cores) still in reserve. In the event the Cubieboard 4 is raised from the grave the Raspberry Pi 2's go to the reserve, as I expect the performance of the Cubieboard 4 to be about the same as that of the Odroid-XU4 -slightly less than four times that of a Raspberry Pi 2, two times that of a Raspberry Pi 3.

    The 64-bit fleet is in the build-up phase and will consist of three Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and two Odroid-N2+ (one with Android, the other with Linux), also 24 cores running.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 10-23-2020 at 12:28 PM.


  2. #2
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    Good news on the 32-bit front: the Cubieboard 4 lives! It is the PSU that died -just as I thought. I was able to flash a new OS to the onboard eMMC by using a USB 3.0 cable between a PC and the Cubieboard. Now to the hunt for a 5V 4A PSU with the right connector -those for e.g. an Odroid-XU4 don't fit, too big, but there might be an adapter. If the Cubie goes up, I'll have 40 32-bit ARM cores up and running! I think I'll try FreeBSD on the two Raspberry PI 2's by that time.

    Less good news on the 64-bit front: Though all my three Raspberry Pi 4's now merrily run Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit and my first Odroid-N2+ 64-bit does the same with Android64 9 PIE, my 2nd Odroid-N2+, the one I meant for Linux, gives big troubles. The HDMI port seems to have a problem, as I only get 'digital signal error' out of it. Going in via SSH -thanks to PuTTy- gives a sluggish, underperforming board, not the blistering fast cruncher I had in mind. So, I have 24 64-bit ARM cores running, but I am not happy with six of those.

    Edit: I don't know what I did -perhaps even nothing and the system just calibrated itself-, but the speed of the N2+ has improved dramatically. WEP M2 went from 7+ hours per WU to less than 2 -and it is not even running at 2400 MHz yet....
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 10-23-2020 at 03:23 PM.


  3. #3
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    Actual life always goes in another direction than the carefully laid-out plans you made.

    The present active 32-bit fleet of my ARMada consists solely of two Raspberry Pi 3's running the latest version of 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS and one Odroid-XU4 running Ubuntu Mate 20.04, so a mere sixteen cores where I had planned twenty-four.
    Two Raspberry Pi 2's, an Odroid-C1, a Banana Pro, a Raspberry Pi B+ and a BeagleBone Black form the 1st line reserve -as I know they will function when powered on.
    The 2nd line reserve is formed by two Cubieboard4-CC-A80's and a Banana Pi M2, boards that have me baffled as to why they won't run when I say so -or at least when I power them on and all the blinkenlights are doing their things.

    The 64-bit fleet is doing more than well at the moment however. Two Odroid-N2+ boards -one running 64-bit Android 9 PIE-, three Raspberry Pi 4's and two Jetson Nano's perform up to expectations and give me 32 running 64-bit ARM cores. Apart from the occasional 64-bit ARM application, the twenty-six 64-bit cores running Linux mainly run WEP-M+2 in 32-bit alt_platform mode, as our man in Vietnam, DavidBAM, might have noticed.


  4. #4
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    Quote Originally Posted by Dirk Broer View Post
    Actual life always goes in another direction than the carefully laid-out plans you made.
    Tell me about it... I wanted to upgrade my workstation this year, and we got hit with a global chip shortage that's driving prices crazy and components stock to zero.
    How's the ARM side of things doing, is the supply and demand still under control?

  5. #5
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    Even ARM products suffer under the present chip shortages.

    My tip for ARM crunching would be a Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) with the Raspberry Pi Compute Module I/O board that will allow you to easily add a NVMe SSD as boot medium, far superior to the SD card that comes with the standard model. And when you have it running well you might opt for another I/O board, together with three other CM4's: the Turing 2.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 07-20-2021 at 12:15 AM.


  6. #6
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    And now for something completely different: Another day in SBC-city, a bit of sillyness.

    At 3B, Raspberry Towers an inhabitant seems to be terminally ill. 3B, Raspberry Towers was erected together with 2B, Raspberry Towers when the old Raspberry Estate Building that housed the entire -then- Raspberry family was taken apart to form 4B/4G, Raspberry Lighthouse, next to the smaller 4B/16G Raspberry Lighthouse.

    The workload for the ill Raspberry Pi 3B is for the moment lightened by an Odroid-C1 from the reserve, that squated in the presently unused part of the old Raspberry Estate Building. This is frowned upon by the other Odroids, who prefer to live on their own, just like the Jetsons, the Cubieboards (that can all stand on their own feet) and the Bananas (that can't). The Bananas had a bit of a falling out after the retirement of the old Banana Pro, who went to the SBC housing for the elderly, where a BeagleBone Black and a Raspberry Pi B+ gave it a warm (or should we say 'cold' with de-activated SBC's?) welcome.

    Banana Pi M2 is on a roll now: it ordered a large DEBO flooring and contacted Noctua for a cooler and fan to be placed on top of it. To really outshine the neighbors, who have to do with 30mm or 40mm fans, it will be equipped with a 60mm fan on a Noctua NC-U6. Suddenly the large flooring makes sense: the Banana M2 might topple otherwise. There are even plans for a Chinese HB-802 cooler with a 80mm Noctua fan it seems!

    The Jetsons have ordered new powerlines and are still working on improved cooling for themselves. The Cubieboards also have ordered new powerlines and have experimented with a twice as big as original heatsink (area 25mm squared instead of 12.5mm squared) and a 40mm Noctua fan -that presently sits on the Odroid-C1's cooling solution: the old Odroid-XU4 active cooler, combined with Noctuas finest. The XU4 uses a XU4Q heatsink with a 40mm Noctua fan itself.

    Rumours are that 3B, Raspberry Towers will soon house an ASUS Tinker Board S to replace the poor Raspberry Pi 3B. Will the mere 30mm fan there be enough? We'll soon find out.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 08-26-2021 at 01:30 PM.


  7. #7
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    Changes upcoming in the fleet!

    The admiralty -me- has ordered a Compute Module 4, with 32 GB eMMC, WiFi and 8GB of RAM and an I/O board to go with as a present for my birthday. Downside is that has an estimated delivery date of somewhere in February 2022...

    The 32-bit taskforce has welcomed the Banana Pi M2 (original A31s variant), the Odroid-C1 and the Asus Tinker Board S for a comparative trial. Absolute loser was the Banana Pi M2 -that despite the massive Noctua NC-U6 cooler and 60mm Noctua fan reached temperatures as high as 79⁰C-, which might have been hampered by the PSU, the same PSU -albeit with a different extension cable- that powered an ailing Raspberry Pi 3. Speaking of that Raspberry, it was cured by having a PSU that delivers 5V and 3A, instead of 5V and 2.1A, so I'm now looking for a PSU that delivers 5 to 5.1 Volt and 3 to 3.5 Ampere and a USB-A outlet port for the Banana Pi M2 (the original A31s variant).

    The reserve will be split in an active and an inactive section, and the single- and dual cores (so the Raspberry Pi B+, BeagleBone Black and Banana Pro) will be forming the latter, a mere four cores in total.
    The active reserve will be operational -when active- on WEP, WuProp and iThena only, and will be formed by the Raspberry Pi 2's, the Banana Pi M2 and the Odroid-C1, four Cortex-A5 and twelve Cortex-A7 cores.

    The main 32-bit taskforce will be formed by the Raspberry Pi 3's, the CubieBoard 4's -both still showing great promise-, the Asus Tinker Board S and the Odroid-XU4, 36 cores altogether.

    When the CM4 arrives the 64-bit taskforce will also be 36 cores strong, so my fleet must still be able to advance in the WEP rankings.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 09-15-2021 at 10:22 PM.


  8. #8
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    The Banana Pi M2 is fully under control in the second test!

    The Banana Pi M2 got its 5V/3A PSU and I moved it to the other side of the man cave and noticed that CPU temps dropped a little bit to 69-71⁰C and then decided to install ZRAM.
    I then read up more on ZRAM and SWAP and adjusted Kernel parameters to use ZRAM before and instead of SWAP.
    On a system with low memory such as the Banana Pi M2, after adding ZRAM, you can add the following lines to /etc/sysctl.conf (and then enable in real-time with the appropriate commands.)

    vm.vfs_cache_pressure=500
    vm.swappiness=100
    vm.dirty_background_ratio=1
    vm.dirty_ratio=50

    To enable these settings temporarily without rebooting, use the following commands:
    sudo sysctl -w vm.swappiness=100
    sudo sysctl -w vm.vfs_cache_pressure=500

    temps for the Banana Pi M2 afterwards dropped to as low as 40⁰C -and the CPU runs all the time @1008 MHz instead of switching between 864 MHz (often) and 1008 MHz (seldom).
    IMG_20210910_215819_resized_20210910_101958611[5477].jpg
    The Banana Pi M2 on its DEBO mounting, with its Noctua NC-U6 cooler and its 60mm NF-A6x25 Noctua fan
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 09-15-2021 at 10:20 PM.


  9. #9
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    The Odroid-C1 is also fully under control, using a PCCooler HB-802 Northbridge cooler and a 80mm Noctua NF-A8
    243161065_1810659649105558_414186979588972949_n.jpg
    temps for the Odroid-C1 afterwards dropped from 74⁰C to as low as 43⁰C -and the CPU runs all the time @1536 MHz.
    Last edited by Dirk Broer; 10-07-2021 at 12:34 AM.


  10. #10
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    Hot news from ARM fleet HQ: the promised CM4 that was due for delivery in February 2022 was in fact delivered today! And such a tiny package, the size of a small matchbox.

    As the two tested chipset coolers prove to be so effective in cooling a SBC, there have been requests within the ARM fleet to order more. But which one? And for what board?
    I will first switch the coolers of the Odroid-C1 and the Banana Pi M2 to see what the impact is, and then order more for the Odroid-XU4 -known to hit the 84?C within seconds without cooling- and the ASUS Tinkerboard S. The Tinker Board S presently runs 'Tinker OS' -which is Linaro by another thinly disguised name, and it is badly maintained as well. You have to literally download everything on top of the basic OS as supplied, and they are behind in almost everything, kernel included. The Odroid-XU4 runs a far better supported Ubuntu Mate as supplied by Hardkernel themselves, but both the ASUS Tinker Board and the Odroid-XU4 can't show CPU temperatures in their basic configuration. I will switch both to Armbian, the ARM SBC operating system of choice for most SBC boards. Cutting edge software technology, take my word.

    Other boards in for extreme cooling soon: The Cubieboard4's, the CM4 and the Jetson Nano 4GB. The Jetson Nano 4GB suffers the same fate as the Tinker Board and the Odroid-XU4: it can't show the CPU temperature -no sensors, they claim. Strange that a mere change of display manager with the Jetson Nano 2GB brought that very feature...so I was able to tell that a big lump of Aluminium from a Pentium II cooler applied on top of the Jetson cooler brought the CPU temperature down with some 20?C.


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