INTL 3:770/1 3:770/3
REPLYADDR Pancho.Jones@proton.me
REPLYTO 3:770/3.0 UUCP
MSGID:  f040b2e3
REPLY:  af1f8460
PID: SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
On 10/30/24 23:14, Theo wrote:
> Pancho  wrote:
>> On 10/30/24 08:50, Andy Burns wrote:
>>> Pancho wrote:
>>>
>>>> The official NVMe Pi Hat has been out for months,
>>>
>>> Oh, I don't have a Pi5, and though I kept hearing about 3rd party NVMe
>>> HATs and lack of official one
>>>
>>
>> OK, I see there is a story about rPi launching actual NVMe M.2 SSDs. As
>> opposed to a hat. I've no idea why they would do that. The obvious
>> suspicion is cashing in on a brand name.
>>
>> 
>
> It may be they are doing it because supply of small-capacity 2230 NVMe is a
> bit of a minefield.  eg I checked scan.co.uk and the smallest 2230 they have
> is 512GB.  There are some 256GB sold by Amazon.co.uk which are more
> expensive (and a few more dispatched by other sellers, of variable
> trustworthiness).  At least with the RPi brand you know they're compatible,
> and they seem to be decent value.
>

I have three 2242 NVMe, they work fine, apart from some versions of
U-Boot boot loader (They actually worked in older versions, then stopped
working). A couple of those are 256GB from a couple of years ago, due to
the price low differential I would buy 512GB now.

I'm thinking of getting a M.2 NVMe adapter for my rPI5, I'll probably
get a Pimoroni one, because it take standard 2280 drives. Best to go
with the flow.


>> It's hard to know what is going on with the Raspberry Pi guys, the
>> RK3588 devices are clearly faster, lower energy, albeit with shit
>> software support. Who knows what will happen with the next generation
>> Arm SoCs. I guess maybe Raspberry Pi have a clue, and hence decided to
>> monetise the brand now, before a new product wipes the floor with them.
>
> It'll depend on what fab slots they can get.  Not everyone can fab on the
> latest process, especially with a budget.  Also how much cache they can
> afford to put on the die.
>
> RK3588: (64+64+512)*4+(32+32+128)*4+3072 = 6400KiB
> RPi5  : 512*4+2048 = 4096KiB
>
> RK3588 also has 4 extra A55 cores which RPi doesn't have, but is more
> expensive ($100+ for the Banana Pi).
>

It's only costs a little more, but the RK3588 is now two years old. For
me it it was the first PC quality Pi type device. I think the next
generation of Pi type devices may be genuine mass consumer products. The
rPi niche is disappearing,  rPi will either become much bigger or much
smaller. Saying others have a manufacturing advantage is supporting the
idea rPi might have problems in future.

FWIW I'm not a traditional Linux/Unix person. When MS Win NT provided a
proper OS, I dropped Unix and was a MS Fanboi for 25 years. I looked at
Linux occasionally, but not seriously. Now I think Arm/Linux is about to
become a serious mass market desktop PC.

MS seem to be a little nervous too.


>>>> I guess I should get one, or maybe an alternative. I just bought a
>>>> NVMe USB enclosure which has appalling performance
>>>
>>> Anyway, is it likely the write speeds are faster than the  read speeds?
>>> I know some enterprise SSDs come in "read mostly" or "write mostly"
>>> flavours, but for a Pi?
>
>> Dunno, IOPS doesn't mean a lot to me. As TNP says, maybe a write
>> operation is to cache, and a read is from main memory.
>>
>> On many solid state persistence devices you see a very fast initial
>> write (presumably to cache) before quickly settling down to a much lower
>> rate for big files.
>
> Any decent benchmarking tool should get past the cache to exercise the real
> storage.
>

These are marketing benchmarks, about as reliable as VW diesel vehicle
emission tests. i.e. They could do it properly, but they don't want to.


> I think they've got them around the wrong way.  Their ODM Biwin's 2230 has
> more read than write IOPS:
> https://droix.co.uk/product/biwin-2230/
>

Yeahbut...



650K  IOPS Max. Random Read 4K
800K  IOPS Max. Random Write 4K


But as I said, I don't really understand what IOPS means. The same
device quotes a faster Max Read than Max Write (presumably sustained
read/write).

I'm not saying the Raspberry Pi NVMe spec is right, just that it is good
manners to have a bit more evidence before accusing it of being wrong.


> Theo

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
 * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)
SEEN-BY: 10/0 1 90/1 103/705 105/81 106/201 124/5016 128/187 129/305
SEEN-BY: 153/757 7715 218/0 1 601 700 840 870 930 220/70 221/1 6 360
SEEN-BY: 226/17 30 100 227/114 229/110 111 114 200 206 300 317 400
SEEN-BY: 229/426 428 470 550 616 664 700 240/1120 266/512 267/800
SEEN-BY: 282/1038 291/111 292/854 301/1 113 812 310/31 320/219 322/757
SEEN-BY: 335/364 341/66 342/200 396/45 460/58 633/280 712/848 770/1
SEEN-BY: 770/3 100 330 340 772/210 220 230 5020/400 1042 5075/35
PATH: 770/3 1 218/840 221/6 301/1 218/700 229/426