Raspberry Pi 4 Expands 3D Potential With Vulkan Update (arstechnica.com) 53
The Raspberry Pi 4 has hit a major graphics milestone, adding support for a more modern Vulkan 3D APIa. Ars Technica reports: Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton announced the Pi 4's Vulkan 1.2 conformance on Monday. Support isn't available yet in downloadable Pi-friendly operating systems but should be coming soon. For most people using their Pi as a server, a DIY controller, or a light desktop, Vulkan 1.2 conformance won't be noticeable. Desktop graphics on the standard Raspberry Pi OS are powered by OpenGL, the older graphics API that Vulkan is meant to replace. There is one group that benefits, says Upton: games and other 3D Android applications. Android uses Vulkan as its low-overhead graphics API.
As with most Raspberry Pi advancements, there could be unforeseen opportunities unleashed by this seemingly tiny change. Vulkan 1.2 support gives developers the same 3D-graphics interface (if not anywhere near the same power) as 2019 NVIDIA graphics cards, 2020 Intel chips with integrated graphics, and dozens of other devices. With a Vulkan 1.0 driver installed, developer Iago Toral was able in 2020 to get the original Quake trilogy mostly running on a Pi 4, with not-too-shabby frame rates.
As with most Raspberry Pi advancements, there could be unforeseen opportunities unleashed by this seemingly tiny change. Vulkan 1.2 support gives developers the same 3D-graphics interface (if not anywhere near the same power) as 2019 NVIDIA graphics cards, 2020 Intel chips with integrated graphics, and dozens of other devices. With a Vulkan 1.0 driver installed, developer Iago Toral was able in 2020 to get the original Quake trilogy mostly running on a Pi 4, with not-too-shabby frame rates.
unobtainium (Score:5, Informative)
Good luck getting one. It's a $35 computer that goes for $150+ for 2 years and counting.
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How dare people think fighting dictatorships is more important than cheap chips.
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Re:unobtainium (Score:5, Interesting)
No it's a $35 computer that goes for $35 when it's in stock, which it is sporadically. It only goes for $150 if you're impatient and feel a desperate need to feed a scalper.
You Can't Buy It So Here's A Code Update... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:You Can't Buy It So Here's A Code Update... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm thinking there are probably different people that work on the manufacturing from the development
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You *do* know that the main reason why it's so popular and basically out of stock is the great software support?
Hell no it ain't, it's out of stock everywhere because we are at saturation for the current videogame console generation and those asshole scalpers have to flip SOMETHING or else they'll get out of practice. There's no other reason for the shortage, industrial PI consumers were hit as much as the PI producers and the Lockdown Retail Therapy buying binge has long since calmed down with plenty of time for the market to normalize and recently there's even a looming recession to curb the industrial customers on
Re:You Can't Buy It So Here's A Code Update... (Score:4, Informative)
Hell no it ain't, it's out of stock everywhere because we are at saturation for the current videogame console generation and those asshole scalpers have to flip SOMETHING or else they'll get out of practice.
Cool story, how does that fit in with the Raspberry Pi, Pi2, Pi3, Pi3B also being out of stock back when video game consoles were a completely different generation.
It's a popular product without a large manufacturing base. No need to make up any more boogeymen to explain the problems.
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There isn't anything they can do about production. Everyone is in the same boat, vital parts not expected to be available for at least another year.
Even the really big guys buying millions of units years in advance can't get what they need, and have had to stop their production lines. Orders are massively backlogged and suppliers are not keen on letting anyone jump the queue, because they have made promises that other businesses have planned around.
Can't make more Pis without the parts, can't get the parts
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Pi was in this boat before the pandemic. Acting like this is a new problem for them is revisionist nonsense.
One is tempted to assume that the Pis are made out of whatever Broadcom has excess of at design time, because otherwise why would they have had so much trouble even before the supply crunch?
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Because they have always been a small player, placing orders in the 100s of thousands range. The people ordering millions at a time get first dibs on any stock, and contractual delivery dates. Everyone else gets what's left.
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At least you admit this has always been a problem.
Frankly I lost a lot of respect for them with the original unit's garbage USB and all the excuses they made for it. They shipped a broken device (the incompetently implemented USB made it literally worthless for what I wanted it for) and we just had to eat it. The fact that their product is also primarily vaporware to advertise their compute modules really clinched it for me, though.
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Yes, it is less than the big boys, but it's not small by most measures. I suspect it has to do with their use of a older 40mn processor (they even state the 28mn are "easier" to o
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There are gazillions of pi picos around, and even more RP2040 chips, so the Pi foundation can clearly source parts, manufacture custom chips and distribute them. There might be some particular component on the bigger boards that's unavailable, but a good bet is that it's the non-publicly available one.
Open Source Adreno is on 1.3 (Score:3)
Nice raspberry pi trading have 1.2 but its 2 years old
in January 2022 Vulkan 1.3 was released and follows Khronos’s usual 2 year release cadence for the API,
Mesa's Turnip driver that provides open-source Vulkan support for Adreno graphics processors continues maturing nicely and is approaching Vulkan 1.3 conformance.
would be nice if raspberry pi trading actually invested some of the money in development of drivers
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Don't bother (Score:2, Interesting)
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Re:Don't bother (Score:4, Informative)
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As it turns out, they were just using you to make a name for themselves. Now that they have done so, they don't need you any more. You have served your purpose, plebe. Go serve another corporation.
You know when I knew the whole thing was a shit-show? When they demonstrated Android for raspi way way way back when, and then refused to release it. They obviously weren't doing that work for us — we weren't even allowed to have it! THAT is the kind of thing they are doing instead of serving the community t
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If you don't need raw speed, cheap RISC-V boards are available. The MangoPi and Lichee RV for example.
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If you don't need raw speed, cheap RISC-V boards are available. The MangoPi and Lichee RV for example.
Unfortunately, nearly all the stuff I do with Raspberry Pi boards requires closed-source binary libraries that are available only for x86-64 and arm64. That said, I'm impressed that there are pin-compatible boards like MangoPi, Asus Tinker, etc. I do have exactly one project that *might* be able to use something like that.
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The whole point of RISC-V is being open. The D1 cpu has the verilog code available if you want see exactly what's going on or simulate it. The Raspberry Pi boards were never about being open. Price and manufacturability were the original goals. In the embedded world speed is low on the scale of importance. If you want something fast buy an oDroid board. They have some do that 4k60 video without breaking a sweat.
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I guess you should blame local retailer for buying up all the stock. /s
Raspberry Pi Pico - RP2040 ARM Cortex M0+ - 8.90 EUR
RASPBERRY PI 3 A+ - 43.90 EUR
StarterKit-Pi4B-32GB - 209 EUR
RASPBERRY PI 4 B 2GB RAM bundle - 159
RASPBERRY PI 4 B 4GB RAM - 109 EUR
RASPBERRY Pi Zero Wireless - 28 EUR
They run out of Zero2, Pi400, PI 3 B, but they had them in stock before somebody bought those.
Re:Don't bother (Score:5, Informative)
You can't buy anything in the Raspberry Pi lineup, not even the smallest and cheapest Raspberry Pi Picos. The lack of availability has basically killed Raspberry Pis for any new projects, the market is moving on to other SBC solutions.
Pi Picos are abundant. They are made on a different process and there is no shortage of them. Element14 (AKA Farnell, Newark, depending where you live) is showing 25000 of the dev board in stock: https://au.element14.com/raspb... [element14.com]
If you want just the Pi 2040 CPU, there's like 100k of them ready to ship: https://au.element14.com/raspb... [element14.com]
Any of your other favourite suppliers (Digikey, Arrow, RS etc etc) can get plenty of them if you want them.
The Pi 4, on the other hand, is a bit trickier to find, especially for the RRP, or in any sort of quantity. They are still trickling out though, so if you're a hobbyist, you'll get one eventually. If you are using a lot of them in a commercial product, well, you just learned a lesson about just-in-time manufacturing, and the benefits of maintaining your own inventory.
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That would be interesting (Score:3)
If it wasn't completely impossible to even find a RasPi at a reasonable price. With "reasonable" being anything below thrice recommended retail.
How impossible you ask? Well, impossible enough that there is even a webpage [rpilocator.com] dedicated to finding out where there are RPi models available. And more often than not, the only things available are the compute modules from a store you never heard of ... for the reason that it's about half a planet away and wouldn't ship to you anyway. Then again, even stores close to you would probably not ship to you because they only deliver to "existing customers".
On other days, nothing is available. Not even from stores that wouldn't even talk to you.
So please don't be too upset when I say that this announcement is a throwback to Soviet days when the glorious leadership announced the new features of the next generation car they planned to produce while the population knew that there aren't even the old models available, let alone any new ones. Another blast from the past is how used models of RasPis cost more than new ones, for the same reason used cars were more expensive in the Soviet Union than new ones: You could get it now instead of in 5-10 years.
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I've not had any luck, and I'm not bothering to pay scalper's prices for stuff I'm doing for fun.
One possible alternative are x86 (technically amd64) SBCs, like LattePanda models. From what I know, most should have some type of UEFI, so slapping a decent OS on them wouldn't be too bad. Pin compatibility with GPIO stuff may vary, though.
Not sure what the holdup is. Is Raspberry Pi just not able to get enough production going?
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The Pi has always had production issues, compounded by the bigger problems currently in the wider market. Eventually though they become available.
Comparing it to promises by vaporware peddlers is disingenuous.
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Hey, cars in the Soviet Union were not vaporware. They became available... eventually. Give it 5 years, give it 10 years, maybe 20 years, but you can't say they were vaporware, they did eventually get made. When there weren't more important things that the parts could be used in, back then it was Ural trucks that transported goods that brought in foreign currency, now it's car manufacturers that need the chips for profit.
It's kinda disheartening when parallels to Soviet times become reality again...
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Again, it's not a question of "more important". Supply chain issues are universal right now for that class of electronics and it happens to be shown the most in highly popular products.
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Oh, and while we're at it, a topical Soviet joke: Why was the Trabant 601 called 601? 600 people ordered it, one person got it.
Just like the RasPi.
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Yep.
I'm buying a new house soon and it's ideally laid out for a rack in the dead centre of the house, with access to the loft space and under the floors.
I was seriously considering putting in a rack and centrally powering it (with UPS and even solar backups) and then buying a rack adaptor for four Pi 4's.
I have 2 of the largest-memory Pi 4's already and my plan was to break them out, one function per Pi 4 to do things like media centre, CCTV, network services, etc. in a couple of U of rack space.
I can buy t
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In this case, the CCTV would be monitoring the new house for over a month while I'm moving into it bit by bit and it's empty for 50% of the time.
Once in place, it's basically zero-cost and useful for the same reason anyone should have CCTV, especially in a town or city... just to be aware.
I've had incidents in previous houses where a gang of kids were basically in my back garden vandalising things and nobody knew they were there, even with people in the house.
I know from my professional life that it won't g
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I have 2 of the largest-memory Pi 4's already and my plan was to break them out, one function per Pi 4 to do things like media centre, CCTV, network services, etc. in a couple of U of rack space.
I can buy the racks today.
I can't buy the Pi 4's, even the lowest memory versions, without spending far more than it would cost to just buy an ordinary rack server that's way more powerful....As it stands, if I end up moving in any time soon, I'm just going to buy a PC.
if I can make a suggestion, get the racks and infrastructure you want, but get something like a refurbed Optiplex [microcenter.com]. the micro form factor models take 60W (i.e. reasonably close to what four RasPi 4 models would likely draw). From there, most of what you're looking to do can be done with Docker; I use Portainer as a pretty WebUI to make it easier to manage and to add more containers; Plex/Emby are available as such, as is Zoneminder and most other network services one does on a RasPi. You might want to use on
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Thanks for the advice.
That's all roughly where I'm heading, but it would have been nice to have just done it with Pi's and stick in Pi 5 / 6 /7 whatever as time went by, with pretty much the same boot image.
I run Plex (off a ReadyNAS) but I will move it to something else as the ReadyNAS isn't powerful enough to transcode live. Then the ReadyNAS will just stay as media storage for whatever becomes the actual Plex machine, as well as boot images and the like.
I have no need of Netflix etc. I worked out long
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Honestly, I think the scalpers could be run out of business if they just switched to an order queuing system. Right now they suddenly flag "in stock!" and then you can order them and they'll be delivered. If instead they were marked "backordered" and the order could be placed and added to a queue with an estimated lead time, I think most people would just drop an order in the queue, which scalpers couldn't script to clean out every time it becomes available. Most people would say "ok, 4-6 weeks" and be fine
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And which of the shops should I place my order at? Because one thing is as certain as the law of the supermarket checkout: The other one will have it available sooner.
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Given most people probably need a couple of them or more, and one per customer seems like a good idea for now, all of the shops.
That way the shop that gets it the soonest will get you one quickest, but the others will get it soon afterwards - you'll get it quicker than placing an order for one, waiting for it, then placing it again with the qu
Don't expect much (Score:2)
Rendering Farm (Score:2)