
8GB Raspberry Pi 4 on sale now at $75 - timthorn
https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/8gb-raspberry-pi-4-on-sale-now-at-75/
======
kart23
This is cool. Whats really holding it back at this point is it's use of a sd
card.

I find that its pretty difficult to use 4gb of ram on a pi practically, and
its often bottlenecked by I/O. It might just be my SD card, but executing
trivial commands sometimes takes forever and reminds me that I'm in a pi. I've
heard ssds can improve speeds a lot, but you still cant boot off usb.

~~~
2sk21
I also read recently that the lack of cooling can really throttle the
performance of a Pi4. Do you have a good heat sink and fan installed?

~~~
geerlingguy
I did an article on the topic after the Pi firmware update made the situation
a lot better. A bare Pi is okay without a fan, but if you want it in a case,
the Flirc case is your best option (IMO):
[https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2019/best-way-keep-your-
co...](https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2019/best-way-keep-your-cool-running-
raspberry-pi-4)

~~~
2sk21
For my use case, I need access to the GPIO pins. The blurb on the Flirc says
that access is possible but I don't see any opening. Can you confirm that GPIO
access I possible?

~~~
mmcnl
I use this case: [https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/aluminium-heatsink-
case-f...](https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/aluminium-heatsink-case-for-
raspberry-pi-4?variant=29430673178707)

Doesn't look as flashy as the Flirc case, but cooling performance is supposed
to be similar and you can access all the pins.

------
NightMKoder
For folks considering running 64-bit on the pi - I don’t think you need 64-bit
userland. I’ve been running a 64-bit kernel on my pi with 32-bit userland
perfectly fine. The few things that actually need 64-bit (I’m looking at you
mongo) run in 64-bit mode via docker. That said, I’m not 100% sure how much
memory overhead I have in this setup vs just running the 64-bit userland.

Technically there’s a very interesting “hybrid” abi you can try - 32 bit
pointers on a 64 bit ISA. The main benefit is the extra registers that get
unlocked in 64-bit mode while keeping memory usage lower. It seems there’s an
attempt to do this in Debian [1]. From what I read it’s not a big win for arm
though but could be big for x86 - since the ISA is very different between x86
and x86_64. Probably doesn’t matter when ram is so cheap nowadays.

Separately I’ve now got a serious case of buyers remorse. I just bought the
4gb version last week. I would have easily shelled out an extra $20 for double
the ram.

[1]
[https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64ilp32Port](https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64ilp32Port)

~~~
CydeWeys
Has anyone quantified these performance differences between full 64 bit vs 64
bit OS but 32 bit memory per process?

At 8 GiB RAM, allowing a single process to "only" use half of the available
RAM really doesn't seem too limiting for most workflows. Especially
considering that there's 4 CPU cores. If it's a notable hassle-free
performance improvement it seems like a no-brainer for most use cases.

~~~
nitrogen
Depending on where the kernel/user memory map split is, each process may only
be able to map 1-3GB. Unless things have changed and all mappings share a
single address space?

------
Legogris
> The BCM2711 chip that we use on Raspberry Pi 4 can address up to 16GB of
> LPDDR4 SDRAM, so the real barrier to our offering a larger-memory variant
> was the lack of an 8GB LPDDR4 package. These didn’t exist (at least in a
> form that we could address) in 2019, but happily our partners at Micron
> stepped up earlier this year with a suitable part.

All other SBCs in this market segments have also been capped at 4GB - I'm
hopeful about this leading to larger memory options from other vendors as well
before long.

Great of RPi to keep pushing the envelope.

~~~
Zenst
EDIT - got excited as because I misread and brainfarted GB and Gb and below is
what followed - sorry for that folks:

Interesting as Samsung developed a 8GB LPDDR4 memory chip back in 2013 -
[https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-develops-
industrys-f...](https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-develops-industrys-
first-8gb-lpddr4-mobile-dram)

Looking at Micron (who probably tickd the box on price to make this happen),
they can do 16Gb modules. So that may well happen. However the power aspect as
already indicated from the 4Gb to 8Gb, considerations will prove more
interesting.

Biggest gain though is more focus upon 64bit, which goes hand in hand with
that extra memory.

~~~
dcm360
This is a case where you should read with care, and notice the difference
between Gb and GB. The chip from 2013 that you mention, has a capacity of 8Gb
= 1GB. Chips with a capacity of 16Gb are indeed very common, because
manufactures put 8 of them on a RAM-module with a capacity of 16GB.

~~~
CydeWeys
Hah, that's weird. I can't say I've ever seen memory being quantified in
gibibits before! It's always gibibytes.

You have to wonder why they deviated from what I thought was a universal
custom.

~~~
bryanlarsen
RAM chips are and have always been measured in kibibits and gibibits since
long before those two words existed. RAM _modules_ are measured in gibibytes.
In a desktop computer you typically use 8 XGb chips to make a single XGB
module.

The confusion comes when you blur the distinction between chips and modules as
they do in mobile. They either use single package modules created from
multiple chips via 3D die stacking or they use single chip modules.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_1103](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_1103)

~~~
CydeWeys
Thanks for the info. Clearly all my experience in this area is from the
perspective of a consumer buying entire modules. I can't say I've ever dived
down to the individual chip level.

------
intsunny
I am strongly hoping that the 8GB Rpi + NexDock would be a good low cost
laptop for web browsing, text editing and terminal.

I've been turned off from investing in a new laptop for a variety of reasons:

\- Apple has made questionable hardware design decisions lately. If Louis
Rossmann is to be believed, the T2 chip + secureboot situation is just as bad
as the old keyboard situation. It sucks having no say over the hardware.

\- Apple's newest Catalina OS has been strangely unstable for many (including
me) and is headed in a strange direction. It sucks having no say over the
software.

\- Intel's chip vulnerabilities are too many and too confusing to keep track
of. While their chips are advertised as "Quad core @ 2.4Ghz", I wonder what
the actual performance is when all the kernel protections are enabled.

\- AMD's Ryzen 4000 products look amazing, but (almost?) none of the laptops
are 13" with high quality screens.

A "laptop" composed of 8GB Rpi + NexDock would allow me much greater control
of the hardware and software.

~~~
Jonnax
Why are you comparing $1000+ laptops to a raspberry pi and a dock?

If the raspberry pi meets your needs, consider a much cheaper laptop

~~~
intsunny
Beacuse if I spend $1000 (even $2000) I want to get that much value for that
purchase. Or I can spend significantly less and be that much less married to
that purchase.

Between Apple's missteps, Intel's not ideal products/roadmap, and AMD's lack
of uptake, the current products do not seem to offer the value for their
costs.

The 2015 13" rMBP was by far my most favorite laptop I have ever owned. I have
never regretted spending what I did on that machine.

If a Raspi + Nexdoc costs $300, I'm not going to be very broken up over
replacing it in a year or two. I cannot say the same for a $1000-2000 laptop.

~~~
kiddico
Why not just continue to use the 2015 13" rMBP? It outclasses a Raspi + Nexdoc
in every way I can think of, and if you still have it it's free :D

Since 2015s doesn't have the T2 nonsense and you were fine with linux on the
rpi and there's no T2 stopping you, then you can just wipe it and install what
you want.

~~~
als0
Also the 2015 13" rMBP is still a great design even today.

~~~
kiddico
I may have been a little biased in trying to sway OP, as I still have a 2015
15" which I plan to use until it dies or I do.

------
rasz
Before anyone goes "OMG I could use it as a desktop" $75 is close to what you
would pay for couple year old ~4 faster laptop with broken screen, sodimm and
PCIE SSD slots. Quick ebay check shows things like $90 'Dell XPS12 i7-3537U
8gb 128GB SSD broken screen'

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Maybe in the US. In my EU country(Austria) second hand hardware prices are
through the roof. There's no way you're getting anything half decent from the
last decade for $75.

And then there's the cooling and power consumption difference between a 10
year old system and a RPi. It's not even close.

~~~
cat199
> In my EU country second hand hardware prices are through the roof.

Curious - any thoughts on why?

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Small country, small market. Small market, low supply. Low supply, high
prices.

~~~
skissane
Wasn't the EU single market supposed to fix that?

~~~
ChuckNorris89
The EU single market has no positive or negative effect here as it's a private
purchase not subject to any regulations.

I am free to buy and sell to and from any country in the world, the issues is
not everyone is willing to deal and pay for international shipping which ends
up quite high for a cheap SFF tower system.

~~~
skissane
> not everyone is willing to deal and pay for international shipping

In principle, shouldn't one of the consequences of the EU project be that
intra-EU shipping rates should, for the same distance, be identical between
within the same country and between EU countries? (Of course, I realise that
outcome may not yet have actually been achieved in practice.)

~~~
bluGill
In theory. In practice roads between counties are not as good so cost goes up.

~~~
skissane
One of the EU projects is trying to improve the transport links (including
road network) between EU countries –
[https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/infrastructure/ten-
t_e...](https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/infrastructure/ten-t_en)

One would hope that if they are successful in improving those transport links,
shipping costs will reduce as a result.

~~~
bluGill
Somewhat. Population also tends to be centered around the country so it even
if transportation is better people still have their lives setup such that
practically shipping in their country is cheaper.

------
dstaley
I really wish Microsoft would release a version of Windows 10 (the full
version, not IoT) for the Pi 4 so developers could easily test their apps on
an actual ARM device. Being able ship a Raspberry Pi 4 preloaded with Windows
10 to developers could bring a huge boost in the number of apps that support
Windows on ARM.

~~~
raghava
Isn't [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot-
core/tutorials/...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot-
core/tutorials/rpi) IOT-Core for that purpose, or am I missing it?

~~~
mrgr1eves
OP is asking for full version not just IOT-Core

------
ggm
8GB is enough to run ZFS with memory ARC backing for TB sized disks behind
raidZ2. I've run this with Intel 64bit CPUs, I can't see a reason this won't
also run in reasonable time for arm. (Both memory shuffles and the checksum
computation)

With the right PiHAT this makes raid FS much nicer.

------
fpgaminer
So I just got a fun project working with a Raspberry Pi 4. I have it
generating a slideshow of fake images using the impressive BigGAN model, and
displaying those on a 7" touch screen.

It's just for kicks; I wanted a little AI daydreaming on my desk :) Also to
see if it was even possible, given how large the BigGAN model is. But lo and
behold the 4GB Pi is _just_ enough to run it. I'm half tempted to buy this new
8GB version so I can run at higher resolutions ... but I think the precompiled
Tensorflow package for RasPi is 32-bit anyway so might not matter.

Here she is:
[https://i.imgur.com/i22METZ.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/i22METZ.jpg)

~~~
zucker42
You could buy a Jetson Nano developer kit which is $99 and has a GPU (I'm not
in anyway associated with Nvidia and have never bought a Nano).

------
jakogut
As someone currently working on supporting application and firmware code on
this platform, this is pretty interesting. I'd also like to point out that
Buildroot ([https://buildroot.org](https://buildroot.org)) and upstream U-boot
have first class support for building and running your own 64-bit kernel and
userland based on included defconfigs.

If you have an application you'd like to ship on a Raspberry Pi image,
especially if you want to address all 8 GiB from a single process, check out
Buildroot.

------
desikoder
At this point, I would much rather use any x86 based laptop instead. Their
price-to-performance ratio's have significantly increased since the first RPI
was introduced and for a 100$, you get a much better package. So, unless the
ARM ecosystem grows to allow for pluggable, extensible and better performing
solutions than the latest entry-level celeron or ryzen based systems, I am no
longer investing into it.

~~~
CydeWeys
Can you recommend any specific laptops at around that price point that have
superior performance? Would these be new or used? And any idea how their power
consumption compares to a Raspberry Pi?

~~~
itsspring
Ya, I'm really confused. Does the poster want a $75 laptop? That's called a
smartphone, and last I looked the operating system and specs are pretty
terrible.

~~~
CydeWeys
You can definitely get OK used laptops for $75, that's why I asked that
particular clarifying question. I'm wondering if they have any specific models
or deals in mind, ideally with a link to an online retailer.

~~~
lozaning
Thinkpad X230 can be picked up for around $100. I use one as my daily driver,
another $70 or so picks you up an SSD and a 16GB ram kit.

~~~
CydeWeys
Think that'd make a better server than a Raspberry Pi 4 for the price? It's
nice that it includes a built-in battery backup, plus screen/mouse/keyboard
for initial setup and later debugging. On the down side, it takes up more
space.

------
Zenst
I bought a couple of Pi 3B+'s about a month before the Pi4 was announced.

Got myself a RPi4 last month.

I'll give you folks a heads up next time I'm buying a Raspberry, seems like I
can turn my luck into others fortunes.

------
davnicwil
Interesting announcements at the end of the article:

\- Rasbian will be renamed to Rasberry Pi OS

\- They're adding a 64-bit variant in addition to the existing 32-bit

------
youngtaff
I'd like a Pi with built in POE and eMMC support

Something like the profile of the original Ubiquiti CloudKey would be ideal
(don't need most of the ports on the Pi)

[https://www.ui.com/unifi/unifi-cloud-key/](https://www.ui.com/unifi/unifi-
cloud-key/)

~~~
Legogris
Like a Rock Pi 4?

[https://rockpi.org/rockpi4](https://rockpi.org/rockpi4)

~~~
youngtaff
Unfortunately POE is still external on the Rock Pi 4

A carrier board for Compute Module with just POE / ethernet, USB ports and and
SD card slot would be good enough too

I literally want same form factor as the Ubiquiti board but with open source
support, and sufficient power to charge a phone from the USB port

Orange Pi Zero is along the right lines but doesn't have enough RAM for my
needs and I'm unsure about the processor

[http://www.orangepi.org/orangepizerolts/](http://www.orangepi.org/orangepizerolts/)

~~~
hipboi
This is Tom Cubie, the founder of ROCK Pi. If you want small form factor, we
have ROCK Pi S for you. Checkout:

[https://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpis](https://wiki.radxa.com/Rockpis)

~~~
youngtaff
Thanks but that doesn't have enough RAM for me or POE

Basically want something like [https://fccid.io/SWX-UCCK/Internal-
Photos/Internal-Photos-36...](https://fccid.io/SWX-UCCK/Internal-
Photos/Internal-Photos-3689962)

I network / POE port, 1 or 2 USB sockets to plug a phone into, SD-Card slot,
1GB+ RAM, A53 (or above) processor

------
emwjacobson
Cool to hear that they're working more on 64-bit version of Raspbian (now
Raspberry Pi OS?)

------
terrywang
Just about to grab 2 Pi 4 GB models, will put on hold for price adjustments..

This is really exciting, Pi 4 8GB with support for booting from USB SSD makes
a cheap workstation option, many other possibilities as well as server in the
garage to replace some VPS in cloud? (for general purpose workloads, can the
CPU keep up if 8GB memory is saturated, consider general purpose use cases,
memory-bound workloads may work well).

Side note: My original Pi 1 is still running Pi-Hole 5.0 fronted by nginx +
php-fpm on Raspbian 10, working well for the home LAN ;-)

------
sylvain_kerkour
Wow, this is such a great news!

This plus the pinebook pro, I really hope that it will help the software
availability on armv8 to skyrocket!

Also I really hope that someone will come with a new case to use it as tablet
and laptop. Like a mix between the old pi-top and a surface book (or a
PineTab).

If anyone has experience developing on the raspberry pi 4 (4GB), I really want
to hear from you, especially regarding the processor performance.

~~~
FullyFunctional
I spent a few months doing much of my development on the 4 GiB Raspberry Pi 4
(gently overclocked). My experience was that of a slightly older notebook -
totally fine for most things. The 4 GiB memory was hardly ever an issue, but
the pathetic IO (storage and to some degree network) eventually drove me away.
Thus, 8 GiB is a great option, but it makes it seem even less balanced now.

EDIT: I haste to add that having the full 64-bit Ubuntu 20.04 was what made
this interesting to me.

~~~
sylvain_kerkour
Thank you!

Talking about the IO, did you experience failure (lose of work) due to the
unreliability of microSD?

~~~
FullyFunctional
No one sane uses the microSD for anything but the boot partition :) I used a
fast USB key and contemplated using a true fast USB 3.1 SSD, but I really
didn't like the bulk (the SSD would have been as big as the Pi). I never lost
any data (but I also only accessed it remotely - it was head-less).

------
iforgotpassword
I was recently wondering if there's any kind of single board computer that
would be suitable for just shoveling data on the network at close to 10gbps.
If you have something that basically just sendfile()s data, an average desktop
PC from 5 years won't pull a sweat saturating 10gbits, barely reaching two
digit CPU%.

Are there are any SBCs that would have suitable IO for this? The pi4 has USB 3
which internally is connected via PCIe, but the question is whether it could
handle eg SATA and Ethernet on it. Not that I actually need this for anything,
it would just be cool to have a small case with 1TB SSD that you can plug into
a switch and deliver hundreds of MB/s. With 8GB RAM you could even make good
use of the fs cache, depending on usage pattern.

~~~
jrockway
My experience is that these small computers don't even do well at 1Gbps. When
I worked on Google Fiber, we really wanted to implement a speed test between
our routers and some trusted server, but the chipset we used couldn't generate
data fast enough. (We could route at 1Gbps because it took a hardware fast
path, but the software-only path wasn't good enough to provide useful speed
tests.) I have subsequently tested RPi4s at another ISP, and again, we
couldn't get a gigabit out of them.

In fact, I have never gotten 10Gbps out of any software-only path. Routers can
do it, but it's hardware accelerated and won't generate packets at that speed.
I did recently get 7Gbps out of normal Internet usage, though, with a
consumer-grade 10Gbps NIC on an Intel system. Pretty decent, but not 10Gbps.

Much optimization is necessary to make 10Gbps a thing. It's not a focus for
$35 single-board computers. Those things are just obsolete phone chipsets in a
desktop form factor; don't expect much out of them.

~~~
iforgotpassword
But it should be about the buses these boards expose shouldn't it? Even the
pi4 still has Ethernet over USB which is unnecessary overhead. Getting access
to the PCIe lanes directly would be interesting for this. I just researched a
bit and it looks like there are boards with SATA port from hardkernel that
completely saturate the 1gbit port, so the question is how much faster they
could go, and whether it uses a USB bridge too.

In general, saturating 10gbit on any x86 from the past couple years isn't a
problem. Doing it with a single TCP connection is a bit tricky and requires
some tweaking, and jumbo frames help too, but a simple threaded server pushing
out data via sendfile to multiple clients easily gets the job done.

But yes, I agree that this is not a useful use case for SBCs, one of these
things I'd just want to build because I can, not because I should.

------
_bxg1
$75 for what is honestly a capable desktop computer - even for light
development work - and is smaller than a phone and has first-class Linux
support. Pretty incredible.

------
jcun4128
Wow 8GB is nice impressive. It's too bad to us it's easy to use these things
but comparatively easier to say "here's a laptop" to someone less inclined. I
was trying to suggest these to people as replaceable computers that you don't
have to worry about getting stolen eg. just keep cheap monitor/keyboard/basic
phone charger... anyway that's neat. Basic phone charger may have to get
bumped up for more amp(s) but yeah.

------
_bxg1
Something I just thought of: with public schools going full-remote, there are
lots of lower-income households whose children are really struggling to stay
in the loop. Has anyone thought about starting a program to package up
Raspberry PIs with case, cables, installed OS, and a cheap display, and send
them to people for quarantine-education purposes?

~~~
thetinguy
At that point you can just get chromebook.

------
Mengkudulangsat
Question from a non-technical person.

I've been reading a lot about tiny websites on HN (e.g.
[https://bearblog.dev](https://bearblog.dev)). Can we use these Raspberry Pis
to host them? Are they performant enough? Is setting things up newbie-
friendly?

Having your own little corner on the internet that no one can shut down sounds
pretty cool.

~~~
boomlinde
Yes, they are definitely fast enough for simple pages to a few thousand daily
visitors. I've hosted dynamic websites from home using much more modest
hardware and eventually used a first model Raspberry Pi for it.

Eventually I moved my sites to a VPS out of convenience. My ISP can't
guarantee a static address with my current plan (although I've found it is
static in practice so far), and the additional cost of a plan where they can
exceeds the cost of renting a VPS.

If you have an ever changing dynamic IP allocation, you can still use Dynamic
DNS services to update DNS records. I use GoDaddy for my names and AFAIR they
provide this service, but there are also free providers that'll give you a
subdomain, like [https://dyndns.org](https://dyndns.org). This requires some
additional setup, because you need to update your IP with the dynamic DNS API
regularly, for example via a cron job.

As for setup, if all you need is static pages you can use Raspbian and just
install Apache or Nginx, put your files under /var/www/html and on your router
forward some port to port 80 on your Raspberry Pi.

~~~
jmiserez
Just a heads up, DynDNS hasn't been free for years. Even the most basic plan
is way too expensive for what you get.

If your DNS provider has a CLI just use that. I use Route53 and a simple
cronjob to update it.

------
Hippocrates
Does anyone know if the rPi4 can play HD (1080p) video in a browser smoothly
yet? I bought one to use as a media PC after reading that it could play 4K
video. Apparently it can’t even do 1080p in the browser though (YouTube etc)

~~~
paines
Yes it can do full hd, ever since at least rPi3. Problem here is chromium. Use
omxplayer and the rPi4 will do 4k in full glory. I think you can even use
omxplayer with youtube somehow. Chromium doesn't even do hardware decoding on
x86 desktops, you just don't notice it, because the cpu's are fast enough to
do it nowadays.

~~~
jstsch
> Chromium doesn't even do hardware decoding on x86 desktops

Which is a ridiculous waste of energy... :( you notice it too now using
Microsoft Teams (Electron) and Google Meet versus Facetime. Eats your battery
in no time.

------
excelblue
Wow, that's a lot of RAM for a SBC.

To give a rough idea, that 8GB chip is the same kind that's used in the 256GB
DDR4 modules (2x8 chips per side, 2 sides).

------
Wowfunhappy
Options are cool I guess, but what are people doing with their Pi’s that’s
memory-bottlenecked at 4GB? This machine strikes me as a bit unbalanced.

------
sdan
This is amazing, might buy a couple to add to
[https://Flocknet.io](https://Flocknet.io)

~~~
maxgashkov
How do you put anything that requires storing of something remotely secret on
a general purpose hardware ran by untrusted parties?

~~~
jshield
Simple, you don't. Not every application has secrets that need to be stored on
someone else's computer.

------
mister_hn
I hope the next upgrade would be a bare minimum flash storage so we can get
rid of microSD Cards to do the boot from it.

------
rewoi
Cool. I need small machine that can run java and Intellij Idea to go with my
phone. Great for section hikes while pretending to do WFH :)

~~~
uHuge
Why not have Linux directly on your Android? There are great options and the
VNC works reliably.

~~~
rewoi
I want local machine, so remote VNC is out.

There is no Linux like solution for android phone that runs Xserver and
OpenJDK reliably. Samsung DEX emulation was the only usable solution, but that
was killed off. Termux can not run OpenJDK, some weird issues with crashing.

Also most devices do not have enough cooling capacity, max performance can be
only delivered in short bursts before CPU gets throttled down. If you hack it
to run at full speed for hours, it freezes.

PI is simply the only option at this size, with enough CPU power and good
Linux support.

~~~
uHuge
Termux -> proot Arch -> pacman -S jre-openjdk

When you want Xserver, you just do so from Android vnc viewer to
127.0.0.1:5901 or so.

------
toasted_flakes
Did they fix the stability issue? Even with a known-good power supply my
raspberry pi 3 has been losing power 3-4 times a week at random points.

~~~
dikei
FWIW, I'm using the official power supply and have never encounter any power
issue.

~~~
imtringued
For some reason people seem to really want to use their $75 Macbook USB
chargers instead of just buying the official power supply.

~~~
mojo982
The promise of USB-C is exactly that though. The goal is having one charger
and cable for everything.

