RPi Alternative: Libre Computer AML-S905X-CC "Le Potato" (2GB RAM)
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toggledbitswrote on Nov 26, 2022, 11:21 PM last edited by toggledbits Nov 26, 2022, 6:22 PM
With Raspberry Pi boards continuing to be relatively scarce, I've been trying a few alternatives to see what may be usable and good. I had previously written about the Jetson Nano 2GB, which is great, but a little pricey, so I'm trying to find sub-US$100 boards that will run Reactor.
I've got four that I'm trying now, but one in particular goes right to work in the most predictable way and seems worth a mention immediately: the Libre Computer Board AML-S905X-CC 2GB (known as "Le Potato").
The form factor is very similar to that of the Raspberry Pi 3 B+, and has comparable CPU (ARM Cortex-A53, quad 64-bit cores at 1.5+GHz -- slightly higher clock speed). It's US$35 on Amazon and LoverPi in the (recommended) 2GB configuration, and easy to get.
Startup is like RPi: download one of the available OS images (Ubuntu, Raspbian, Debian, ARMbian, etc.) from their site and write the image to a MicroSD card, insert into slot, power up, and off you go. I tried the Ubuntu 22.04 image first and it comes right up. No problem getting nodejs 18.12.1 installed and running (with Reactor).
No WiFi on board, but I don't see that as a minus for use as a controller/hub (which should be hard-wired, IMO). The 40-pin GPIO connector is compatible with typical RPi HATs (PoE, breakouts, etc.).
There is an available eMMC (solid state storage) module to use instead of MicroSD, which I would recommend for long-term use. It runs US$25 for 32GB (64GB and 128GB available). The module is scarcely larger than the chip it carries, and has the smallest board-to-board connector I've ever seen.
Next up: ESPRESSObin 2GB (spoiler: it's... technical...)
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PassMark Performance Test result:
Libre Computer AML-S905X-CC Cortex-A53 (aarch64) 4 cores @ 1512 MHz | 1.9 GiB RAM Number of Processes: 4 | Test Iterations: 1 | Test Duration: Medium -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CPU Mark: 430 Integer Math 9262 Million Operations/s Floating Point Math 994 Million Operations/s Prime Numbers 3.4 Million Primes/s Sorting 2643 Thousand Strings/s Encryption 125 MB/s Compression 3064 KB/s CPU Single Threaded 204 Million Operations/s Physics 61.7 Frames/s Extended Instructions (NEON) 170 Million Matrices/s Memory Mark: 459 Database Operations 438 Thousand Operations/s Memory Read Cached 2822 MB/s Memory Read Uncached 2243 MB/s Memory Write 3592 MB/s Available RAM 1079 Megabytes Memory Latency 124 Nanoseconds Memory Threaded 5116 MB/s --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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a-lurkerreplied to toggledbits on Dec 4, 2022, 10:00 AM last edited by a-lurker Dec 4, 2022, 5:00 AM
Was looking at running PassMark on a RasPi 4 to get a general reference against the other PCBs being trialed as possible replacements for the RasPi:
Downloaded PassMark from RasPi 64 bit OS from PassMark. I'm using the 64 bit OS.
Put the executable "pt_linux_arm64" into /bin/user and changed the permissions to 0755.
Run the executable and get:
pt_linux_arm64: error while loading shared libraries: libncurses.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Download page for PassMark Linux says "ncurses 5, newer distributions with ncurses 6 will need to install the ncurses 5 library for compatability ".
So I do this but it installs ver 6 not 5:
sudo apt-get install libncurses5-dev
Any ideas on how I get PassMark to work? I thought it would be useful to post the results here.
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Have you tried installing lib64ncurses5-dev or libncursesw5 ?
C
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Going OT here a bit... I just posted benchmarks for RPi 4 maker board and Compute Module
2/5