[chbot] PineBook

[Geoff]

Slightly off topic, but I recently investigated low-cost laptops. We wanted
to compare between a LattePanda (atom x5-8350) and a raspberry pi 3 (
BCM2837) for computer vision processing. The cheapest way to get hold of
the x5 processor quickly was in a chromebook on from a local store for
about 200NZD (I am currently located in Switzerland, and it cost 150CHF).

What we found was that the atom X5 processor completely dominated the
BCM2837 in everything except cost.
- In processing power, the intel atom was several times faster than the Pi3
on the computer-vision benchmarks we ran despite them both having similar
clock speeds and core-counts.
- The atom is a normal x86/64 processor, so you can run normal
distributions and software on it. The only issues are an unsupported
sound-card [and a hardware fault on the lid-closed switch].
- To our surprise, the intel processor has about the same power
consumption. The Pi3 requests a 5v supply of 2.5A, the latte panda requests
a 5v supply of 2A, and the laptops supply is 5V 3A. So at the very least,
the consumption is comparable. In practice, the chromebook's battery drains
incredibly slowly - much slower than any other system I've used. It even
outperforms the battery life of my smartphone for web-browsing.

In the end we didn't end up doing computer vision to solve the problem, so
we used neither the lattepanda or the Pi. The laptop is now running as a
self-hosted gitlab server, which it does admirably at. Unlike when I tried
hosting services on a Pi, the services are up to date and run much faster.
The biggest limitation for me is that there's only 2Gb of ram and gitlab
idles using 1.5Gb of it.

So if you need a lot of processing power and you can deal with a 90USD SBC
instead of a 35USD one, and you don't need GPIO's (or are happy to have a
co-processor), then the low end of X86 processors may be better than the
high end of ARM processors.

Geoff

On Sat, Dec 1, 2018 at 7:37 AM Andrew Errington <erringtona at gmail.com>
wrote:

> At this month's meeting (it being December already) I plan to bring the
> fabled $100 laptop which was recently delivered:
>
> https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707
>
> You can read a decent review here, together with a description of the
> byzantine ordering process:
>
> https://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/
>
> Yes, I did all that, and the US$100 laptop turns into a NZ$200 laptop when
> you add shipping and currency conversion. However, it's still pretty
> remarkable for the price.
>
> It's not ugly, and it seems to work. I haven't really used it for
> anything, it's currently just a curiosity.
>
> It will be too difficult to have everyone play with it on the night, but I
> am happy to install various things on it (if they are present in the
> package manager) and either show them (yes it has HDMI out), or at least
> report what I found when I tried it.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Andrew
>
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