CPUs for edge computing without ECC ram required, discussion only

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newabc

Active Member
Jan 20, 2019
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Topic only for discussion.

The beginning story:

I got an SBC board with an rk3588s CPU. The board plus a case, a fan and heatsinks, total cost < $120, after tax and shipping fee. Checked the geek bench 5 multi-core scores, its highest score is higher than Intel N5105 and N6005's highest ones.

It is Rockchip's sub-flagship ARM CPU with 4x Cortex-A76 cores, 4x Cortex-A55 cores and an NPU on 6 Tops. Comparing to its current flagship rk3588, it cuts some I/O ports: USB ports, 1 display port, MIPI lanes, PCIe and SATA ports, and SARADC. Its benchmark result comparing to Intel's J3455, J4105, J4125, N5105 and N6005, and Raspberry Pi 4B, please see the result page from SBC-Bench: link

(Note: The board using rk3588s on this result list is Khadas Edge2; the Radxa ROCK 5B is using rk3588.)

Thoughts:

There are lots of edge environments that will not need ECC rams, or somewhere can allow rebooting every day in less than 1 minute. Those are where the Intel J3455, N5105 etc and the rk3588 series can be used for. If registered ECC rams and SFP+ ports are needed, atom c3000/c5000, xeon-d and epyc 3000 series will be there. (By the way, the current price for available Raspberry Pi 4 is too expensive.)

The motherboard of a thin client or the SBC board needs re-designing for dusty and/or high temperature environment for sure. At least, a metal case with passive cooling, or a rugged case with active cooling.

@Patrick
 
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fkyuu

New Member
Jan 24, 2023
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I mean, the range of software that can run on ARM is probably a lot less than x86. In a lot of these usecase, speed isn't even really that important
 

unwind-protect

Active Member
Mar 7, 2016
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Boston
I mean, the range of software that can run on ARM is probably a lot less than x86. In a lot of these usecase, speed isn't even really that important
Well, edge computing usually runs Linux or FreeBSD. The open source software running on top generally works on ARM, and commercial Linux software already offers ARM versions.

I developed under ARM for a while and didn't miss any tools or infrastructure goodies.