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Paul Stoffregen  
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 More options Jul 4 2012, 2:31 pm
From: Paul Stoffregen <p...@pjrc.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2012 11:31:57 -0700
Local: Wed, Jul 4 2012 2:31 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Raspberry Pi

On 07/03/2012 08:17 PM, Dave Edick wrote:

> Paul,

> I think I can provide a little useful info here.  There are dramatic
> differences in small file performance on SD cards.  This difference is
> very noticeable when the card is used as an boot device.

Wow, that is pretty incredible.  The "random 4K write" performance is
utterly dismal on so many SD cards.

I reformatted my 16 GB USB flash disk and ran Crystal Disk Mark on it
from a MacBook Pro booted into Windows 7.  Its random 4K write speed is
only 0.010, or only 10 kbytes/sec!  I had no idea its performance was so
bad.  I guess that explains why only a small fraction of my 600 meg
.tar.gz file was able to extract in 1 hour!  Why its partition table got
corrupted is still a mystery....

Scott, any chance you could run Crystal Disk Mark on the SD card we were
using on your Raspberry Pi?  It'll probably require reformatting the
card, but maybe a dd image could save and restore the whole thing?  I'd
be really curious to know how the card we were using compares?

I ran the benchmark on my 32 gig SD card I brought Monday, but we didn't
use.  It scored 0.597 on the random 4k write test.  It's a "SanDisk
Ultra, class 4".  597 kbytes/sec isn't wonderful, but it's certainly a
lot faster than the 7 to 20 kbytes/sec so many SD cards seem to have on
random writes.

 From those web pages and a couple others I found with a little
googling, it looks like 1.8 Mbyte/sec is about the fastest random 4k
write score anyone has found on any SD card.  Here's another page.  
Pretty amazing how only a few cards manage faster than 20 kbytes/sec:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2011-micro-sdhc-charts/Random-Writ...

Tomorrow I'll set up Dan's Pi with this "fast" 597 kbyte/sec card and
see how it runs.

Thanks for the tip Dave.  I had no idea SD card random write performance
varies by about a factor of 100 between different cards.

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Erik Walthinsen  
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 More options Jul 4 2012, 4:39 pm
From: Erik Walthinsen <om...@omegacs.net>
Date: Wed, 04 Jul 2012 13:39:22 -0700
Local: Wed, Jul 4 2012 4:39 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Raspberry Pi
On 07/04/2012 11:31 AM, Paul Stoffregen wrote:

> Thanks for the tip Dave.  I had no idea SD card random write performance
> varies by about a factor of 100 between different cards.

I haven't been following this thread, but I am interested in why exactly
it is that random writes suck so badly.

What follows is just a random dump of thoughts on the matter though.....

I highly doubt it's something to do with the actual SD interface, as
it's basically just an SPI or quad-SPI connection.  Is it something to
do with the host polling the card for page-erase completion, in which
case it might be mitigated with a tuneable on the host?  I wouldn't
think it's that either though since there's such variation between
cards, unless the card suggests a polling period.  I know too little
about the protocol as far as that goes.

Thinking about it more, I'm guessing it has more to do with flash page
size and rewrite times.  If you only write 512b to the card and the
flash page size is bigger than that, it'll be forced to read that whole
page, erase it, and then rewrite the merge of the old data and the new
sector.

You'd think that since 4K is a common flash page size, and the random
writes are 4K, that you'd be fine.  However, unless the controller is
smart enough to start the read-erase-write cycle on the first sector,
then *notice* that the next sector is sequential and try to coalesce the
writes, it's going to end up doing *8* r-e-w cycles every single time.
Going to a 4K sector size could eliminate the problem, but leading-edge
SATA hard drives are only just now supporting 4K, I wouldn't expect SD
cards to do it yet.  Maybe that's what the higher class cards are
capable of?

Looking into the SD architecture a bit, it looks like the picture is
even worse.  They're arranged in up to 4096 "clusters" with up to 512
"blocks" per, where originally a block = 512b sector, but later could be
1k or 2k.  Either way, the *cluster* is the flash page erase size, which
means you could have a erase size of 1MB.  That makes the 8x r-e-w
cycles need to "randomly" write a 4KB block suck really bad, but it does
also strongly imply that sequential erase clustering is generally done,
because that'd the only way you'd get decent sequential write
performance (get write of first sector, read and erase entire cluster,
get write of sector++ and *not* restart the erase, repeat for entire
cluster).

As far a usage on a Nook or Pi, I suspect your killer is atime.  Be
default (at least historically) the filesystems are set to record the
timestamp of every *read* access to every file, which means the inode of
every file has to be subtly altered.  This will cause a *massive* number
of small writes especially on boot, which could explain what's going on.
  Setting 'noatime' on all filesystems would help that significantly.

Another probably better option, and where TRIM comes into play again,
would be to use something like JFFS2 on the SD card.  Such filesystems
are *extremely* aware of the physical structure of flash-based devices,
to the point where they "waste" space by trying to treat the device as
"append-only".  Rather than erasing and rewriting data repeatedly in a
given sector of the hardware, it will "journal" the data changes in such
a way as to almost totally eliminate read-modify[erase]-write cycles.

When you have a piece of hardware with a hard-wired flash chip on the
board (rather than an "ATA" protocol to an SD card), JFFS2 will actively
pre-erase as much of the flash space as it can, sequentially, in order
to make writes nearly instantaneous (since erases take *far* longer than
the actual write).  For an SD card or even a modern SSD, that's where
the TRIM command would come into play.  However, I have no idea if the
SD protocol has any provision for that.

The main difference in this case between a SD card and a larger SSD
would be that the SSD has far more resources at its disposal in order to
reorder and map the logical sectors into actual physical flash pages.
An SSD will wear-level in such a way that the mapping becomes totally
chaotic across the entire device, whereas an SD card *might* wear-level
in very small blocks (because of silicon-size constraints, basically).
  Because SSDs actually have a little bit of headroom relative to their
advertised size, they can do a *little* bit of pre-erase even without
TRIM.  SD's not so much.

Anyway, enough rambling for now, back to cleaning the house.....
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Scott Dixon  
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 More options Jul 4 2012, 6:49 pm
From: Scott Dixon <sc...@dixons.mailworks.org>
Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2012 15:49:09 -0700
Local: Wed, Jul 4 2012 6:49 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Raspberry Pi
Paul, I will try to benchmark that SD card tonight if I have time.  I hadn't realized how much variation there is.  
Scott
On Jul 4, 2012, at 11:31 AM, Paul Stoffregen wrote:

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Paul Stoffregen  
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 More options Jul 5 2012, 6:32 pm
From: Paul Stoffregen <p...@pjrc.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:32:53 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 5 2012 6:32 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Raspberry Pi
My Raspberry Pi adventure continues today....

The Pi does not like booting up from my Sandisk card.  I've power cycled
many times, and so far managed to get it to boot up twice.  It seems to
only boot if the power has been off for a very long time, like half an hour.

I tried 3 different power adaptors, and finally I got a voltmeter out
and measured on the PTC fuse and 3.3 volt regulator.  The Pi is getting
5.1 volts.  I'm pretty sure it's not the power.  With the same power
adaptor, the Pi boots every time from the Corsair card.

The Pi actually runs pretty well when using the Sandisk card... the 2
times I've managed to get it to actually boot.  One of those times, I
did the "apt-get install libgtk2.0-dev" (that took over half an hour to
extract/install at Backspace), and it took only a few minutes!  The SD
card speed seems to make a HUGE difference.

These are the 4 cards I have.

Sandisk Ultra, 32 GB, class 4, random 4k write = 597 kbytes/sec
Transcend, 32 GB, class 10, random 4k write = 10 kbytes/sec
Kingston, 2 GB, random 4k write = 15 kbytes/sec
Corsair, 2 GB, random 4k write = 96 kbytes/sec

I'm starting over with the Corsair card, which isn't nearly as fast as
the Sandisk, and only has 2 gigs, but at least the Pi boots up reliably.

Running on the Corsair card, the install part of "apt-get install
libgtk2.0-dev" took 3 minutes and 12 seconds, which is dramatically
faster than the 30-40 minutes it took at Backspace running on Scott's card.

I tried to re-run with the Sandisk card, which seemed to go very
quickly, but so far I haven't managed to get the Pi to boot with it again.

I'm trying now with the Transcend card, and so far it's still stuck in
the initial "apt-get upgrade" which ran quickly on the other 2 cards.  
It's running terribly slow, about like at Backspace on Scott's card.  I
might not even bother trying the libgtk2.0-dev install.  It's unusably slow.

One thing is certain, the SD card's random write speed makes a huge
difference.  It's a shame the Pi almost never boots up with my Sandisk
card, because it actually runs pretty well with that one.

On 07/04/2012 03:49 PM, Scott Dixon wrote:

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David Madden  
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 More options Jul 5 2012, 7:00 pm
From: David Madden <d...@mersenne.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:00:51 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 5 2012 7:00 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Raspberry Pi
On 7/5/2012 15:32, Paul Stoffregen wrote:

> One thing is certain, the SD card's random write speed makes a huge
> difference.  It's a shame the Pi almost never boots up with my Sandisk
> card, because it actually runs pretty well with that one.

Have you tried booting/running with a USB disk (i.e., a SATA or SSD with
a USB converter)?  It might be useful for making the mistakes that would
be time-consuming if you were running from an SD card.

Also, not sure if this would matter, but I have one of my GuruPlugs
running with a micro SD card in a tiny USB-SD adapter, and it appears to
work OK.  Seems like it'd be worth a try on the RPi as well.

--
Mersenne Law LLC  ·  www.mersenne.com  ·  +1-503-679-1671
- Small Business, Startup and Intellectual Property Law -
1500 SW First Ave. · Suite 1170 · Portland, Oregon  97201

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Chris Goodwin  
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 More options Jul 5 2012, 7:03 pm
From: Chris Goodwin <cgood...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 16:03:04 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 5 2012 7:03 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Raspberry Pi

On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 4:00 PM, David Madden <d...@mersenne.com> wrote:
> Have you tried booting/running with a USB disk (i.e., a SATA or SSD with
> a USB converter)?  It might be useful for making the mistakes that would
> be time-consuming if you were running from an SD card.

The Pi's boot loader looks to the SD card for its boot code; there's no
BIOS, and it's hard coded to do this.  It should be possible to write boot
code to the SD to mount and boot from a USB drive, but I'm not sure whether
anyone has done that yet.

--
Chris Goodwin
cgood...@gmail.com

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Paul Stoffregen  
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 More options Jul 5 2012, 7:11 pm
From: Paul Stoffregen <p...@pjrc.com>
Date: Thu, 05 Jul 2012 16:11:56 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 5 2012 7:11 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Raspberry Pi

On 07/05/2012 04:03 PM, Chris Goodwin wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 5, 2012 at 4:00 PM, David Madden <d...@mersenne.com
> <mailto:d...@mersenne.com>> wrote:

>     Have you tried booting/running with a USB disk (i.e., a SATA or
>     SSD with
>     a USB converter)?  It might be useful for making the mistakes that
>     would
>     be time-consuming if you were running from an SD card.

> The Pi's boot loader looks to the SD card for its boot code; there's
> no BIOS, and it's hard coded to do this.  It should be possible to
> write boot code to the SD to mount and boot from a USB drive, but I'm
> not sure whether anyone has done that yet.

The one USB flash disk I have that's of reasonable size (16 GB)
benchmarked at the same slow 4K random write speed (only 10 kbytes/sec)
as the worst of my SD cards!

I ran for a while with the Transcend card (random 4k write = 20
kbytes/sec), and indeed the Pi ran much slower, but still not nearly as
bad as we experienced on Monday at Backspace.

I also got a kernel panic while running with the Corsair card.

So far, my Raspberry Pi experience is not going so well......

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Discussion subject changed to "Sale at gizmos." by Jerry Biehler
Jerry Biehler  
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 More options Jul 5 2012, 7:33 pm
From: Jerry Biehler <jerry.bieh...@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 16:33:44 -0700
Local: Thurs, Jul 5 2012 7:33 pm
Subject: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Sale at gizmos.
Just thought I would let everyone know surplusgizmos is doing 50% off sale on all surplus items in the store this Saturday the 9th.
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Blain C  
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 More options Jul 7 2012, 8:24 pm
From: Blain C <blain...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 17:24:56 -0700
Local: Sat, Jul 7 2012 8:24 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Sale at gizmos.

Hey all. Was just at this sale, and picked up a few surplus lacie drive
adapters. They're USB3, but require an external 12v 3a adapter. The adapter
from lacie round $29.99. Was gonna ask if anyone has an adapter of
comparable specs. I have a barrel connector that fits, so I can swap it out
easily.

I can pay with (some, I'm broke) money, or a beer or two at a meeting.

-Blain
On Jul 5, 2012 4:33 PM, "Jerry Biehler" <jerry.bieh...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Jerry Biehler  
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 More options Jul 7 2012, 8:36 pm
From: Jerry Biehler <jerry.bieh...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 17:36:39 -0700
Local: Sat, Jul 7 2012 8:36 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Sale at gizmos.

There should have been adapters down there.

-Jerry

On Jul 7, 2012, at 5:24 PM, Blain C <blain...@gmail.com> wrote:

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Blain C  
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 More options Jul 7 2012, 8:45 pm
From: Blain C <blain...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 17:45:00 -0700
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Sale at gizmos.
Sadly, we all thought they were 5v at the time, and so that's what I
walked away with. Now that I know, they're closed. I feel kinda
stupid, honestly.

-Blain
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Jerry Biehler  
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 More options Jul 7 2012, 9:02 pm
From: Jerry Biehler <jerry.bieh...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 18:02:08 -0700
Local: Sat, Jul 7 2012 9:02 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Sale at gizmos.
Oh well. That's life.

One thing to keep in mind with the hard drive adapters. If they are intended for 3.5" hard drives they will need 12v. Some cheaper ones will need 12 and 5v. Anything that was intended for a 2.5" drive will be 5v.  

-Jerry

On Jul 7, 2012, at 5:45 PM, Blain C <blain...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Sadly, we all thought they were 5v at the time, and so that's what I
> walked away with. Now that I know, they're closed. I feel kinda
> stupid, honestly.

> -Blain
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Blain C  
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 More options Jul 7 2012, 9:49 pm
From: Blain C <blain...@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 7 Jul 2012 18:49:06 -0700
Local: Sat, Jul 7 2012 9:49 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Sale at gizmos.
Good to know. Thanks. :P

-Blain
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Discussion subject changed to "Raspberry Pi" by Brett
Brett  
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 More options Jul 29 2012, 12:33 pm
From: Brett <bre...@teleport.com>
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2012 09:33:34 -0700
Local: Sun, Jul 29 2012 12:33 pm
Subject: Re: [dorkbotpdx-blabber] Raspberry Pi
On 07/04/2012 01:39 PM, Erik Walthinsen wrote:

> On 07/04/2012 11:31 AM, Paul Stoffregen wrote:
>> Thanks for the tip Dave.  I had no idea SD card random write performance
>> varies by about a factor of 100 between different cards.

> I haven't been following this thread, but I am interested in why
> exactly it is that random writes suck so badly.

> What follows is just a random dump of thoughts on the matter though.....

Here's another data point for the raspberry pi/sd card discussion:

Yesterday I went to Costco and bought a Sandisk Ultra 2-pack of 8GB
class 6 SD cards for about $18.  The CrystalDiskMark 4k random write
score is 1.629.

Brett
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