pine64: cheap linux/arm64 dev board

[Josh Bleecher Snyder]

I'm not sure what other folks are using for arm64 development work,
but I finally found what appears to be a decent, cheap option: pine64.
I just got mine in the mail and thought I'd share first impressions.

Using cross-compiled Go 1.6.2 for the bootstrap compiler, make.bash at
tip runs in 5 mins (real time), and all.bash passes.

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor : AArch64 Processor rev 4 (aarch64)
processor : 0
processor : 1
processor : 2
processor : 3
Features : fp asimd aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32
CPU implementer : 0x41
CPU architecture: AArch64
CPU variant : 0x0
CPU part : 0xd03
CPU revision : 4
Hardware : sun50iw1p1

Might be just in time for folks who want to contribute to the ARM64
SSA backend. :) I believe that there are also still several arm64
optimization-only assembly routines yet to be implemented, e.g. in
math/big.

-josh

---

Some details:

I have the PINE64+ 2GB version -- see https://www.pine64.com/product.
I suspect the basic version would also work, but haven't tried.

I'm running Debian Jessie:
http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A64_Software_Release#Debian_Linux_Jessie_with_Mate_GUI_Image_.5B20160508.5D_by_lenny.raposo_with_Longsleep_kernel

The board is noticeably physically bigger than an RPi.

"decent, cheap option": I used to use my phone or a tablet, but that
requires jumping through annoying hoops. The RPi 3 has an arm64 chip
but no supported 64 bit OS. There have long been fancy arm64 dev kits,
but they were (are?) expensive.

[Anthony Starks]

see: https://gist.github.com/ajstarks/fa05919377de73a552870ce9e45e4844

[Ian Lance Taylor]

On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 7:06 AM, Josh Bleecher Snyder
<josh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure what other folks are using for arm64 development work,
> but I finally found what appears to be a decent, cheap option: pine64.
> I just got mine in the mail and thought I'd share first impressions.

Sounds nice. Want to see if you can recreate
https://golang.org/issue/14875? Or https://golang.org/issue/15936?

Ian

[Michael Hudson-Doyle]

I have a Dragonboard 410c, which has a similar CPU but only 1 GB of
RAM: I'd definitely recommend getting the 2 GB variant! Although with
a 1Gb/s ethernet port you can always mount swap over iSCSI or
something, which is likely to be faster than the SD card or a USB2
drive.

> I'm running Debian Jessie:
> http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A64_Software_Release#Debian_Linux_Jessie_with_Mate_GUI_Image_.5B20160508.5D_by_lenny.raposo_with_Longsleep_kernel
>
> The board is noticeably physically bigger than an RPi.
>
> "decent, cheap option": I used to use my phone or a tablet, but that
> requires jumping through annoying hoops. The RPi 3 has an arm64 chip
> but no supported 64 bit OS.

There is also the Dragonboard 410c as I mentioned, which runs 64 bit
Ubuntu fine but lacks decent IO options (another problem for the RPi3,
I think).

These are all still really mobile phone CPUs, unfortunately.

> There have long been fancy arm64 dev kits,
> but they were (are?) expensive.

Yeah, not aware of anything with a "proper" CPU and decent amount of
RAM that's actually easy to get yet. There's things like
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/gigabyte-r120-p30-single-socket-1u-rackmount-armv8-24ghz-pcie-30-8x-ddr3-slots-ecc-unbuffered-2x-10g
but that's beyond hobbiest money. Maybe the LeMaker Cello will be nice
to use when it or something like it finally ships...

Cheers,
mwh

[Joseph Poirier]

On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 9:06 AM, Josh Bleecher Snyder <josh...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not sure what other folks are using for arm64 development work,
but I finally found what appears to be a decent, cheap option: pine64.
I just got mine in the mail and thought I'd share first impressions.

I've been using an Odroid-C2 (http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G145457216438) for a few Go projects (mainly a Stratux ADS-B receiver).
 

[Robert Griesemer]

I concur. It also seems like a pretty stable machine (mine's approaching 4 weeks of uptime).

On average, for all the benchmarks in the std lib, I find that the machine is 5-6x slower than a Mac Mini (2.3Ghz Intel Core i7, 8GB 1333MHz DDR3). I suspect much of that is due to the slower RAM on the Pine, some due to the slower-clocked CPU, and probably a good chunk due to less than optimal code generation (SSA optimizations should be much more effective for the ARM than for an x86). And then there's some missing hand-written assembly.

https://plus.google.com/+RobertGriesemer/posts/Zbyh76dx9ua

- gri

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[lion...@sinovoip.com.cn]

http://forum.banana-pi.org/t/banana-pi-bpi-m64-quad-core-64-bit-sbc-with-allwinner-a64/1997

[agge...@gmail.com]

I'm interested to know how people are finding the Allwinner A64 boards for development?

I specifically want Golang, so Josh's comments seem to indicate Go is sweet. But is everything ok with the Linux distro - heard there were some issues with Allwinner?

Also keen to hear if anyone a) has attempted building Tensorflow for this, b) how is integration of Tensorflow with the Mali GPU and c) does anyone have knowledge of any Google efforts to port Tensorflow to Go?

On Sunday, 12 June 2016 22:07:01 UTC+8, Josh Bleecher Snyder wrote: