Orange Pi

Just a thought: Instead of doing this Hackable a Quad Core with 1 Gb ram and 8gb storage, would not it be simpler for some to get this Orange Pi One US $17.07 + Free S/H to run Linux OS. This unit only has a 512 MB RAM with 0 MB internal storage.

Habibie that OrangePi, with 512 RAM:

Compare a Pogoplug E02, it has no onboard video, and you access it using a network connection. If you RDP into it, our resident hacker extraordinaire has it so XFCE gets brought up. But when you log out the RAM that XFCE took up is free again for the "server" to do it's work in the dark with more RAM headroom.

But OrangePi has onboard graphics/video chip, and that may necessitate reserving some RAM for video all the time.

What I was wondering is, is it possible or worthwhile to make OrangePi so when your video is off somehow you free up RAM but not having things you can't see running you know? Or is that just a matter of setting hardware Power Management so the video goes off after x minutes and shuts that part off?

It's just my intuition and nothing else that makes me think, when there's an HDMI jack attached, add 512MB RAM above what worked before.

But yeah I'd love two of every Pi including the $50 Pi Plus with 2G RAM, Gigabit and SATA jack.

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-= Cloud 9 =-



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2016 12:19PM by JoeyPogoPlugE02.

JoeyPogoPlugE02 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Habibie that OrangePi, with 512 RAM:
>
> Compare a Pogoplug E02, it has no onboard video,
> and you access it using a network connection. If
> you RDP into it, our resident hacker
> extraordinaire has it so XFCE gets brought up. But
> when you log out the RAM that XFCE took up is free
> again for the "server" to do it's work in the dark
> with more RAM headroom.
>
R U describing a PogoPlug EO2 above? I have not used the XFCE window manager before. However, one can configure any Linux (embedded) computer with a CLI. Then, execute X11 + any window manager as the GUI. When done, just exit from both window manager + X11 and the RAM will be relinquished back to the Linux system for other applications to use.

> But OrangePi has onboard graphics/video chip, and
> that may necessitate reserving some RAM for video
> all the time.
>
Not necessarily. See my above explanation.

> What I was wondering is, is it possible or
> worthwhile to make OrangePi so when your video is
> off somehow you free up RAM but not having things
> you can't see running you know? Or is that just a
> matter of setting hardware Power Management so the
> video goes off after x minutes and shuts that part
> off?
>
I don't know what exactly did you mean by video is off. As long as your window manager is still running, it will consume RAM. On a Linux system, if the window manager becomes idle for a certain period of time (don't know when that will happen), its RAM usage too can be swapped out for other application to use, AFAICT.

> It's just my intuition and nothing else that makes
> me think, when there's an HDMI jack attached, add
> 512MB RAM above what worked before.
>
If you wanna build a Linux system that does not have a need for GUI, then you can just build your Linux kernel without the HDMI driver and leave all of of RAM for your application to use. I am not sure if that answers to your statement above.

This is why I prefer to hack any inexpensive Android TV Box, particularly the ones with a SATA (Tronsmart Draco AW80 Meta Allwinner A80 Octa Core) and a USB3 port, to run Linux as an embedded system. I have not looked into how the performance of internal data buses of any Android TV Box compared to a comparable Linux embedded system.

I can somewhat understand a BIOS for allocating video memory (such as the ThinClient I'm typing on), where 128MB or 256MB can be absolutely spoken for from the RAM allocation for video use, but as for little Android boxes, I'm not sure about anything when there doesn't seem to be a BIOS and the settings for timeout and RAM use come from Linux settings.

But I do have a question that might help my understanding. Seems most small boxes have standard-line CPUs, but I hadn't noticed if the onboard video hardware is also within the confines of one or two brands? Not VIA probably lol

=========
-= Cloud 9 =-

JoeyPogoPlugE02 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I can somewhat understand a BIOS for allocating
> video memory (such as the ThinClient I'm typing
> on), where 128MB or 256MB can be absolutely spoken
> for from the RAM allocation for video use, but as
> for little Android boxes, I'm not sure about
> anything when

there doesn't seem to be a BIOS and
> the settings for timeout and RAM use come from
> Linux settings.

True.

>
> But I do have a question that might help my
> understanding. Seems most small boxes have
> standard-line CPUs, but I hadn't noticed if the
> onboard video hardware is also within the confines
> of one or two brands? Not VIA probably lol

Video chip on ARM board is separate from the SoC. Example: rPi, HP T5325, all rPi clones, .... they might package it together in the board, but not integrated like Intel's. Most NAS dont have video chip (it's NAS, i.e. headless). EDIT: See boba's post below for a better answer: http://forum.doozan.com/read.php?8,29754,29904#msg-29904

-bodhi
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2016 04:05AM by bodhi.

bodhi Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Video chip on ARM board is separate from the SoC.
> Example: rPi, HP T5325, all rPi clones, .... they
> might package it together in the board, but not
> integrated like Intel's. Most NAS dont have video
> chip (it's NAS, i.e. headless).

No, on embedded devices the GPU is usually in the SoC.

The raspi is technically a GPU with an ARM core running as a passenger (the GPU initializes the board and deals with hardware). That's why broadcom made a so easy upgrade to the CPU without changing the pinout or anything in the SoC. Because the ARM core(s) in that SoC are passengers.

All Raspi clones use Allwinner SoCs for tablets, and they have an integrated "gpu" (technically a dedicated 2D accelerator core and a different accelerator for 3D called Mali).

The only outliers are products like the T5325 because it is using a NAS SoC, Kirkwoods were designed to be network and storage SoCs, so they lack a GPU, sure they have a pcie line you can attach a GPU on, but that's not what they were meant for.

All SoCs supposed to go in devices with a screen have their own integrated GPU and display controller.

In general all embedded systems have or don't have hardware in their SoC depending on what is their purpose.

bobafetthotmail,

Thanks for the correction! Agree.

> In general all embedded systems have or don't have
> hardware in their SoC depending on what is their
> purpose.

Yes, I think I was wrongly lumping these thinking about NAS. All the cheap new boards seem to have integrated GPU/VPU.

-bodhi
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