[TriEmbed] Raspberry Pi perspectives

[Rodney Radford]

Fyi, I found this site which gives a good overall view of what is open
source and what is not

How Much of the Raspbian Stack is Open Source? - Raspberry Pi Forums
<https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=211005>

Broadcom even released their internal GPU documentation on the GPU in the
Raspberry Pi, which is seldom done by any manufacturer of GPUs (including
Broadcom)


On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 12:21 PM John Vaughters via TriEmbed <
triembed at triembed.org> wrote:

> +1 for Rodney
>
> Also, on the 10k ft. view. I am less concerned about any of the hidden
> details until it affects me. Cost and performance first. Is it cheap and
> does it do what I need? If not, Can I up the cost on something else? Or
> Should I consider the time to dig into the ability to make the low cost
> device do what I need with lower level customization. Unless I am designing
> anything with volume, it's usually not a big factor. So if the Rpi has
> performance issues, I look to other devices in most cases. I have found Rpi
> to have great value in this area and it does alot. But there are
> alternatives that have obvious advantages like my Rock64 that I use to run
> Mango SCADA application. But cost goes up. Also at the time I bought it Rpi
> did not have 4GB mem, which I needed for this application.
>
> So for me the article is good, because I like to understand technology,
> but I have not really run into it causing me an issue. I try what I am
> attempting and if performance lags, I try something else. The cost of all
> these things are so cheap compared to my time frame of computing
> development. I just moonshot it with that whopping $80 Rpi. My dad bought
> us an Apple IIe for about $2000, which is about $4000 equivalent today.
> Yea, perspective, it's a thing `,~)
>
> John Vaughters
>
>
>
> On Friday, January 15, 2021, 11:23:38 AM EST, Rodney Radford via TriEmbed <
> triembed at triembed.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Personally I think the closed GPU on the Raspberry Pi gets a bad rap. Yes,
> the GPU is closed source (nothing the Raspberry Pi guys can do about that
> as it is not their choice),.
>
> It is true that it is responsible for mounting the SD card and starting up
> Linux, but the way I look at is that it takes the place of the BIOS and
> bootloader on a standard PC system. Like the BIOS, it opens up the boot
> device (SD card), loads the bootloader. The main difference is the
> bootloader is also part of the GPU code so it does make it more difficult
> porting other systems to it, but not impossible.
>
> After that, the code runs on the Linux side of things with it being in
> control with the GPU handling graphics, as expected, and monitoring
> voltages and temperatures, with the ability to directly write to the
> display for battery and heat issues.
>
> You can modify the Linux code and you can create custom device drivers for
> it, so I don't see it as a closed system any more than a PC is running
> Linux with a 'closed' BIOS.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 11:12 AM jonathan hunsberger via TriEmbed <
> triembed at triembed.org> wrote:
> > Maybe not a lot of fully open options in the "sbc running Linux"
> category yet, but..
> > BeagleV recently released on RISC-V.  At $150 it's not really a RPi
> replacement, but could lead to proliferation of similar solutions at lower
> cost.
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 1:10 AM Mauricio Tavares via TriEmbed <
> triembed at triembed.org> wrote:
> >> On Sun, Dec 27, 2020 at 10:17 AM Pete Soper via TriEmbed
> >> <triembed at triembed.org> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Here are some criticisms of RPI that this list will hopefully take as
> constructive. Some good tech details that many of us may have been unaware
> of.
> >>>
> >>> https://ownyourbits.com/2019/02/02/whats-wrong-with-the-raspberry-pi/
> >>>
> >>       I was not aware of the everything-goes-through-gpu-blob aspect
> >> of the Rpi4. What are the alternatives? I was looking at the Rock Pi,
> >> especially the N10 for some applications, and then started wondering
> >> if it has as much closed source stuff as the Rbpi.
> >>
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