False advertising ?

[daveculp]

The "Supercomputer" claim is clearly hyperbole. The Pine64 -- a single one, by itself -- has zero potential to be a modern supercomputer. Everyone knows that, or should have. It might beat a Cray-1 from the mid-1970s. Definitely the Pine64 CPU would beat earlier supercomputers. And the Mali GPU would require another comparison.

I also cringe when I hear the Pine 64 referred to as a "supercomputer the size of an index card". In reality it is just another ARM based SBC. Granted it has a very low price point and is one of the first 64 bit ARM SBC's to hit the market. Calling it a "supercomputer" is a stretch.

The ARM and Linux based SBC market has absolutely exploded. I can no longer keep track of the number of different boards and manufacturers there are. It seems every time I think I know them all or most of them I discover another. I own the following:

Every iteration of the RPi
Beaglebone Black
An Odroid XU3, C1 and C2
C.H.I.P
Creator CI20
Omega Onion
Banana Pi
Orange Pi
Minnowboard Turbot
Cubietruck
Pine A64
Udoo Neo and Quad

I think the market is a bubble and going to crash leaving many companies out of business. What most companies fail to realize is that it isn't really about the hardware. Yes, to a certain extent it is; better, faster hardware is good. However, what matters most and the hardest to build is the software and the community. Most users want to open their board and be able to do something with it almost immediately. Whether that is making a media center, building a robot, or a weather station. Users want the hardware to work and software that makes interfacing into the hardware easy. Most people do not want to dig around in kernel code trying to figure out how to activate PWM and i2c on their board. I am in the same boat, I am capable of doing it but I dont want to. I'm 47 with a wife, kid, job and things to get done, I want my hardware and software to just work or at least work reasonably well with only a little headache.

Companies that build a good community and good software interfaces into their hardware stand a good chance of staying around. The RPi is not the most powerful board on the market but it is the single best supported and best documented board around. The support from the RPi foundation and the community is second to none. If you need help with something on an RPi chaces are someone has already answered the questions, has a web page, blog post or YoiuTube video about it.

[dkryder]

there are several posts in the forum by knowledgeable people that indicate allwinner is not as you portray them, read around.

Feel free to invite these knowledgeable people to this thread and I will explain them why they are wrong.


it is interesting that one of the most recent threads that shows allwinner as they really are and not as you describe them is one i think you post to, the hardware acceleration thread. whats it been, a couple months or more? has allwinner resolved the issue? no.  there are others. you ask anyone you want, do your own work.

---

[Oscar]

I have actually used both a raspberry pi 2 and 3 as a media centre, both ran openelec (kodi under linux) absolutely fine without frame drop. The menus via mouse were a bit slow but a wireless keyboard sorted that.

What the RPi doesn't have is Android, it has various optimized linux distros and even Microsoft IOT if you want to create code no one will ever use. So whilst you do have half the memory then I would say that because  the linux IS optimized means you do not miss it, this being as the OS has a lower overhead.

It is a shame about the pine, on paper it looks better with faster network (pi has only 100Mbit/sec), more space to run code and cache data (1GB on PI against optional 2GB) but I would say that by the time the software is optimized there will be something faster and cheaper plus actually availible.

Now the Odroid XU4 HERE beats both pine and rpi massively on the hardware side and seems to be moving in the correct direction on the software side, plus I havent heard anything about shipping problems but then again given that ODROID have been established for sometime they have the experience to know in advance what can go wrong with a big project.

On the Kodi side of things, I would say that the days of streaming ripped movies without being noticed are gone. Reading between the lines I would say the producers of kodi have become worried that their product will be marked as promoting piracy, their post on this subject IMHOsuggesting that they had a visit from the movie industry ambulance chasers. I would not be surprised if versions after the press release included additions to make tracking of people watching"pirate" content easier. This is just my opinion and I wont be saying I told you so.

[ssvb]

it is interesting that one of the most recent threads that shows allwinner as they really are and not as you describe them is one i think you post to, the hardware acceleration thread.

First of all, "hardware acceleration" is a very broad topic. But the discussion there eventually focused on OpenGL ES drivers (which are primarily useful for playing 3D games). I'm not sure if you know this, but the Mali400 3D accelerator is not Allwinner's IP, but is licensed from ARM. And normally one would expect ARM to be providing the drivers for their part of hardware, but somehow they relay this responsibility to the SoC manufacturers. This is not the only weird thing done by ARM, for example they used to have some really strange and restrictive EULA which did not allow redistribution of the drivers.

Now back to the Allwinner's role in this story. GNU/Linux is definitely not the primary line of business for them. They are making money by selling chips to Android tablet manufacturers. Also please note that the Pine64 board is not your usual Android hardware, because it is missing a USB OTG connector and touchscreen among other things. So Android has to be adapted and such adaptation is done by another startup company Jide Technology. Neither Allwinner, nor Jide have any obligations to support the Pine64 board users just because the Pine64 board exists. That's where the Pine64 team comes into the picture. And Tl Lim from the Pine64 team is in contact with both Allwinner and Jide, trying to negotiate whatever is needed for the Pine64 board.

whats it been, a couple months or more? has allwinner resolved the issue? no.

You probably don't understand that it is not Allwinner's issue in the first place. It is not their hardware (the Mali400 IP block is licensed from ARM) and GNU/Linux with X11 desktop is also not their operating system of choice. Still they were kind enough to allocate a developer to work on this and already delivered something.

Now you may argue that this is something that the Pine64 team should have arranged beforehand and delay their kickstarter campaign until the software is in a perfect shape. However this would not fly. First of all, the Pine64 team had been very lucky to start the kickstarter campaign early enough. If they had delayed it even by a few months, then the appearance of Raspberry Pi 3 and ODROID-C2 would have surely killed the whole project. Second, it is definitely difficult to negotiate with Allwinner or Jide unless you have a product which has proven to be reasonably successful. And I really can't imagine why Allwinner would care about allocating a developer for doing some obscure job with dubious purpose.

there are others. you ask anyone you want, do your own work.

Do you realize that such claims of yours have zero credibility? If you have something else to discuss, then please bring it up in a proper way.

[NexusDude]

Can we please put aside the anger and especially the charged, angry language? 

There are 2 types of threads -- those that help others and those that don't. Expressing a disagreement politely is far likelier to help others. The posts could express various sides of an issue. Or, the disagreement could warn readers that someone has it wrong.

The other option is that the thread helps no one else. Maybe no one else will ever care. Maybe you won't, either, in 30 minutes. If that's likely, why even bother posting?

You may be a ninja, but even noobs have skills and knowledge that overlap with yours. So it's no shame to be corrected. Besides, we're all noobs in some areas. So why get so furious?

If I overstepped or made false assumptions -- since I'm just a fellow Pine64 user/tinkerer -- I do apologize.   I'm just tired of threads getting derailed.

Chill out, dudes! 

[dkryder]

Do you realize that such claims of yours have zero credibility? If you have something else to discuss, then please bring it up in a proper way.

ok, 
you own words have substantiated every point i have made.

[diofantos]

hehe many seem to have misunderstood the thread.. Or at least the topic changed a bit when the Pine64 Fanboys started crying and defending my "great useless hardware" statement , which i fully standby.. Here is the thing, i use linux alot so I prefer it over Android, so Android is not even in my picture.. 

And back the to fasle advertising .. Right now, these claims are false, cause without proper Mali drivers, its just rubbish.. And like someone here pointed out about these boards, it's not all about the hardware.. The community behind the product is what will determine it's success, that's just a simple fact. 
And after the amount of money they raised on Kickstarter, and just being on Kickstarted, you expect a working platform, not just some half ass job... Anybody can make these boards, cause they just buy parts an put them together, it's not like Pine for example is making any of the components, none of this is proprietary..

To me this feels like some noobs just got an idea like "Hey let's make our own sbc with tiny bit better specs that Rasp Pi and let's put it on kickstarter" without thinking about the software side and just hope that somebody else will sort out that part.. 

I would be very surprised if Pine64 will not go out of business in the next 10-12 months or something like that if they dont take part of that money and spend it on software dev. to make this usefull.. 

Im into all kinds of hobby projects, 3d printing, cnc milling, laser cutter is next , then i have few other Arduino projects that im working on and stuff like that, and I look at these boards (both sbcs and microcontrollers) as parts in bigger projects.. I what to spend my time working on the whole project, not fucking about getting the parts to work properly, i expect the to work when i buy them so i dont have to spend the extra time, and thats why I feel like this is false adverising, cause on their page they are basicly just talking shit cause it cant deliver

[ssvb]

And back the to fasle advertising .. Right now, these claims are false, cause without proper Mali drivers, its just rubbish..

Let's see. You already get a somewhat low end, but usable Linux desktop system for running office applications and Internet browsing, because this does not need Mali. You also get hardware accelerated video playback in Linux, because it does not need Mali. You get a headless server use case covered too, because it does not need Mali drivers again. You can experiment with the GPIO expansion headers, because Mali drivers are completely unrelated.

But unlike what you have in Android, you don't get 3D accelerated games working at full speed in the Linux X11 desktop yet, because Mali drivers are still not ready (this is being addressed). Also you will not have a good experience with the Kodi application in Linux, because it relies on 3D drivers for rendering a fluffy user interface. You will not get extravagant eye candy effects (such as wobbly windows) in the compositing window manger either. But there are very few other use cases, which really need 3D acceleration in Linux. There are not too many games developed for GNU/Linux anyway.

If you are really into gaming, then it is probably best to use Android, and hope that the games don't rely on the touchscreen too much.

Im into all kinds of hobby projects, 3d printing, cnc milling, laser cutter is next , then i have few other Arduino projects that im working on and stuff like that, and I look at these boards (both sbcs and microcontrollers) as parts in bigger projects.. I what to spend my time working on the whole project, not fucking about getting the parts to work properly, i expect the to work when i buy them so i dont have to spend the extra time, and thats why I feel like this is false adverising, cause on their page they are basicly just talking shit cause it cant deliver

How many of these hobby projects actually need the Mali driver? It does not look like even a single one of them really depends on it, but feel free to correct me.

[Oscar]

And back the to fasle advertising .. Right now, these claims are false, cause without proper Mali drivers, its just rubbish..

Let's see. You already get a somewhat low end, but usable Linux desktop system for running office applications and Internet browsing, because this does not need Mali. You also get hardware accelerated video playback in Linux, because it does not need Mali. You get a headless server use case covered too, because it does not need Mali drivers again. You can experiment with the GPIO expansion headers, because Mali drivers are completely unrelated.

But unlike what you have in Android, you don't get 3D accelerated games working at full speed in the Linux X11 desktop yet, because Mali drivers are still not ready (this is being addressed). Also you will not have a good experience with the Kodi application in Linux, because it relies on 3D drivers for rendering a fluffy user interface. You will not get extravagant eye candy effects (such as wobbly windows) in the compositing window manger either. But there are very few other use cases, which really need 3D acceleration in Linux. There are not too many games developed for GNU/Linux anyway.

If you are really into gaming, then it is probably best to use Android, and hope that the games don't rely on the touchscreen too much.

Im into all kinds of hobby projects, 3d printing, cnc milling, laser cutter is next , then i have few other Arduino projects that im working on and stuff like that, and I look at these boards (both sbcs and microcontrollers) as parts in bigger projects.. I what to spend my time working on the whole project, not fucking about getting the parts to work properly, i expect the to work when i buy them so i dont have to spend the extra time, and thats why I feel like this is false adverising, cause on their page they are basicly just talking shit cause it cant deliver

How many of these hobby projects actually need the Mali driver? It does not look like even a single one of them really depends on it, but feel free to correct me.

"Not to many games developed for linux"? have you ever actually install a linux distribution and looked under games? not to mention Valve's Steam linux games and from direct download and via wine and emulators. In reality at least 70% of all the PC games ever written will run under linux. Even under ARM distros there are still plenty of games and if this is a factor in his decision to purchase the pine then who are you to say he is wrong.

I see far too many  posts here along the lines of "stop your bitching about X, I don't do X so it doesn't matter", if you ever want a community then try being just a little understanding of other people by putting yourself in their shoes. In case that is too difficult for you then think "I am angry about being deceived into parting with money via being decieved by advertised capabilities not being availible, compounded by an unsympathetic and possibly trolling "community" of I am alright Jacks". Would you really part with money when you see how little the vocal "community" cares about the product, their peers and the fulfilling reasonable expectations?

On the kickstarter website it says "The GPU on the PINE A64 is a dual-core MALI-400 MP2 and runs at 500MHz, capable of 1.1 Gpixel/s throughput. This means the graphics capabilities are slightly higher than the original X-Box's level of performance. " X-box level of performance would suggest a working 3D accelerator at least

It says on the pine website "GRAPHICS: Dual core Mali 400 MP2 Graphics acceleration provides mobile users with superior experience in web browsing, video playback, and gaming effects." one would reasonably assume that the gaming effects were actually available and more capable then not having a MP2 at all. Unless you interpret the "mobile users" as a hint that it doesn't apply to the pine as yet, I would suggest that most reasonable assessments would not agree with you.