Hah, interesting/fun that Microsoft would release a guide for something so hacky. There may be some spirit left at that company yet!
The cynic in me also finds it slightly amusing that Microsoft complain about the Pi constantly overheating when it works just fine for the vast majority of other users. Heck, even the gaming community (eg RetroPi) often overclock this thing with little more than a heat sink. I think it just goes to show that there is still a lot of work required to get Windows down to the same footprint as Linux.
Still, at least Microsoft are embracing the Raspberry Pi. :)
I do love my Pis (I have a few of them) but if you're having to overclock the thing and then strap on a CPU fan to make the Pi even viable for running compute-intensive AI models then perhaps the exercise might have been better suited for running on another piece of hardware instead?
I see general IA coming first in the form of many neural networks working together. Being able to optimize each sector for its own processing needs seems like both the most power efficient and performance optimal solution.
I don’t know anything about this stuff though.
I'm actually quite impressed they were even recommending Rasbian actually. They wouldn't have done that 5 or 10 years ago.
The cynic in me will be monitoring the news to see if MS releases a competitor (FPGA-based?) to the RPi in the near future.
"when it works just fine for the vast majority of other users"
The vast majority of other users DO NOT utilize all four cores at 100% for prolonged times.
Also, the very small niche subset that actually do, will in the absolute vast majority of cases not notice the that the PI has reduced the clock frequency in order to remain stable.
The heatsink used is in the article is a quite poor heatsink but even that managed to keep everything in check in these situations.
How on earth does the footprint have anything to do with this? (nevermind that they do run linux) If anything a greater footprint might have suggested poorer utilization which from a hardware and overheating scenario is a positive.
It should also be noted that the examples you gave were not heat related stability issues. The random crashes and USB devices not working symptoms are due to the device being starved of power due to the increased power requirement of the overclocked ARM and people using power adapters based solely on the voltage rating rather than checking what amps it can push.
The Raspberry Foundation blogged about underclocking it's ARM chip to reduce the required power draw rather than preventing it from overheating. This was with the first release of the Pi - back when they ran a single core ARM CPU. But the same problems are evidenced by your example of USB devices failing to function despite the ARM chip still running full speed (when the Pi's CPU overheats it should throttle itself). In fact you can "overclock" the Pi even without a heatsink if you use the right power adapter. Though obviously the harder you push the chip, the more you'll want cooling so it doesn't self throttle nor do more damage.
Anyway, to go back to the point you're ignoring: if raw CPU grunt is your end goal then the Pi isn't really the right dev board for the job - overclocked or not.
You entirely correct that underclocking has been used to gain stability issues that have been caused by poor power supplies. But has nothing to do with throttling, heat related issues or this article.
I'm "ignoring" that because I have not (and I have not seen anyone else) suggested that raw CPU grunt is the end goal...
I would have imagined the end goal for this particular use case is availability. Microsoft want's people to play with their solutions and the reason to target the Pi is because of availability and familiarity at a very low price point. It is the single most popular and accessible device they could have adapted this project for. For that purpose I can not imagine any better hardware than the Raspberry Pi.
Sorry it must have been someone elses post. Full of cold at the moment so bare with me :-/
> You entirely correct that underclocking has been used to gain stability issues that have been caused by poor power supplies. But has nothing to do with throttling, heat related issues or this article.
I wasn't suggesting that either. I think we are both arguing the same points badly tbh.
> I would have imagined the end goal for this particular use case is availability.
That was my assumption as well but I think their approach is a little confusing. They talk about the ELL framework being designed for "resource constrained platforms and small single-board computers, like Raspberry Pi, Arduino, and micro:bit." yet then go on to discuss appending a fan to the Pi in a way that kind of defeat the purpose of running a Pi. It makes it very confusing when read any one of their articles in isolation as I had done initially.
In any case, it's good to see Microsoft continuing to support Linux.
... huh? They're not running Windows on these Pi's, are they? Nothing in the article indicates that they are, and the fact that they tell you to monitor temperatures with `watch /opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp` strongly implies that they're not.