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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

>Lightweight virtualization is a natural fit for low power devices

No it's not. The pi is punchy enough for it sure, but the above doesn't follow in my mind. Low power = limited resources so ideally you want it run on bare metal to minimise overheads

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sure! bare-metal would be awesome. But isn't it a shame not to take advantage of all the virtualization/containerization goodies out there? After all, the virtualization overhead nowadays is only referring to I/O (network & storage). CPU/MEM are being virtualized using hardware extensions at (near-)native speeds.

>CPU/MEM are being virtualized using hardware extensions at (near-)native speeds.

Is that really true for rasp level gear? Haven't tested it but my gut feel tells me the hit is sizable.

Anyway - don't let that dissuade you from the mission. Container goodies on a rasp is a grand idea...just don't think it's quite as hit free as the article suggests ;)

definitely! that's our initial goal. Quantify the penalty and examine the trade-offs. Clearly, virtualizing workloads on such devices with standard VMMs/hypervisors isn't ideal. And we're working towards this direction; playing with the systems stack is what makes us tick, so, it will be a fun and (hopefully) useful adventure :D

>Quantify the penalty and examine the trade-offs.

If you do have numbers available I'd love to see a write-up on what the real world hit is.

I used to run a rasp3b for home server but that just wasn't punchy enough (crappy fake gigabit etc). So my old gaming laptop became a server w/ docker etc.

But itching to justify a rasp 4.

Anyway...thanks for exploring 64...thought the 32 on rasp 3 was unfortunate.

will do -- that was only a high-level run to make sure there's enough compatibility with our framework & tools to move forward.

stay tuned ;)

I have a raspberry pi 4. That thing runs HOT. 64c idle (44c above ambient) without any case, but with a PoE hat and disabled fan.

The PoE hat makes attaching a proper heat sink (or using the flirc case) impossible, so I have now rolled my own using copper coins.

I am not comfy with letting my pi run that hot 24/7, and I don't want active cooling. I bought a rock pi 4 which has a PoE hat that can be combined with a HUGE heat sink, and there I have no heat issues at all.

There are cases you can use when you don't have a PoE hat, but the original pi 4 case almost throttles the pi at idle.

I have been testing a rpi4 and comparing it to the rpi3. The Rpi4 is actually the first Pi that is usable as a desktop computer, but have seen thermal issues like you. Many the early reviews have only done short tests with the cover off. The thermal CPU throttling on the RPI4 is huge, while the RPI3 might slow things down 50-30%. The RPI4 will slow down to 100%. In the case I tested the RPI4 was running close the RPI3 speeds. I don't think a heatsink or CPU fan is needed there just not enough heat being generated to warrant the expense.I have had good luck with running the RPI with just the cover off, and some sort of air circulation in the room.

I have been trying to figure out the cheapest way to cool the RPI4, I am thinking a single slow 5V fan blowing across the card would be the best solution. This would also cool off the VLI, and take up less room on the card. I am just hoping someone will make the case, fan combination the works at a good price point. If things get too pricey then other SBC look very interesting.

I am really disappointed the thermal issues were not considered. A simple fan header like on UDOO boards, or an official case with space and air flow so a heat-sink could actually work would make me feel a lot better.

I’m assuming you updated the firmware? There was a fix that lowered the temperature significantly.

Only 3-4c in my case, with some losses in USB data transfer rate.

I haven't installed the latest firmware, is there a way to backup my current firmware so I can compare them easily?

Try this one: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=2435...

I believe the old binary is there and you can revert using the same mechanism

If you don't use a hat, you can probably fit the pi a real heat sink or with something like this: https://geekworm.com/collections/new-arrivals/products/raspb...

For my rock pi, that is more than enough.

It looks like a great heat sink, I wish I could order one now.

My biggest concern with that is the blocking of the camera connector.

It is also 4 times more expensive than a cheap 5V fan.

but without noise! My significant other is allergic to noise. Either I install a fan that is too big and run it on the lowest setting, or I do it passively. I don't like moving parts, so passively it is :D

I just got my rock pi 4. It is undocumented and is probably full of hacks (someone mentioned 5 different partitions just to get it to boot), but it has an official huge heatsink for $8 that can be combined with a poe hat. My rpi4+poe hat now has a heat sink consisting of 5 cent euro coins and one of those very very small heat sinks that does nothing :D

I am running a Noctua 40mm 5v fan on top of my Raspberry PI. It cannot be heard, I've been tempting to under volt it 3v since it has been keeping my RPi4 at 50C under load without heatsink.

No it's not... Containers "goodies" serve a purpose, but they also bring a big number of disadvantages to the table! It's not all fun and games in container world. We definitedly need better build tools, but I don't think containers are the solution here, or at least not the only solution.

agree, I'm just talking about the flexibility to build & deploy a workload in any device (cloud / edge). Think of it like "building your own buildroot image" vs. "docker build" based on busybox or alpine. In the first case you'll end up with exactly what you want, but you'll spend quite some time building it; in the latter case you'll have to mix & match various other stuff, but you'll end up executing the actual application a lot faster.

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