Raspberry Pi 3B+ RT backup

MARK2011 — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 21:40:21 GMT

Current Revision posted to Documents by MARK2011 on 10/6/2021 9:40:21 PM

Amazing Raspberry in yet another, brand new - MODEL 3B+.

I hope, that the following test will depict some enhanced features of the new raspberry

Basic parameters

As the Raspberry Pi microcomputer is well known, besides the new model is also well documented and wide described, nevertheless, I feel obligation to attach detailed description and parameters below.

New model is presented on the raspberry official site as

1.4GHz 64-bit quad-core processor, dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.2/BLE, faster Ethernet, and Power-over-Ethernet support (with separate PoE HAT)

Processor: Broadcom BCM2837B0, Cortex-A53 (ARMv8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.4GHz
Memory: 1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM
Connectivity
- 2.4GHz and 5GHz IEEE 802.11.b/g/n/ac wireless LAN,
- Bluetooth 4.2, BLE
- Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0 (maximum throughput 300 Mbps)
- 4 USB 2.0 ports
Extended 40-pin GPIO header
Full-size HDMI
CSI camera port for connecting a Raspberry Pi camera
DSI display port for connecting a Raspberry Pi touchscreen display
4-pole stereo output and composite video port
Multimedia: H.264, MPEG-4 decode (1080p30); H.264 encode (1080p30); OpenGL ES 1.1, 2.0 graphics
Micro SD port for loading your operating system and storing data
5V/2.5A DC power input
Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) support (requires separate PoE HAT)

The first thought that comes to mind is the question of differences with the previous model.

At first glance I noticed two metal coated chips

Broadcom BCM2837 instead of plastic package appear in the metal now.

Another metal object with full -size raspberry icon embossed on it is screening shield covered wireless device: IEEE 802.11.b/g/n/ac wireless LAN 2.4GHz & 5GHz integrated with Bluetooth 4.2, BLE

The ceramic chip antenna is replaced by resonant PCB one now.

The big change is replacement of LAN9514 with LAN7515 contained 10/100/1000 Ethernet and USB 2.0 hub.

There must be impart the new module is Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) - ready.

Looking at documentation and features list we have following significant improvements :

ARM Cortex-A53 1.4 GHz. means increase of the frequency by 200MHz

All above easy to find in papers and manuals, but now let’s check it out!

Let me introduce the new Raspberry:

or to be precise its small but smart as well as faster and faster brain:

Thermal issue

As declared in my application I conducted some comparison tests with previous RPi model.

The first most interesting question was check of the energy dissipation issues and working temperature.

With precise Flir thermovision equipment that task was quite simple but instructive

first - take look at Raspberry 3B model:

warming up few seconds after start.

3 seconds later:

and after half an hour of normal work

focused not perfect but larger picture

here the measurement of the temperature of the USB module:

and supply conditioning area:

now hot photos of our new Raspberry:

unpowered RPi3B+ below:

and just after the start

module:

temperature groth 1 sec later:

10 min:

20 min

supply unit:

Now let me summarize above pictures in short words.

First I must inform, that measurements were taken with open cover. (the bottom base remained)

At average work conditions there are no significant difference in heat transfer in the board and temperature levels. Nevertheless model+ looks few degrees warmer.

(is that the reason for this sign?)

You can see the problem with catch the real temperature of metal covers of chips. Shiny surfaces are nightmare for thermography.

On the other hand, such cover ensure better radiation as well as heat transfer (dissipation) at all

RPI3B & RPi3B+ Benchmarks

The stage of benchmarks I started from simplest test command:

cpuinfo

Above results are the same for both RPI3B & RPi3B+

the only differwnce is the serial, of course and,

The revision id:

Pi 3 B : a22082

Pi 3 B+ : a020d3

But look: simple command “/cpuinfo_max_freq” shows significant difference in cpu speed:

RPi3B+ 1400000

RPi3B 1200000

Running cpuinfo_cur_freq I got 600000 with new RPi3+

But for old one 600000 or 1200000 alternately appeared.

One more 1 command comparison: Benchmarking using “openssl speed”

calculate the time it takes to encrypt or decrypt one block of data.

Differences are shown in the table below:

Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on X size blocks	aes-256-cbc's in 3.00s
Doing aes-256-cbc for 3s on X size blocks	RPi3B+	RPi3B
X = 16	5495602	4669861
X = 64	1787593	1532253
X = 256	484706	415754
X = 1024	123813	106153
X = 8192	15615	13350
X = 16384	7812	6671

The 'numbers' are in 1000s of bytes per second processed:

type		16	64	256	1024	8192	16384
aes-256-cbc	RPi3B+	29309.88k	38135.32k	41361.58k	42261.50k	42639.36k	42663.94k
aes-256-cbc	RPi3B	24905.93k	32688.06k	35477.67k	36233.56k	36454.40k	36432.55k

Now time for more sophisticated comparisons. How are the improvements in the practical use?

I looked for my old but still convenient computation speed tests based on prime numbers seeking algorithm. The few lines code (C++ in origin, converted to python)

The attempt to find primes in the range to 300000 gave as follow:

The result for RPi3B is 30,5s

Where for RPi3B+

is 25,5s

I did repeat these tests, for sure, results everytime were similar.

Another worth to do test from the point of view of practical comparison is “pystone”.

The benchmark is available on Github as the python code.

RPi3B+ scored around 16500 “pst”/s when 50000 or 500000 loops

Additionally I decided to check the CPU temperature during the test:

Now compare it with old RPi3B

And for 50000 passes:

Pystone(1.1.1) time for 50000 passes = 3.54852

This machine benchmarks at 14090.4 pystones/second

Pystone(1.1.1) time for 500000 passes = 35.5569

This machine benchmarks at 14062 pystones/second

Pystone(1.1.1) time for 500000 passes = 35.885

This machine benchmarks at 13933.4 pystones/second

The RPi3B result is not much abowe 14000 “pst”/s

Temperature was lower a little:

At the last i decided to use quite popular AikonCWD benchmark.

https://github.com/aikoncwd/rpi-benchmark

Raspberry Pi Benchmark Test

Author: AikonCWD

Version: 3.0

RPi3B	RPi3B	RPi3B+
temp=58.0'C	temp=53.7'C	temp=53.2'C
arm_freq=1200	arm_freq=1200	arm_freq=1400
core_freq=400	core_freq=250	core_freq=250
sdram_freq=450	sdram_freq=450	sdram_freq=450
gpu_freq=300	gpu_freq=300	gpu_freq=300
sd_clock=50.000 MHz	sd_clock=50.000 MHz	sd_clock=50.000 MHz

Running InternetSpeed test...	Running InternetSpeed test...	Running InternetSpeed test...
Ping: 58.209 ms	Ping: 35.333 ms	Ping: 52.511 ms
Download: 10.15 Mbit/s	Download: 12.38 Mbit/s	Download: 12.34 Mbit/s
Upload: 0.60 Mbit/s	Upload: 0.78 Mbit/s	Upload: 0.54 Mbit/s

Running CPU test...	Running CPU test...	Running CPU test...
total time: 13.1449s	total time: 13.3998s	total time: 12.5586s
min: 5.22ms	min: 5.22ms	min: 4.48ms
avg: 5.26ms	avg: 5.36ms	avg: 5.02ms
max: 15.31ms	max: 20.33ms	max: 14.01ms
temp=73.6'C	temp=69.8'C	temp=61.8'C

Running THREADS test...	Running THREADS test...	Running THREADS test...
total time: 12.2089s	total time: 13.3951s	total time: 12.2423s
min: 4.70ms	min: 4.68ms	min: 4.71ms
avg: 4.88ms	avg: 5.36ms	avg: 4.89ms
max: 45.25ms	max: 53.92ms	max: 25.74ms
temp=77.9'C	temp=74.1'C	temp=63.4'C

Running MEMORY test...	Running MEMORY test...	Running MEMORY test...
temp=77.4'C	Operations performed: 3145728 (2022725.74 ops/sec)	Operations performed: 3145728 (2055722.75 ops/sec)
	3072.00 MB transferred (1975.32 MB/sec)	3072.00 MB transferred (2007.54 MB/sec)
	total time: 1.5552s	total time: 1.5302s
	max: 15.71ms	max: 5.37ms
	temp=75.2'C	temp=63.4'C

Running HDPARM test...	Running HDPARM test...	Running HDPARM test...
Timing buffered disk reads: 66 MB in 3.01 seconds = 21.94 MB/sec	Timing buffered disk reads: 22 MB in 3.19 seconds = 6.89 MB/sec	Timing buffered disk reads: 68 MB in 3.05 seconds = 22.31 MB/sec
temp=67.7'C	temp=64.5'C	temp=58.0'C

Running DD WRITE test...	Running DD WRITE test...	Running DD WRITE test...
536870912 bytes (537 MB, 512 MiB) copied, 80.1061 s, 6.7 MB/s	536870912 bytes (537 MB, 512 MiB) copied, 86.7152 s, 6.2 MB/s	536870912 bytes (537 MB, 512 MiB) copied, 72.7018 s, 7.4 MB/s
temp=58.0'C	temp=55.3'C	temp=53.7'C

Running DD READ test...	Running DD READ test...	Running DD READ test...
536870912 bytes (537 MB, 512 MiB) copied, 23.4638 s, 22.9 MB/s	536870912 bytes (537 MB, 512 MiB) copied, 22.7106 s, 23.6 MB/s	536870912 bytes (537 MB, 512 MiB) copied, 23.1917 s, 23.1 MB/s
temp=58.0'C	temp=55.3'C	temp=54.2'C

Other features

Check of main features extended in the new model

we have two USB 2.0 HUBs onboard now!

General compatibility

In the scope to proof the compatibility of the new model, I repeated selected experiments and tests concerned RPi I conducted before.

DS18B20+ One Wire Digital Temperature Sensor and the Raspberry

MEAS PI WEATHER SHIELD

Thanks to the previous Element14 R-T my simple weather station and its data logging system is ready for new experiments.

Raspberry Pi 2/3 Weather Sensor Shield - the set of transdusers necessary to make simple weather/ environment measures.

https://github.com/TEConnectivity/piweathershield-python

The MEAS Pi weather hat consist of:

HTU21D digital relative humidity sensor;

MS5637 digital barometric pressure sensor;

TSYS01 digital temperature system sensor;

TSD305-1C55 digital thermopile sensor.

It utilizes Raspberry Pi compatible expansion ports configurable for I2C communication.

Modules detection in the new RPi 3B+ works perfect!

My simple python code works without need of any adaptation

Matlab compatibility

I wondered if the new Raspberry is fully compatible with i.e. Matlab / Simulink modules?

after some troubles I think new M-L version related...

I can operate and interface with RPi using matlab/ simulink.

The simplest cooperation results are shown below:

The model B+ was identified properly!

Remote operation on GPIO is available from Matlab code level.

Communication

The comprehensive roadtest covers assessment of the reliability and immunity of the board as well as compatibility to its modules.

I have checked the communication interfaces. Honestly I’m not ready to introduce sophisticated radio-propagation and emission loses test but I tried my best to check it.

Connecting to 5G Wi-Fi on 3B+

I have tested it using:

iw reg get

For RPi B+

The 5GHz Wifi is marked

Signal info comparison below

With two walls border, around 15m distance:

Some retries but lommunication still works

Here comparison with 2,4GHz behaviour:

10 meters+wall:

Conclusions

There are lot of advantages in the new RPi model.

I'm sure the new idea of "heating management" and metal covers help to work in comfortable conditions regardless of the cpu and general load and environmental surroundings.

The most interesting features improvement are dual band WiFi

as well as modernisation of USB module combined with faster Ethernet.

Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) - also very promising ideea but require the extra module.

Nevertheless I must confirm, in practical use the chages are not particularly visible.

I would like to emphasize that in my opinion this is due to the fact that previous models have very good parameters and functions.