[HH] Engadget Raspberry Pi review

[Tom Metro]

Raspberry Pi impressions: the $35 Linux computer and tinker toy
http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/01/raspberry-pi-impressions-the-35-linux-computer-and-tinker-toy/

  If there's one place the Pi has been an unquestionable success, it's
  been on cost. ... the fact that it clocks in at a measly $35 for the
  advanced model is all the more impressive. Granted, it hits this
  Arduino-level price point by eschewing things like storage, a display,
  wireless radios and even a protective case. What you get instead, is a
  capable, but low-end ARM CPU with integrated RAM and a surprisingly
  powerful GPU on an exposed board with a small, but versatile
  assortment of connectivity options.
  [...]
  At the heart of the Pi is a Broadcom BCM2835 SOC. The 700MHz ARM11
  core certainly isn't a barn burner. In fact, the foundation itself
  compares performance to a 300MHz Pentium II, but with "much, much
  swankier graphics" thanks to the Videocore 4 GPU. The chip itself is
  capable of not only decoding 1080p video, but of hitting Xbox (we're
  talking original, not 360) levels of 3D performance.

  In practice those claims seem to be about spot on. While some crafty
  devs have managed to get Quake III up and running on the diminutive
  Pi, it struggles to keep up with even modest modern demands. Firing up
  the Midori browser in the Debian "squeeze" distro suggested for use
  with the board and opening a couple of tabs is enough to bring the
  entire system to a standstill.

  In fact, simply launching Engadget was enough to pin the CPU and bring
  the OS to a standstill for at least a few minutes. And don't even
  think about watching streaming videos -- there is no support for Flash
  or HTML 5 at the moment. And, in case there was any doubt in your mind
  about how painful just web browsing could be on this thing, we ran
  SunSpider [JavaScript benchmark] (which also pinned the CPU) and got a
  score of 44,230. By comparison, our OG Droid (which is clocked at just
  550MHz, but has the advantage of being a Cortex A8 chip) pulled a
  11,188.

  On the software front, things are currently a tad underwhelming. You
  have your choice of three officially supported Linux variants (Debian
  Squeeze, Arch Linux ARM and QtonPi) and a port of XBMC, dubbed
  Raspbmc.
  [...]
  XBMC center fared slightly better in our testing, but not much. It
  boots up fast enough...and works more or less as advertised, provided
  you're the patient type. The now ubiquitous 1080p copy of Big Buck
  Bunny took about 15 to 20 seconds to load up from a USB key, but once
  it did, played reasonably smoothly...
  [...]
  Web-based content was a completely different story. We managed to
  install the Engadget and YouTube add-ons, but both failed to deliver.
  Launching an episode of the Engadget show took several minutes and,
  once the video began playing back, we were presented with what
  amounted to a slide show...

Follow the link for more review details (like Debian performance) and
pictures.

This review makes it sound like the CPU is woefully underpowered for a
media player application, and to an extent that merely adding hardware
optimized drivers for the GPU isn't going to be a magic bullet. (You
can't do everything in the GPU. You still need the CPU to shuttle bits
around.)

(If you've seen evidence to the contrary, post a reply.)

Makes me wonder if the effort to port XBMC to this device was misplaced
and is only going to lead to user frustration.

You'd think the Raspberry Pi designers would have been aware of the
capabilities and not misrepresented the product, or, if the media player
idea came more from 3rd parties, discouraged that line of exploration,
or at least added commentary on their blog warning of the limitations.
(I don't think the designers explicitly said it was a great media
player, but they did promote the effort to port XBMC by repeatedly
noting it on their blog.)

There's certainly plenty of other things you can do with a $35 Linux board.

 -Tom