Broadcom SOCs

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Dirk Broer
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#1 Broadcom SOCs

Post by Dirk Broer »

Broadcom -formerly Avago- is in the BOINC-world mainly known for supplying the SOCs for the Raspberry family of SBCs, but that is merely a niece market for this silicon giant.

The Broadcom portfolio
SOCImageSpeedGPUGPU SpeedGPU SDK SPECSAPPLICATION
BCM21553Single-core ARM11600 MHzSingle-core VideoCore 4250 MHzOpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG 1.1, Open EGL, OpenMAXSmartphones: Samsung Galaxy Y, Samsung Wave Y, Samsung Galaxy Mini (GT-S5570i), Samsung Galaxy Ace (models 5830i/c/m and 5839i), Vodafone Smart 2 (Alcatel TCT V860)
BCM2835Single-core ARM11700 MHzSingle-core VideoCore 4250 MHzOpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG 1.1, Open EGL, OpenMAXSBC: Raspberry Pi A/B, A+/B+, Zero/Zero W, Odroid-W Mediaplayer: Roku 2 HD/XD/XS
BCM2836Quad-core ARM Cortex-A7900 MHzQuad-core VideoCore 4250 MHzOpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG 1.1, Open EGL, OpenMAXSBC: Raspberry Pi 2 Model B 1.1
BCM23550Quad-core ARM Cortex-A71200 MHzSingle-core VideoCore 4300 MHzOpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG 1.1, Open EGL, OpenMAXSmartphones: HTC Desire 601 Dual SIM, XOLO Opus-HD, Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo
BCM2837Quad-core ARM Cortex-A531200 MHzQuad-core VideoCore 4400 MHzOpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG 1.1, Open EGL, OpenMAXSBC: Raspberry Pi 2 Model B 1.2, Raspberry Pi 3 Model B/B+
BCM28150Dual-core ARM Cortex-A91200 MHzSingle-core VideoCore 4300 MHzOpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG 1.1, Open EGL, OpenMAX3G baseband processing
BCM28145/28155Dual-core ARM Cortex-A91200 MHzSingle-core VideoCore 4300 MHzOpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG 1.1, Open EGL, OpenMAXSmartphones: Samsung Galaxy SII Plus, Samsung Galaxy Grand, Samsung Galaxy Core Plus, Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 Mediaplayers: Amazon Fire TV Stick
BCM725xBroadcom Brahma-B15742 MHzQuad-core ARM Mali-400 MP2-OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenVG 1.1Mediaplayer: Smartlabs SML-482 HEVC Hybrid
BCM2711Quad-core ARM Cortex-A721500 MHzQuad-core VideoCore 6500 MHzOpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 3.0, OpenGL ES 3.2 (partially)SBC: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
BOINC-wise, the 1400 MHz BCM2837 SOC of the Raspberry Pi 3+ is by far the most interesting offering of Broadcom, whose main activity remains connectivity.
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#2 Broadcom Benchmarked

Post by Dirk Broer »

No Antutu or GeekBench scores here, but Gareth Halfacree has done a splendid job here, of which I give you a few graphs:
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For more detail: visit the article of Gareth Halfacree.
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#3 Re: Broadcom SOCs

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Before everyone rushes out to buy a new Pi 3 Model B+ a few words of warning:
Running a Pi 24/7/365 DOES get them hot, so make sure you have at least a heatsink on the SOC.
That heatsink may be helped with a fan (I am having my Pi-rack on top of two 120mm fans).
The RAM gets hot too, after a while. That RAM is still DDR2 RAM

All this would perhaps be less severe if the chips were produced at 28, 20, 14 or 10 nm, but the Broadcom chips are still being made using a 40 nm production process!

So If I were to design the Raspberry Pi 4 I would:
  • Do away with the by now ancient 40 nm VideoCore 4 and take a quad-core 10 nm Mali G51 or so.
  • Increase RAM to at least 2GB DDR3 -and even 4GB if the Pi 4 is to run a 64-bit OS.
  • Step up the CPU part to a quad-core Corex-A57 or A72.
Bearing in mind that one of the goals of the organisation behind the Raspberry is to keep the cost of a single unit to approximately $35 you see why I'm not hired as the next Raspberry Pi designer
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#4 Re: Broadcom SOCs

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Dirk Broer wrote: Mon May 28, 2018 1:15 pmSo If I were to design the Raspberry Pi 4 I would:
  • Do away with the by now ancient 40 nm VideoCore 4 and take a quad-core 10 nm Mali G51 or so.
  • Increase RAM to at least 2GB DDR3 -and even 4GB if the Pi 4 is to run a 64-bit OS.
  • Step up the CPU part to a quad-core Cortex-A57 or A72.
Bearing in mind that one of the goals of the organisation behind the Raspberry is to keep the cost of a single unit to approximately $35 you see why I'm not hired as the next Raspberry Pi designer
I should apply at Eben Upton's firm it seems! They've done away with VideoCore 4 and replaced it with inhome VideoCore 6, give now an opportunity to choose from 1, 2 or 4 GB DDR4(!) RAM and to top it off have chosen for a four-core Cortex-A72! And they now also have real gigabit ethernet, two USB 3.0 ports, and a USB-C power connector. And all for -in the case of the 1GB version- 35 quid!
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#5 Re: Broadcom SOCs

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So, if I now were to design the Raspberry Pi 5, I would....
  • Add an NVMe M.2 slot -at the backside- for added storage.
  • Use an eMMC module, to either replace the Micro-SD slot or as an addition to it.
  • Upgrade to the ARM Cortex-A73 -or even the A76, if feasible.
  • Unlock the full power of ARMv8 instructions, meaning forking Raspbian into two seperate branches: 32-bit (older BCM2835 and -2836 SOCs) and 64-bit (BCM2837, -2837B0 and -2711), though you might better just want to run the 32-bit on the BCM2837 and BCM2837B0, in view of the meagre 1GB DDR2 RAM aboard.
  • Try to unlock the VideoCore6 GPU for OpenCL use -some success has been made with the older Raspberries VideoCore4 in that field.
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#6 Re: Broadcom SOCs

Post by davidbam »

put me down for 10
I think this is fool-proof but could you just try it for me please? • There are 10 types of people in the world; those who understand binary, and those who don’t
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#7 Re: Broadcom SOCs

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We're two years further, so our expectations have grown too in some aspects.
The forking of Raspbian -now Raspberry Pi OS- into 32- and 64-bit versions has occurred, but what I still would want to see in the upcoming Raspberry Pi 5:
  • Add an NVMe M.2 slot -at the backside- for added storage.
  • Upgrade to the ARM Cortex-A73 -or even the A76, if feasible. But it needs to be Broadcom, so the BCM58732 SoC springs into mind: An octo-core Cortex-A72 @3000 MHz.
  • Try to unlock the VideoCore6 GPU for OpenCL use -some success has been made with the older Raspberries VideoCore4 in that field.
Where I would want to see more improvement, as compared to two years ago:
  • Use UFS instead of the ancient SD card. UFS 2.0 is already superior to eMMC 5.1, so having an UFS 3.0 card slot would be a tremendous improvement.
  • Bring out a 16GB version -especially when the BCM58732 octo-core comes into view.
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#8 Re: Broadcom SOCs

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Dirk Broer wrote: Sat Aug 31, 2019 1:44 pm So, if I now were to design the Raspberry Pi 5, I would....
  • Add an NVMe M.2 slot -at the backside- for added storage.
  • Use an eMMC module, to either replace the Micro-SD slot or as an addition to it.
  • Upgrade to the ARM Cortex-A73 -or even the A76, if feasible.
  • Unlock the full power of ARMv8 instructions, meaning forking Raspbian into two seperate branches: 32-bit (older BCM2835 and -2836 SOCs) and 64-bit (BCM2837, -2837B0 and -2711), though you might better just want to run the 32-bit on the BCM2837 and BCM2837B0, in view of the meagre 1GB DDR2 RAM aboard.
  • Try to unlock the VideoCore6 GPU for OpenCL use -some success has been made with the older Raspberries VideoCore4 in that field.
Pi 5 has just been released
  • No NVMe M.2 slot -at the backside- for added storage, but a multi-purpose PCIe connector.
  • No eMMC module.
  • ARM Cortex-A76!
  • 64-bit OS, 4GB and 8GB models certain, 16GB promises!
  • VideoCore7 GPU.
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#9 Re: Broadcom SOCs

Post by scole of TSBT »

A PCIe 2.0 x1 interface, 500 MB. No faster than USB 3.0. meh
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#10 Re: Broadcom SOCs

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scole of TSBT wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 2:25 am A PCIe 2.0 x1 interface, 500 MB. No faster than USB 3.0. meh
We must be able to think of things we want in a future Raspberry Pi 6 (or any other high-end ARM SBC) too, it seems...

Let's kick of then!
  • At least one PCIe 3.0 x4 interface, whether M.2 or PCIe.
  • Replace the ancient SD card slot with either fast eMMC or a much faster type slot -or both.
  • A 2.5GB LAN port instead of the old 1GB.
  • Replace the USB 2.0 ports with at least USB 3.0 -but better USB-C 3.2.
  • We want to be able to use OpenCL for the GPU on our ARM boards.
  • We want a coprocessor socket, to be able to plug in an AI chip of choice (I bet that's a very hard one, a copro-hat might do as well).
  • We want to be able to add extra useable RAM to our boards.
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#11 Re: Broadcom SOCs

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scole of TSBT wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 2:25 am A PCIe 2.0 x1 interface, 500 MB. No faster than USB 3.0. meh
Rumour has it that the CPU performance is between 200 and 300% of the level of the Pi 4, no slouch either -SBC-wise....My Pi 3's are about to be retired!
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#12 Re: Broadcom SOCs

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scole of TSBT wrote: Sat Sep 30, 2023 2:25 amA PCIe 2.0 x1 interface, 500 MT/s. No faster than USB 3.0 (600 MT/s) meh.
Jeff Geerling shows here that the PCIe 2.0 x1 can easily be changed to PCIe 3.0 x1, thereby doubling the speed to 1,000 MT/s (Theoretically that is. But as the great Yogi Berra already said "In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.", so it is actually only 800 MT/s)

tldr:
By default, the external PCIe header is not enabled, so to enable it, you can add one of the following options into /boot/config.txt and reboot:

Code: Select all

# Enable the PCIe External connector.
dtparam=pciex1

# This line is an alias for above (you can use either/or to enable the port).
dtparam=nvme
And the connection is certified for Gen 2.0 speed (5 GT/sec), but you can force it to Gen 3.0 (10 GT/sec) if you add the following line after:

Code: Select all

dtparam=pciex1_gen=3
This Polish company makes not only M.2 2230-2242 Raspberry Pi 5 hats, but also does even better M.2 2230-2242-2280 Raspberry Pi 5 bottoms -and they have also a AI bottom/hat for the Coral dual edge TPU! -but at PCIe 2.0 x1 or PCIe 3.0 x1 speeds only one lane gets used...
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