Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2017 11:01:28 -0700 From: Ian Lepore <ian@freebsd.org> To: nowhere <florence44638@caliopea.com>, freebsd-arm@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Durable/serious arm hardware ? Message-ID: <1485108088.42643.5.camel@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <45d41ec7-3004-ea6c-560e-50bdff9b997a@caliopea.com> References: <45d41ec7-3004-ea6c-560e-50bdff9b997a@caliopea.com>
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On Sun, 2017-01-22 at 11:19 +0100, nowhere wrote: > Hello > > I'd like to hear from the most skilled of you, if anybody knows > serious > arm based hardware or share this though : I'm becoming convinced > that > theses hardware (arm based) are just the consumable-smartphone > fashion > counterpart for kids and leisures or tests. Not really final and > carefully finished products; abble to works for years or a decade; > doing > is job in a office corner, being forgotten by anyone, like some of > my > older freebsd servers wich are running for a decade now. > > > Those past years, I've bought 3 arm based devices : > > 1 raspberry-pi , which was affected by the "micron-ram-chip" bug: > except > with debian, it never booted on freebsd (I even tried netbsd): I > just > trashed it yesterday (bought in 2014 i think). > > 1 Beagleboneblack : works fine for weeks then freeze suddenly. And > sometimes did not event reboot (*): had to loop-reset it until boot > process go to the end. Seem the most "workable" product so far.. > (bought > in 2015) > > 1 olimex a20-lime2-emmc: my most recent buy. It did not event boot > with > network with it's own debian sd card... (I did not yet take time to > make > it's own freebsd sd card): (bought in 2016-07). > > My goals, for example, with theses boards were to give some of my > nomads > customers, a box with an autonomous dhcp/dns/vpn server on theyr > networks, without the need to change anything else than disabling > their > dhcp servers for instance : I think a Quad xeon racked server is a > bit > too much for theses tasks; I was using pfsence on pcengines boards > before to do this kind of things. > > Since my conclusions are based only on theses 3 boards, I'd like to > hear > from thoses of you who works daily with these boards, and thoses > opinion > are based on far more than my hand counted experiences. > > > PM. > > > > (*) I work with a 5V/5A (25w) psu: that's not an overloaded psu > problem; > Not a damaged emmc/sd card problem too: all my systems are > read-only-root based: seems to really be an hardware issue. > At $work we create commercial products running freebsd that have a 10 to 20 year (depending on the product) g'teed lifespan in the field. We used to use Atmel arm chips on custom-designed mainboards. Now we use primarily imx6 SOM modules from Technexion, SolidRun, and soon Boundary Devices, along with our own custom-designed carrier boards. The imx6 SOM modules are a bit higher-end than rpi or beaglebone boards. I would say that basically you have to shop around a bit. If you buy ultra-cheap hobbyist hardware such as an rpi, you're going to get what you pay for. If you buy the higher-end hardware you can expect the same kind of quality and lifespan you'd get from x86 hardware (which doesn't tend to target the hobbyist market so much). -- Ian
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