I don’t see the BPI-R2 on @sinovoip’s Ali Express store. Just the unfortunate R2Pro.
Has the R2 been withdrawn from the market?
Why is R2 pro unfortunate? R2 pro, to my understanding, has all the features of R2. No?
The R2 Pro is based on the Rockchip RK3568 which has very problematic Linux support. There was never mainline kernel with support for it. All the kernels for it have been cobbled together one-offs.
The unfortunate part is that the R2-Pro was marketed and sold as an upgrade to the R2, which had very excellent Linux support since it was based on Mediatek. So people who had the R2 bought it and then found you couldn’t do much with it.
I would like the know if the original R2 is now officially out of production.
I have added mainline support for 6.1 afair. Which feature do you miss here?
And there is no complete mainline atf source yet (hangs in check-acripts atm)…and r2 has none too.
The big problem i see is missing uboot ethernet support and the throughput of the gmac to switch which is only 1gbit/s for all lan-ports.
One problem on r2 is the internal wifi driver which i cannot upgrade to 6.0 (and so latest lts 6.1). R2pro has no builtin wifi.
Yes, the internal wifi on the R2 has always been an issue.
I am really just more interested to know, though, if the original R2 is officially out of production.
I don’t know what else to tell the other user regarding the lack of support. Maybe help developers a hand by tackling the support yourself?
Bpi releases bsp kernels as reference for upstreaming. Internal wifi was too huge and dirty and so was not upstreamable. Some time ago some more users here helped to upport the driver to newer kernel versions, but neverless i was stuck here in 6.0 where core network stack was changed for mesh and i can’t adapt changes to this driver. Netherless it is only the internal wifi that was buggy too (but i’m still using it on my main router woth 5.15 which is going to be replaced by an r3 if this runs stable so far).
Imho r2 users will be splitted into them using r2 as nas/storage/media server (where r2pro is the alternative with hdmi but not so good network) or router only usage (like me using r3 as follow device,better network compatibility but no hdmi).
But question here is: is BPI-R2 still produced? @sinovoip
I don’t think BPI-R2 is still produced, and why would something that already has many replacements be still produced in excess to create deadweight loss?
- For the same reason that you probably find it useful that parts are still made for your car, even though it is likely a few years old and there are many replacement cars available.
- Because the main replacement for the BPI-R2, the R2-Pro, is a router board with very little support in the router firmware community.
- Because the R2 supports SATA, which only the R64 also has, and has a case that has an internal HDD mount, which none of the replacements have.
- Because the R2 has twice the memory of the R64 and (as a 32-bit device) has a far smaller memory footprint.
- Because the R2 has HDMI out.
That may change when openwrt bumps to 6.1…but because the 1g gmac for lan-ports it can limit its usage here. But for nas/media server still usable.
But ack on the other points
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- This is only true if you want to replace the old technology WITH old technology. Your comparison is also inapt here. You are saying parts for a car. If the switch chip on the Pi goes bad, would you buy a new switch from MediaTek to de-solder and re-solder?
- For “very little support,” the blame is not on BPi, but on the community. Since you are complaining about he support, why not join the effort to provide the VERY support?
- Only R2 and R64 have SATA? Really? RPi-Pro 2 has SATA too.
- R2-Pro has the same amount of memory. What do you mean by memory footprint? You mean the OS you choose to run? I can tell you frank-w’s Ubuntu uses less than 200MB. Can’t help you if you choose to run Windows on BPi.
- R2-Pro 2 has HDMI out too. W3 has 2 I believe.
because the 1g gmac for lan-ports it can limit its usage here.
I disagree on the grounds that I tested an AQC113CS on RPi2-Pro and got 4Gbps down and 6Gbps up. On the industrial BPi R2 Pro with PCie 3.0 x2, you could go for 9.4Gbps in my opinion and prediction.
I also tested RTL8125B on BPi R2 Pro and you can get 2.35 Gbps up and down. You can write to a 6Gbps SSD. Not sure what is limiting the use case here.
I talked about the switch for the lan-ports is connected with only rgmii (1gbit/s bidirectional),so if lan-clients producing more than 1gbit/s which needs to be handled by cpu (e.g. target r2pro or forward to wan) this is limited. R2 has ~2.2gbit/s (trgmii). Of course you get better speed over pcie. Maybe this can be changed if using a naneng phy from usb or sata for the mac.
With memory footprint i guess he means the ram usage because of 64bit where r2 is 32 bit.
And mainline support was mainly done by me (except graphics driver) for r2pro. R2 and further mtk boards have got many patches from vendor.
R2pro still misses proper uboot-support (ethernet driver),we have it now working again with mainline,but without ethernet
The R2 board IS the part.
You don’t seem to have had experience with computing technology used in production environments. My background is embedded computing, process control, and automation. When you have something that has been commissioned into service, when it needs repair you don’t replace it with something else willy nilly, no matter how much better you perceive it to be. You replace it with an identical one until such time as a new device has been proven, and commissioned in its place. Commissioning is expensive in cost and time, as every single possible function of the device has to be tested against a master checklist. Reputable companies that produce boards they want to have become used in production environments (which embedded boards like these are often positioned as being good for) generally ensure they have at least some quantities for replacements of production-installed units.
The community didn’t choose the R2-Pro’s SoC. That was BPI. BPI chose an SoC that had little Linux support from a company whose been known to have a very problematic relationship with the Linux community. RockChip is not generally considered to be at the forefront of Linux cooperation. For a board that BPI was positioning as a replacement for an open-source friendly board like the R2, this decision was at best unfortunate. The R2 and the R2-Pro are basically designed for two different markets.
Out of Banana Pi’s router series offerings, yes. Discussion of other companies’ offerings is hardly germane here.
I mean that as a 32-bit device, The R2 uses about a third to a half less memory for code pages than the R2-Pro and the R3, and about 20% less for most data.
In a number of ways, the R2 is superior to even the R64, which is still in production and sold.
R2 Pro we’ve discussed and is not currently an option. W3 is not a router board, and it also uses a RockChip, in this case an RK3588. I don’t follow RockChip too closely, because of their problematic Linux history, but I don’t think the RK3588 has full Linux support even yet.
I am formally trained as a biochemist. I play around embedded systems during past time. That being said, I do code automation pipelines as part of multimillion-dollar projects.
I personally assembled and commissioned over $100k of proper computers (desktops) and embedded systems. I source from dozen brands and dozen vendors, and no two systems are of the same spec or use the same parts. This is my/my organization’s coping strategy for future supply chain issues (whether natural, man-made, or political). Given the word of computation is so standardized now, there are no reason to not design the system to easily accommodate substitute parts of the same functionality.
The community did not choose the RockChip, that’s true per se, but the community also did not choose to support RockChip’s chips (or at least to the point of your satisfaction). Vendors and manufacturers could only do so much. For us, the majority of the time it is vendor’s part we find either lacking or inefficient. What should we do? Yell at the vendor to provide better support? Or spend more money to “bribe” the vendor? No, we develop our own and be our own support.
I believe every version of router board has SATA. R2-Pro has SATA, so does R3. I am not sure about R4. But these amenities would only count if we resolve the differences about R2-Pro and R2.
R3 and R4 do not have (native) SATA,but you can use the m2 slot for a pcie2sata adapter.