Raspbian Jessie (64bit) for RPi3?

[mascondante]

I'm a little surprised a 64 bit kernel wasn't already in development as soon as Broadcom released the chip.

[stderr]

I'm a little surprised a 64 bit kernel wasn't already in development as soon as Broadcom released the chip.

Other SBCs with 64bit cores that are coming out are often running now with 32bit kernels. It's not really a shock. When did AMD come out with the AMD64 cores and when did Windows go 64 bit?

[fruitoftheloom]

When did AMD come out with the AMD64 cores and when did Windows go 64 bit?

2004 & 2005 respectively



Debian ARM64 https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port

[RaTTuS]

When did AMD come out with the AMD64 cores and when did Windows go 64 bit?

2004 & 2005 respectively



Debian ARM64 https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port

umm
announced 1999 first really available 2000
XP 64 was 2001 ?
Vista 64 was 2006

[jojopi]

announced 1999 first really available 2000
XP 64 was 2001 ?

You are confusing AMD64 with Intel Itanium.

I built my first Athlon64 machine in late 2003, and Opterons were available earlier that year. At first, SuSE was the only Linux distribution with support.

The fact that it took Microsoft two more years to release a version of Windows was suspected to be at least partly due to pressure from Intel.

[RaTTuS]

announced 1999 first really available 2000
XP 64 was 2001 ?

You are confusing AMD64 with Intel Itanium.

I built my first Athlon64 machine in late 2003, and Opterons were available earlier that year. At first, SuSE was the only Linux distribution with support.

The fact that it took Microsoft two more years to release a version of Windows was suspected to be at least partly due to pressure from Intel.

yes you are correct

[mascondante]

If I knew how to compile a kernel I would happily volunteer my time as I'm unemployed right now and honestly don't have anything better to do. Here's hoping someone with more knowledge has the same amount of time on their hands.

Iirc Microsoft is already on the job in their latest insider preview of Windows 10 IoT Core.

[mascondante]

Has this suggestion been accepted for future consideration or is ARM64 Raspbian a flat no? Not rushing just polite curiosity.

[gregeric]

I dunno if there'll ever be a 64bit Raspbian - mpthompson (& plugwash) created Raspbian to provide a current Debian build optimised for the ARMv6+VFPv2, which at the time had been abandoned by Debian themselves: no releases after Squeeze.

I'm sure there will be a 64bit linux OS's for the Pi, but will it be Raspbian?

[rpdom]

Has this suggestion been accepted for future consideration or is ARM64 Raspbian a flat no? Nor rushing just polite curiosity.

It is being considered. The amount of work involved one getting a 64 bit version ready for the launch meant it was not possible at the time. Once things have settled down...

[plugwash]

I'm sure there will be a 64bit linux OS's for the Pi, but will it be Raspbian?

The *whole point* of raspbian was/is to rebuild Debian armhf to reduce the minimum CPU requirements. There is no need for such a rebuild project here, a Deban arm64 userland should work fine on the Pi3 once we have a suitable kernel.

mpthompson (& plugwash) created Raspbian to provide a current Debian build optimised for the ARMv6+VFPv2, which at the time had been abandoned by Debian themselves: no releases after Squeeze.

Deban never had a port optimised for ARMv6+VFPv2.

Debian armel is what was used on the Pi initially (with a custom kernel) , armel was included in the wheezy and jessie releases too and is most likely to be included in the stretch release (though beyond that is questionable). It runs on the Pi but is far from optimised for it.

[mascondante]

I sincerely appreciate the team considering the request instead of flatly denying it as an effort > benefit thing. Much love.

[rpdom]

Has this suggestion been accepted for future consideration or is ARM64 Raspbian a flat no? Nor rushing just polite curiosity.

It is being considered. The amount of work involved one getting a 64 bit version ready for the launch meant it was not possible at the time. Once things have settled down...

To expand on what I said (which was not strictly correct), as plugwash stated, there is little or no point in producing a 64 bit version of Raspbian, when the Debian ARM 64 bit version will work.

The main work will be to create a 64 bit kernel, a few changes to the firmware and new versions of all the Raspberry Pi specific programs that the RPF and others produce like omxplayer, kweb and wiringpi (as just a few examples).

[gregeric]

@plugwash thanks for correcting my somewhat fuzzy recollection - it's been a long time since the days of Pisces images & donating to keep the project rolling.

[gkreidl]

I'm not sure if it's all worth the trouble. You won't notice a difference in 95% of all applications.

We've had a similar question when the RPi 2 was published: Is it worth to compile the whole OS for ARMv7 now?

It has never been done (although some people using ARMv7 systems now like Ubuntu Mate). Adding a special repository for RPi2/3 only with a small number of optimized ARMv7 + NEON packages (video codecs, for example) might be a much better solution and it could be used for both RPi2 and RPi3.
But even that may not needed, as plugwash's latest upgrades have shown: a number of libraries are now using NEON if it is available (libav, x264) and some applications that use them are running much faster now.

[av8r1]

I was surprised to see the RPi3 still has 1GB of RAM.

[DougieLawson]

I was surprised to see the RPi3 still has 1GB of RAM.

You're the only one, because it's clearly documented that the VC4 can't address more than 1GB.

[mascondante]

I was surprised to see the RPi3 still has 1GB of RAM.

RAM is still expensive. They do what they can while sticking to the same price.

A deluxe model with all the extra bells and whistles people want for a larger pricetag would probably sell out on day 1 though admittedly.

[filker0]

I have built AARCH64 kernels for several multi-core A53 processor complexes, most recently the Freescale (now NXP) LS1073 in an evaluation kit and (I think that's the number) and the hard cores in an early access Xilinx UltraScale+MSoC on a development board.

What I've not done is use graphics on either of them, but that's because I am doing embedded development, and our target will not have any sort of display capability (even if there is a GPU in the SoC).

I can tell you without reservation that these cores are faster than their A8 and A11 precursors running in 32 bit mode. The boost for 64 bit over 32 bit on the same core is not as dramatic as the move from A11 to A53, unless you do floating point, at which point the 64 bit mode outstrips the 32 bit mode. At least that's what I'm seeing with the benchmarks I've run. I'm at home, so I don't have the actual numbers available. From what I can tell (and I used to write compilers for a living), the speed advantage of the 64 bit mode over 32 bit mode that you will see depends largely on how the software is coded and what type of data is being processed. With the Linero AARCH64 build of GCC, "long longs" are 64 bits, so are pointers and size_t, but "longs" and "ints" are still 32 bits, and "shorts" are still 16 bits. I think there are compiler command line options that change this to make longs 64 bits, but I've not tried that. There is an advantage to the additional registers and the decluttered addressing model that make the 64 bit model better for my peace of mind. I don't have a RP3 yet, but it's on order. I'll probably try to get a 64 bit kernel on it shortly after I get it, then worry about using debootstrap to get myself to a Debian Stretch desktop if I can figure out the graphics part, or a Debian server if I fail with the graphics. It won't be Rasperian, though.

[DasPferd]

I want to create a small application with mongodb and nodejs. For example mongodb offers no updates for 32bit versions. Sure I could use another db, but as every developer, one has a lot of code which can be reused. It think other providers will have the same approach to not lot longer maintain outdated architectures.

[DougieLawson]

There's a version of MongoDB that runs on an RPi, you just have to build the last ever 32-bit version from source.

http://andyfelong.com/2015/12/mongodb-3 ... erry-pi-2/
Andy even has 3.0.9 binaries available for download that will run on an RPi2 or RPi3. It was a monster PITA building from source.

[plugwash]

I was surprised to see the RPi3 still has 1GB of RAM.

You're the only one, because it's clearly documented that the VC4 can't address more than 1GB.

I have to say I thought Pi2 would be the last in it's line and that Pi3 when it came would be a big break. I wasn't expecting the rapid followup of pi2 with another core swap.

[DougieLawson]

I have to say I thought Pi2 would be the last in it's line and that Pi3 when it came would be a big break. I wasn't expecting the rapid followup of pi2 with another core swap.

I agree with you, I would have expected 2GB minimum with a 64-bit processor, but what we've got works and we can leave the memory expansion for a RPi4. Lets see what emerges from Pi Towers next February.

[peterlite]

My current projects start with Raspbian on a P3 for development then the microSD card is inserted in a Pi Zero for day to day use. The code would have to switch between 64 bit and 32 bit at boot time.

[r3d4]

But I have a question, does the boot-loader code need to change? In other words is there any 'bitness' in the other code in /boot?

No. ( AFAIK)
The boot-loader stuff in /boot runs on the gpu AFAIK!