A day with the Tinkerboard, part 2

Please read the first article here before you continue.

Having gone through a wealth of alternative boards, alternative to the Raspberry PI 3b that is; I have to admit that I am really, really disappointed by the results. Not just with the Tinkerboard but also boards like the ODroid XU4 and the whole fruit-basket of banana, orange and pineapple PI clones.

What a waste

And please keep in mind that I have not been out to discredit anyone. I have been genuinely interested in these alternatives for many reasons, not just emulation or multimedia. I have no problem paying that extra 15£ for a system that delivers twice the power of the PI, in fact I even paid close to 150£ for the UP board. Which is also the only board that so far has delivered on its promise. Microsoft Windows and the horrors of eMMC storage considered.

Part of what I work with these days include node.js and full screen browser views, often touch enabled for POS (point of sale) type machines. This is an exciting field because for the first time in history we can now create rich, responsive and rock solid solutions using off the shelves web technology.

So while emulation of older systems is interesting for hobby purposes, the performance of vital technologies like the browser – and consequently the performance of JavaScript and the underlying JIT compilation, is naturally paramount for what I do.

So I was really looking forward to the extra power these boards advertize. Both CPU, number of cores, extra memory and last but not least – the benefits of a fast GPU. The latter directly impacts the effects we can use in our user-interface. And while effects may seem superficial, its important for touch feedback and the customers experience.

We have all come across touch devices that give little or no visual feedback. We all know what its like when you type something and the UI just hangs while talking with a server. This is why web tech is so important today. In many ways Html5 and websocket is re-defining what we think of as software.

So while I bring little pie-charts and numbers to the table, I do bring honesty and perspective. It’s not all fun and games.

Was it really fair?

It has been voiced by a couple that perhaps my way of testing things is unfair. Like I mentioned in my previous article the PI has a healthy head-start and a rich community that not only consumes and demands, but also contributes substantially to the value of the product. A well established community around a product is worth its weight in gold. The alternative boards have yet to establish that and when it comes to the Tinkerboard, it’s pretty much just getting started.

Secondly, as far as emulation goes, we have to remember that those who make these products rarely have emulation in mind (and probably not Amiga which by any standard is esoteric compared to Nintendo and Sega consoles). If we look at what people use gadgets like the Raspberry PI for, I think products like Kodi, Apache and various DIY programming experiments out-rank all the retro systems combined. And it’s clear that the people behind Tinkerboard is more media oriented than anything else; it ships with hardware support for 4k video playback after all.

Having said that, I do feel I gave both the ODroid and Tinkerboard a fair trial. I did not approach these boards as a developer, but rather as a consumer. I have focused on the experience of familiar things – like using a browser and how well JavaScript runs, does the UI lag under stress; things that any customer will face after purchase.

UAE4Arm vs FS-UAE

As far as UAE (Unix Amiga Emulator) there is one thing that might be unfair. Amibian is based around something called UAE4Arm which is a highly optimized version of the Amiga emulator. I would even go so far as to say its THE most optimized UAE version on any platform – Windows and OSX included.

The Amiga was a lot more than just a games machine, it was way ahead of both Windows and OS X for a decade

Comparing that with FS-UAE is perhaps unfair. FS-UAE is based on the older, non optimized codebase. It’s known for stable emulation and good JIT performance. Sadly the JIT engine only works on x86 and is thus disabled on ARM systems. So to be honest it can’t hold a candle against UAE4Arm. The latter uses lookup tables for everything, fast switch cases instead of long sequences of “if then else” code (easier for the compiler to optimize), and it benefits from hardcore llvm level 3 optimization. So I agree, comparing FS to UAE4Arm is like comparing a tiger with a kitten. It’s not even in the same ballpark.

Optimization on this level is almost a lost art these days. People are used to languages like C# and Java – which are hopelessly bloated (for those that have seen what raw assembler and hand optimized pascal can deliver). On the Amiga we learned how to shave off a clock-cycle here and there – and the end result really made a huge difference.

The same type of low-level, every cycle counts, type optimization is used throughout UAE4Arm. FS-Uae is safe, slow and can hardly deliver A500 speed on a Raspberry PI. Yet UAE4Arm spits out 3.2 times the power of an Amiga 4000 with a 68040 cpu. That was the flagship power machine back in the day, and this little $40 card delivers 3 times the power under emulation.

Its like comparing a muffled 1978 Lada with a pissed off 2017 Lamborghini.

Fair is fair

Having tested just about every distro I could find for the Tinker, even back-tracking to older releases in hope that the drivers there would be better suited for the board (perhaps the new drivers were released in a hurry, or a mistake was made) the last straw really was Android. My hope was that Android could have better drivers since it sees a lot of development. It has giants like Google and Samsung behind it – so the last glimmer of light was that Asus had focused on Android rather than Linux.

Will Android save the say and give the Tinker it’s due credit?

I downloaded the latest image, burnt it and booted – thinking that this should finally put things right. Well it didn’t. Quite the opposite.

The first boot took almost an hour. Yes, an hour. I suspect this is because it did a network restore – downloading packages and requirements from the Internet. But that is still no excuse. I have tried Android on the PI it and it was up and running in less than 10 minutes; and that includes having to set some initial user information.

When the Android desktop finally came into view, it was stripped down with no repository package manager. In other words you would have to manually install packages. But that would have been OK had it not been for the utterly sluggish performance.

Android on the PI is no race-car, but at least it doesn’t freeze and lock-up every five second. Clicking on a link in the browser froze the whole system, and you were asked if you wanted to terminate the process again and again while Android figured out the meaning of life or whatever. Every single time.

I’m sorry but this is the worst experience I have ever had with a board. The ODroid XU4 at least tries to deliver a good experience. I had no problems finding Linux editions that ran well (especially gaming systems, Kodi and some homebrew distros) – and the chrome build for the ODroid gave far better results than both the PI and Tinkerboard. It was not the power-house it had been hyped up to be, but at least it delivered a normal desktop experience (even the PI locks up when facing demanding tasks, but the Tinker has an 8 core cpu, twice the ram and a supposedly superior GPU. With the capacity of running 8 threads and doing task scheduling in batches of 8 – the Tinkerboard should remain both stable and interactive under pressure).

I am sorry but I cannot recommend the Tinkerboard at all. The ODroid gives you a slight edge over the PI and if someone baked a more optimized Linux distro for it (it ships with a variant of Ubuntu) then ODroid XU4  would kick serious ass. But the Tinkerboard is a complete disaster.

Do not waste your money on the Tinkerboard. It may have the hardware but the software to utilize and express that power is simply not there! It has been the most pointless purchase I have done this year.

A common waste

The common denominator between these alternatives is the notion that more power equals more stuff. Which ultimately results in biting over more than they can chew. A distro like Pixel is lightweight, optimized and the PI foundation has spent a considerable amount of time making sure the drivers run as fast as possible.

Saying it doesnt make it so, except in Weird Science

What these alternative hardware suppliers don’t seem to get is that – what is the point of having a cpu that is twice as fast as the PI, when you waste it on a more demanding version of Linux? Both the ODroid and Tinkerboard ship with Ubuntu clones. And while Ubuntu is wonderful to work with on a high-end x86 machine, 32 gigabytes of ram and a i7 CPU growling away under your desk, it is without a doubt the worst possible OS you could pick for a tiny ARM board.

To put things into perspective: The Tinkerboard has the “theoretical” cpu power of a Samsung Galaxy S4 mobile phone (2012). Yet in their infinite wisdom they decided Ubuntu is what is really going to show off this fart of a device.

It makes absolutely no sense from a consumer’s perspective. As a user you want that extra power for running programs. You want to use the extra power on your stuff. Yet these guys seem to think that wasting all the extra power on infrastructure is going to score points.

So if anyone from the Tinkerboard or ODroid camp reads this, please remember the old saying “If you cannot innovate, emulate”. Make a fast, stable and small Jesse distro like Pixel. Focus on optimization. Compile whatever you can with maximum optimization. Shave off every clock cycle you can. Hand carve the drivers in assembler if that’s what it takes.

Because the sad result is, that right now the Raspberry PI is outperforming you with lesser hardware. There is no point in buying a Tinkerboard because it actually delivers a worse experience. It has bitten off more than it can chew and it’s trying to be something it’s not.