Raspberry Pi is launching end of this month and actually I was looking for one of those devices. But before I buy it, I was curious how fast that SoC really is.
The Wiki shows this OpenSSL Speed result (link) (mirror)
I compared that to my Sheevaplug running Debian Lenny.
To my GuruPlug running Debian Lenny.
To my Dell Streak 7 running a Debian Lenny in a chroot environment.
And to my HTC Desire running Debian Lenny in a chroot env
I’d like to take out a random line to show them side by side:
Raspberry Pi:
dsa 2048 bits 0.073897s 0.087304s 13.5 11.5
Linux Zaurus SL-C1000
dsa 2048 bits 0.053441s 0.062785s 18.7 15.9
Pentium III, 500 MHz
dsa 2048 bits 0.024974s 0.030185s 40.0 33.1
600 MHz Celeron
dsa 2048 bits 0.020263s 0.024355s 49.4 41.1
Guruplug:
dsa 2048 bits 0.017623s 0.020725s 56.7 48.3
Sheevaplug:
dsa 2048 bits 0.017657s 0.020626s 56.6 48.5
HTC Desire:
dsa 2048 bits 0.017153s 0.020021s 58.3 49.9
Dell Streak 7:
dsa 2048 bits 0.015314s 0.017641s 65.3 56.7
Atom 330 1.6GHz:
dsa 2048 bits 0.005139s 0.006301s 194.6 158.7
Core2Duo 2 GHz (P7350?)
dsa 2048 bits 0.003546s 0.004271s 282.0 234.2
My Webserver:
dsa 2048 bits 0.002939s 0.003529s 340.2 283.4
Q6600 (Quad Core 2.4GHz):
dsa 2048 bits 0.001752s 0.002072s 570.8 482.6
Athlon X2 4000+ @ 2.8 Ghz:
dsa 2048 bits 0.000863s 0.001027s 1158.6 973.8
Amd X2 6000+:
dsa 2048 bits 0.000819s 0.000973s 1221.7 1028.0
Conclusion:
The Raspberry Pi is not worth the 35 USD + Shipping + Powerplug + Case + SDHC Card. You can get a Dell Streak for 199 USD (even cheaper on ebay if you dont mind a used device) with 5x the power, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth, Screen, USV, around the same power usage (~2 Watt) and 16GB Flash. You can get USB host mode and HDMI on different Android models like Archos 70 IT (around 150 USD, USB host mode, HDMI out, 1 Ghz, 256mb RAM, 8GB internal Flash).
Edit: I added some more results from hajiso and ubuntuforums
I’m not sure how you’re coming to that conclusion from one comparison alone. Especially one, that might not be too relevant in real life.
I could answer: Hey, the Dell Streak has no ethernet and no hdmi. But we’d just continue comparing apples to bananas.
In the end: the comparison is very interesting, and even if i’m not coming to the same conclusion, i’d like to thank you.
Of course it will heavily depend on the use case. I took openssl because it is widely used and easily compared.
I have some embedded systems running (as mentioned above) and from my personal experience the Plugcomputer (Sheeva+Guru) are VERY slow compared to atom in day to day business. Its ok for me, they dont need much power, so you can let them run all day long. I was interessted in Raspberry Pi, too, until I saw those benchmarks. Now I’d never get one. See, you can get a Acer Revo with ION chipset, 250GB HDD, 2GB RAM, … for about 100 Euro at Ebay… it offers so much more power and potential.
What are you going to do with a R. PI?