Comparative Analysis of Raspberry Pi 3+ with BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi 2

Previously, I played with Beagle Bone Black for a while, and this time I borrowed Raspberry Pi 2, so I decided to do a simple comparison and testing of the three boards.

The three boards involved in the comparison are TI’s BeagleBone Black (BBB), Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, and Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. Among them, BeagleBone Black is a similar product, Raspberry Pi 2 Model B is the second generation Raspberry Pi, and Raspberry Pi 3 Model B is just one generation apart.

Introduction Most people are familiar with Raspberry Pi, so here is a brief introduction to BeagleBone Black. BeagleBone originated from Beagle Board and is a low-power open-source single-board computer produced in collaboration with Texas Instruments, Digi-Key, and Newark element14. It is also a system built for running open-source software and showcasing Texas Instruments’ chips. This motherboard was developed by a group and designed to showcase open-source hardware/software capabilities in universities. BeagleBone is a simplified version of BeagleBoard, and its price is also “simplified”.

It is important to note that the official price of BeagleBone Black is $45 (which is also the cheapest in the BeagleBoard series), but this is nearly 30% higher than the consistently $35 price of the high-end version of Raspberry Pi. Recently, there have been news reports about the newly upgraded version of BeagleBone Black, BeagleBone Black Wireless, which cancels wired Ethernet and adds WiFi and Bluetooth, but the price is $70, which is enough to buy two Raspberry Pis. It seems that the cost-performance ratio of Raspberry Pi is truly unbeatable. Appearance Comparison From left to right are BeagleBone Black, Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, and Raspberry Pi 3 Model B.

Front view

Back view

Side view

The three boards are similar in size, the BBB uses a black PCB and has four large rounded corners, making it appear a bit more rounded. Both Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 use green PCBs, and at first glance, they seem identical. In fact, most of their interfaces are the same, but the LED positions are different, and the cases are not interchangeable. If you do not consider the LED issue or use a transparent case, the cases can be interchangeable.

The biggest difference in the circuit board between Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 is that the 3 has added WiFi and Bluetooth transceivers, making the circuit layout more compact. In the front view, even the Raspberry Pi logo had to be reduced in size, and the LED position on the 2nd generation has been occupied by the antenna, with the LED moved to another corner. On the back, the BBB does not have a large-scale IC, while Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 both have the RAM on the back. Perhaps due to the additional circuits in the RF section, Raspberry Pi 3 uses a smaller Micro SD card slot. The difference from the 2nd generation is that the 2nd generation has a spring mechanism that produces a “click” sound when the storage card is pushed in, and to remove the storage card, you need to press it in first and then pull it out. The 3rd generation only has a push-in card slot, which allows for direct insertion and removal without a spring. Of course, this difference does not significantly affect personal use.

Hardware Comparison CPU: Beagle Bone Black uses TI’s AM3359 SoC, with a maximum clock speed of 1GHz and 1 Cortex A8 core. Raspberry Pi 2 uses Broadcom’s BCM2836 SoC, with a maximum clock speed of 900MHz and 4 Cortex A7 cores. Raspberry Pi 3 uses Broadcom’s BCM2837 SoC, with a maximum clock speed of 1.2GHz and 4 Cortex A57 cores, supporting 64-bit. RAM: Beagle Bone Black includes 512MB DDR3L 400MHz RAM. Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 include 1GB LPDDR2 RAM. Storage: Beagle Bone Black has an onboard 2GB eMMC chip (the one I have is an old version; the new version is 4GB) and supports Micro SD. Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 do not have onboard storage chips and support Micro SDHC. Display: Beagle Bone Black has a Micro HDMI interface, but seems to only support up to 720P resolution and does not support 1080P. Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 both have a standard HDMI interface (HDMI 1.3), supporting 1080P, and also have a 3.5mm composite video output. Audio: Beagle Bone Black does not have a dedicated audio interface and outputs digital audio through HDMI. Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 can output analog audio through 3.5mm and digital audio through HDMI, and also have an I2S interface. USB: Beagle Bone Black has a Mini USB for power and connecting to a PC, and one standard USB Host interface. Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 expand to 4 USB Host interfaces via SMSC LAN9514. The Micro USB is only for power. Networking: Beagle Bone Black has a 100Mbps Ethernet port. Raspberry Pi 2 provides a 100Mbps Ethernet interface. Raspberry Pi 3 provides a 100Mbps Ethernet interface and 802.11n wireless connection (with onboard antenna), and Bluetooth 4.1 connection. GPIO: Beagle Bone Black provides 2×46 pins, including various bus interfaces and 65 GPIO. Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 provide a 40-pin interface, including bus interfaces and GPIO. Below is the GPIO definition for BeagleBone Black

Below is the expansion port definition for Raspberry Pi 2/3:

Also attached is a character version (which can be obtained through gpio readall):

Others:

Beagle Bone Black provides an independent power interface and power chip, allowing for power to be cut off in software, and provides 5 LEDs (including 1 power indicator), and 3 buttons (including 1 power and 1 reset button).

Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 provide one camera interface (CSI) and one display interface (DSI), 2 LEDs (including 1 power indicator), and no buttons on the mainboard.

Summary:

In fact, such a comparison is somewhat unfair, as BBB is a product from 2013, while Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 were released in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Therefore, in terms of CPU, Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 have a huge advantage. In practical use, it is found that a quad-core processor is indeed much more powerful than a single-core processor. 1GB of memory is also much more ample than 512MB. The onboard eMMC of BBB is an advantage, but the 2GB capacity is barely enough for a system, and even the 4GB version is just enough, making it better to insert a Micro SD card, which is not expensive for 16GB.

Another advantage of BBB is that it provides enough GPIO ports, which is practical in industrial control and other fields, while for personal DIY projects, the interfaces of Raspberry Pi are also basically sufficient.

Raspberry Pi additionally provides a camera interface (CSI), which facilitates applications in image acquisition. However, the additional display interface (DSI) directly connects to the GPU, and the information is not open, so it can only connect to the official LCD screen, and there are not many third-party options available, making it not very user-friendly.

The biggest advantage of Raspberry Pi in terms of interfaces is that it provides an onboard USB Hub, resulting in 4 USB Host interfaces. This brings a lot of convenience during use, while BBB only has one USB Host, which is always insufficient.

Comparing Raspberry Pi 2 and 3, the two mainly have two differences. One is that the processor has been replaced with a better-performing Cortex A57 core, supporting 64-bit, and the clock speed has increased by 300MHz. The other is the addition of wireless and Bluetooth transceivers. This eliminates the need for an external USB wireless network card, increases system integration, and reduces the occupation of one USB port. The Bluetooth supports low-power version 4.1, which is also a popular communication method in the Internet of Things.

Software Comparison BBB supports Debian, Android, Ubuntu, and other Linux-based systems, along with supporting resources like Cloud9 and Bone Script library. When BBB’s USB is connected to a PC, there is a virtual USB drive that provides drivers, documentation, a virtual serial port for debugging, and even a virtual network port, making software development relatively easy to get started with. The onboard eMMC allows for software to be ready to use right out of the box.

Raspberry Pi offers a richer selection of systems, with almost all mainstream Linux distributions included. The officially supported Raspbian is a Linux system based on Debian.

A hardware needs software support to become popular, and both BBB and Raspberry Pi have done well in this regard. It does not necessarily mean that more support is better; what is suitable is the best.

It is worth mentioning that both Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 support Windows IoT Core. Currently, there are still very few hardware options supported by this version of Windows for the Internet of Things (as shown in the picture), and in this regard, Raspberry Pi is clearly ahead.

Benchmark Comparison The software used is UnixBench, a tool for testing the performance of Unix systems, and it is also a relatively universal benchmarking software. The purpose of this test is to provide a basic performance indication for Unix-like systems, with multiple tests used to evaluate different aspects of system performance. The results of these tests yield an index value (index value, e.g., 520), which is the ratio of the test system’s results compared to a benchmark system’s results, making it more valuable than the raw values. The index values obtained from all tests in the test set are summed to get the overall system index value. The software version is UnixBench 5.1.2.

Raspberry Pi, without a heat sink, still has relatively high temperatures under full load for extended periods. The following is my solution, and I believe everyone has better methods.

Test results are as follows:

BeagleBone Black only has 1 core, single-core result:

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B single-core result:

Raspberry Pi 2 Model B quad-core result:

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B single-core result:

Raspberry Pi 3 Model B quad-core result:

The benchmark results are for reference only. It can be seen that BeagleBone Black has the lowest single-core score and only has 1 core. In practical use, it is also found to be the most laggy, indicating the rapid development of SoC in recent years.

Both Raspberry Pi 2 and 3 have significantly higher benchmark scores than 2, whether single-core or quad-core. However, it should be noted that the system used here is still 32-bit, which recognizes the Pi 3 processor as ARMv7 Processor, so it is estimated that the new architecture advantages of Pi 3 have not been fully realized yet. However, in terms of current performance, the initial lag of the first-generation Raspberry Pi is completely gone, and the CPU does not easily reach 100% utilization anymore. Whether the benchmark claims of being 10 times better than the first generation are true or not, the user experience has indeed improved many times.

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