Embedded system performance comparison

Last week I found a new Odroid C1 board under the Christmas tree. Curious about the performance of the new board, I decided to compare its speed to a few other embedded SoC boards I've got around the house, including the Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone Black, and Odroid XU3 Lite.

I often use the Rebol speed? function to get a rough idea of the performance of desktop and server systems, and it works equally well for embedded devices. The measurement method is pretty simple, but I've found it provides an accurate estimate.

Here are the prices (plus|minus and for boards only), speeds, and Rebol speed? results. For reference, I included my old Ubuntu 10 Linux desktop (Intel i5).

Board	Price	CPU MHz	DDR MHz	Eval	CPU	Mem
Raspi	$40	700	400	369	130	7
BBB	$45	1000	800	720	437	16
Odroid-C1	$35	1500	792	1040	615	15
Odroid-XU3-L	$105	2100	933	3020	1474	62
Intel i5-2500	$500	3300	1600	8000	4200	118

Using the Raspberry Pi as the base, the table below shows the improvements as simple multipliers (X times). The CPUC (CPU clock speed) and DDRC (memory clock) are combined to obtain the HW "boost" labled as X Factor. This is overly simplistic (e.g. ignores bus width) but the results seem to be in the ballpark.

Board	X Eval	X CPU	X Mem	X CPUC	X DDRC	X Factor	X Price
Raspi	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
BBB	1.95	3.36	2.29	1.43	2.00	2.86	1.13
Odroid-C1	2.82	4.73	2.14	2.14	1.98	4.24	0.88
Odroid-XU3-L	8.18	11.34	8.86	3.00	2.33	7.00	2.63
Intel i5-2500	21.68	32.31	16.86	4.71	4.00	18.86	12.50

Taking the above into account, the speed? results can be divided by the X factor. A result of 1 would tell us that the Rebol speed perfectly matched the HW boost. Numbers less than 1 fell below expectations. Greater than 1 exceeded.

The final column shows the bottom line, the performance (for Rebol eval results) for the price. Both Odriods are at the top, with the new C1 in first place, and the XU3-L not far behind.

Board	Eval/HW	CPU/HW	Mem/HW	Eval/Price
Raspi	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00
BBB	0.68	1.18	0.80	1.73
Odroid-C1	0.66	1.11	0.51	3.22
Odroid-XU3-L	1.17	1.62	1.27	3.12
Intel i5-2500	1.15	1.71	0.89	1.73

I'll update these numbers if any config changes further improve performance (e.g. L2 cache enable, DDR clock adjustment, bus arbiter.)

If you're interested in a nice little computer for special projects, the Odroid C1 makes a good choice. A good place to buy them is at Ameridroid, run by our Rebol friend Bo Lechnowsky.

If you happen to have speed? results for any other embedded processors/boards, feel free to post those in the comments. Be sure to mention the base price for comparison.

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Updated 10-Mar-2024   -   Copyright Carl Sassenrath   -   WWW.REBOL.COM   -   Edit   -   Blogger Source Code