[time-nuts] Raspberry Pi TCXO Hat

[Adrian Godwin]

On Sat, Nov 2, 2019 at 11:59 AM David J Taylor via time-nuts <
time-nuts at lists.febo.com> wrote:

>
> Given that the path to the outside Ethernet world on both of those models
> is
> via a USB controller, I would expect to see very little improvement with a
> TCXO in a constant temperature environment.  Just perhaps with a RasPi-4
> you
> /might/ see an improvement as the Ethernet has a more direct path, but
> that's a board where self-generated heat is greater, so the thermal issues
> might make things worse.
>
>
There's a bunch of 'ifs' there though - on the early Pis, the ethernet chip
was a major source of heat. Presumably it's a different, non-USB part on
the Pi4 so that may or may not have changed.

Does the Pi4 inherently run hotter, or is it just capable of running at a
level where it consumes more power ? If it's under-used and maybe even
intentionally underclocked, it might do better than earlier versions.

It would at least be worth including a Pi4 running the same workload as the
other boards in any parallel test.