Radxa Rock 3 Compute Module (CM3)

[geerlingguy]

Basic information

• Board URL (official): https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock3/CM
• Board purchased from: Allnet.China
• Board purchase date: January 23, 2023
• Board specs (as tested): No WiFi / 1GB RAM / no eMMC
• Board price (as tested): $30 (+$12 shipping)

Linux/system information

# output of `neofetch`
PASTE_HERE

# output of `uname -a`
PASTE_HERE

Benchmark results

CPU

• Geekbench: (TODO single / TODO multi - PASTE_URL)
• TODO Gflops (geerlingguy/top500-benchmark HPL result)

Power

• Idle power draw (at wall): TODO W
• Maximum simulated power draw (stress-ng --matrix 0): TODO W
• During Geekbench multicore benchmark: TODO W
• During top500 HPL benchmark: TODO W

Disk

MANUFACTURER_AND_MODEL_OF_DISK_HERE

Benchmark	Result
fio 1M sequential read	TODO MB/s
iozone 1M random read	TODO MB/s
iozone 1M random write	TODO MB/s
iozone 4K random read	TODO MB/s
iozone 4K random write	TODO MB/s

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/geerlingguy/pi-cluster/master/benchmarks/disk-benchmark.sh | sudo bash

Run benchmark on any attached storage device (e.g. eMMC, microSD, NVMe, SATA) and add results under an additional heading. Download the script with curl -o disk-benchmark.sh [URL_HERE] and run sudo DEVICE_UNDER_TEST=/dev/sda DEVICE_MOUNT_PATH=/mnt/sda1 ./disk-benchmark.sh (assuming the device is sda).

Also consider running PiBenchmarks.com script.

Network

iperf3 results:

• iperf3 -c $SERVER_IP: TODO Mbps
• iperf3 --reverse -c $SERVER_IP: TODO Mbps
• iperf3 --bidir -c $SERVER_IP: TODO Mbps up, TODO Mbps down

(Be sure to test all interfaces, noting any that are non-functional.)

GPU

• TODO: Haven't determined standardized benchmark yet. See Issue #2.

Memory

• TODO: Haven't determined standardized benchmark yet. See Issue #2.

[geerlingguy]

It looks like you need to manually modify the dtbs included with the Debian image before it will work correctly on the CM4 IO Board from Raspberry Pi: https://github.com/radxa-build/radxa-cm3-io/releases/tag/20221101-0118

For some reason the boot partition won't automatically mount on macOS (at least for me...?), so I had to check on volumes with diskutil:

$ diskutil list
...
/dev/disk4 (internal, physical):
   #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE       IDENTIFIER
   0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *63.9 GB    disk4
   1:                        EFI ⁨boot⁩                    536.9 MB   disk4s1
   2:           Linux Filesystem ⁨⁩                        3.4 GB     disk4s2

Then I created a folder for a mount point (mkdir ~/Downloads/efi), and mounted the volume manually:

$ sudo mount -t msdos /dev/disk4s1 /Users/jgeerling/Downloads/efi

And then I modified the dtbs so the CM3 should hopefully boot on the CM4 IO board:

$ cd /Users/jgeerling/Downloads/efi/dtbs/4.19.193-58-rockchip-gbac1feba87f0/rockchip/
$ sudo mv rk3566-radxa-cm3-io.dtb rk3566-radxa-cm3-io.dtb.bak
$ sudo cp rk3566-radxa-cm3-rpi-cm4-io.dtb rk3566-radxa-cm3-io.dtb

Then I unmounted the disk:

$ cd ~
$ sudo diskutil unmountDisk /dev/disk4s1

[geerlingguy]

Even with that... I put the thing on my CM4 IO Board, and nothing. The green ACT LED is very dim. The red PWR LED is brightly lit. The Ethernet port's LEDs are both on. No coil whine, and the RK3566 doesn't get hot.

I just found there are some newer releases. Going to try one of those... https://github.com/radxa-build/radxa-cm3-io/releases/tag/20230201-0059

[geerlingguy]

Looks like someone else has similar issues here: https://forum.radxa.com/t/cm3-v1-3-waveshare-cm4-io-base-a-wont-boot/10324/7

I tried shorting GLOBAL_EN to GND (https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock3/CM3/raspcm4io/getting_started#Power_on), but that didn't do anything either. My board revision is V1.31A — it seems that shouldn't be required. Ah well... I'll wait to see if anyone has any ideas on Twitter or Mastodon and come back to this later.

I've already sunk about 6 hours of my life into the two CM3 revisions I have (V1.1 with eMMC, and V1.31A with no eMMC), not sure how much more time I'll spend here.

(And no, I don't think buying the Radxa CM3 IO board is the answer—my goal is to see how well these things are drop-in replacements for the CM4, since there are hundreds of carrier boards that assume CM4 compatibility.)

[RadxaYuntian]

I'd say we are in a pretty awkward timing as far as CM3 support goes right now. On one hand we have received a few reports about CM3 boot issue on Raspberry Pi CM4 IO, on the other hand our own IO board sample is broken and we are waiting for delivery.

While I can't help our kernel developers with their lack of hardware, I have created a separate image for use with Raspberry Pi IO board a while ago. I was working on another RK3566 based products for a few weeks, so there are some improvements to this platform since the last build, and I just initiated a new one. However, our current development and testing focus is not on CM3, so it will take a while before we officially release it.

I think in the short term you can give this new image a go. If it doesn't work (which I'm afraid is likely), I'll make sure once we get the RPi CM4 IO, there will be an boot-able image in that repository.

[bastelfreak]

@RadxaYuntian are there any plans for upstreaming your patches so mainline linux will work? That would make a lot of stuff easier.

[RadxaYuntian]

I'm not sure which patches you are talking about, but you can ask @RadxaNaoki about our up-streaming efforts.

[RadxaNaoki]

patches for CM3 were already submitted
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mmind/linux-rockchip.git/commit/?h=v6.3-armsoc/dts64&id=096ebfb74b19f2d4bdcbc33ae02e857ff4b3e0a0

[geerlingguy]

@RadxaYuntian Thank you so much for your help—I will give that a try later! I'm guessing the CM5 is getting some more focus (as it should—I think it is the more compelling alternative to the CM4 with it's way faster cores!)... I would love to take a look at one once they're available.

[geerlingguy]

It seems like @TheRemote had a similar story as mine above... no ability to boot it on the CM4 IO board :(

Radxa Rock 3 Compute Module Review

I then attempted a boot and…. nothing. Are you kidding me? I’m going to really have to get a USB to TTY serial console out to get this to boot off ANYTHING even SD card?

How about no. I’m failing this board right now. This board is going into the drawer of shame and I doubt I’ll ever touch it again. Not even within the same league as the Raspberry Pi 4 Compute Module 4 or even the Pine64 SOQuartz. There’s literally no point in continuing. This is a terrible offering.

I won't go as far as putting the board away forever—I'm that desperate to find anything that can stand in place of a CM4 during this brutal shortage. But I will say for a board that is touted as being 'supported until 2029', the initial support is not wonderful so far :(

Radxa CM3, CM3 SODIMM will remain in production until at least Sep 2029, CM3 Industrial will remain in production until at least Sep, 2032 (source)

[Jamos1988]

Anybody tried the Armbian yet? From https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock3/downloads I get redirected to the Armbian website, there I can download the CLI or XFCE version. No luck boothing them. Only one I can get tot work is the Debian one. Hoped to get Armbian working too as I have projects that are more compatible there.

[darioteixeira]

@Jamos1988 Could you explicit what you mean by the "Only one I can get tot work is the Debian one"? There's a Debian image from Armbian and one from the Radxa website -- which one do you mean?

[geerlingguy]

See also makerbymistake's CM3 (eMMC) review: https://dphacks.com/2023/05/30/radxa-rock-cm3-review-all-you-need-to-know/

[RadxaYuntian]

I just fixed U-Boot support for CM3 on Raspberry Pi CM4 IO 2 days ago. We are working on upgrading our rk356x to use Rockchip 5.10 kernel, and will release a new image soon.

[darioteixeira]

@RadxaYuntian Thank you for the update. Will these fixes allow one to use any variety of the Rock CM3 (with/without eMMC) on any board that expects a Raspberry Pi CM4?