StarLabs Byte Mini PC: Celeron N200 + coreboot + EDK II UEFI Secure Boot + Linux

[sounds]

Summary

The UK-based StarLabs unveils a mini PC that has an appealing UEFI Secure Boot feature built-in.

 

Quotes

Quote

Being a Linux-powered computer, the Star Labs Byte Mk II can come pre-installed with the latest versions of the Ubuntu, elementary OS, Linux Mint, Manjaro Linux, MX Linux, or Zorin OS distributions. The chassis is made of polycarbonate and nickel, and the device uses the Coreboot and TianoCore EDK II open-source firmware.

 

My thoughts

I think coreboot and TianoCore EDK II is a big deal here because instead of the typical shovelware riddled with built-in backdoors that Lenovo ships, this might actually be a reasonable Secure Boot implementation for security conscious businesses.

 

System76 doesn't really have a competing option: https://github.com/system76/firmware-open/issues/111

 

However, the $452 list price makes it quite expensive for its performance level.

 

Sources

https://9to5linux.com/star-labs-unveils-the-byte-mk-ii-mini-linux-pc-drops-amd-for-intel-cpu

https://liliputing.com/star-labs-byte-mk-ii-is-a-linux-mini-pc-with-intel-n200-alder-lake-n/

[williamcll]

Odd to use a slower chip compared to the oder 5800U

[Senzelian]

33 minutes ago, sounds said:

My thoughts

I think coreboot and TianoCore EDK II is a big deal here because instead of the typical shovelware riddled with built-in backdoors that Lenovo ships, this might actually be a reasonable Secure Boot implementation for security conscious businesses.

You mention Lenovo, but what are the advantages of Coreboot and Tiano compared to any other pre-built from companies such as HP, Intel, Gigabyte, ASUS and so on.

[da na]

*Celeron N200, not N2000. I was quite confused when first reading this because the N2000 Celeron series launched in like 2014, and they are slower than most Core 2 Duos

[porina]

30 minutes ago, williamcll said:

Odd to use a slower chip compared to the oder 5800U

5800U model was also much more expensive: "You can configure and pre-order the Byte Mk I right now from Star Labs. The price for this all-AMD Linux-powered mini PC starts from $793.00 USD for the basic configuration with 8GB RAM and 240 SSD storage." from here.

 

This newer version: "The price for this computer starts from $452.00 USD for the basic configuration with 8GB RAM and 480 SSD storage." from link in OP.

 

I'm somewhat curious how 4 E cores (no HT) perform in practice. They've been compared to Skylake before, so without HT this could be approximately Skylake i5 performance level, but at much lower power consumption.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, porina said:

5800U model was also much more expensive: "You can configure and pre-order the Byte Mk I right now from Star Labs. The price for this all-AMD Linux-powered mini PC starts from $793.00 USD for the basic configuration with 8GB RAM and 240 SSD storage." from here.

 

This newer version: "The price for this computer starts from $452.00 USD for the basic configuration with 8GB RAM and 480 SSD storage." from link in OP.

For only having 4 E cores, that's insanely overpriced. Though I know that this Distributor does charge a decent to large markup for what they provide.

1 hour ago, porina said:

I'm somewhat curious how 4 E cores (no HT) perform in practice. They've been compared to Skylake before, so without HT this could be approximately Skylake i5 performance level, but at much lower power consumption.

This immediately made my think of Intel's Lakefield, though of course with Lakefield Intel had the decency at least to give 1 P core with the 4 E cores.

 

I wouldn't expect much more than a quad core Atom because that is essentially what this is.

[AlTech]

I'm all for selling devices with CoreBoot and whatnot but this is just not the right CPU to be putting in this kind of device at that price.

 

Granted at the time of writing this there seems to be a £120 discount applied at the website right now but it's still overpriced for a Celeron powered system.

 

AMD makes much more powerful Dual P core APUs like Mendocino for this kind of price product. I don't know why they felt the need to go backwards in performance like this.

 

If they really wanted to stick with this CPU I would say it should have been sold at closer to half the asking price or less.

 

1 hour ago, Senzelian said:

You mention Lenovo, but what are the advantages of Coreboot and Tiano compared to any other pre-built from companies such as HP, Intel, Gigabyte, ASUS and so on.

CoreBoot is an open source BIOS and Bootloader. On top of being open source, it also usually boots faster than proprietary BIOSes.

 

BIOSes from other manufacturers created on commission from vendors like AMI are not open source.

[porina]

8 minutes ago, AlTech said:

For only having 4 E cores, that's insanely overpriced. Though I know that this Distributor does charge a decent to large markup for what they provide.

You're paying for the "benefits" they offer. If you don't care about those, then for sure, regular hardware is much cheaper for a given spec. 

 

8 minutes ago, AlTech said:

This immediately made my think of Intel's Lakefield, though of course with Lakefield Intel had the decency at least to give 1 P core with the 4 E cores.

Maybe it could have had been an option had it not been retired already.

 

8 minutes ago, AlTech said:

I wouldn't expect much more than a quad core Atom because that is essentially what this is.

Atom hasn't stood still over the years. These are probably Skylake class, so it is an 8 year old P core. The products actually called Atom were much worse.

[AlTech]

Just now, porina said:

You're paying for the "benefits" they offer. If you don't care about those, then for sure, regular hardware is much cheaper for a given spec. 

 

Maybe it could have had been an option had it not been retired already.

Lakefield was much more expensive. Tray price for Atom based Celerons is usually around $20-30 per CPU.

 

Lakefield tray price was around core i5 laptop tray price iirc which is closer to $250 to $300.

Just now, porina said:

 

Atom hasn't stood still over the years. These are probably Skylake class, so it is an 8 year old P core. The products actually called Atom were much worse.

I don't think it's going to be like having a quad core Skylake CPU though.

[porina]

5 minutes ago, AlTech said:

AMD makes much more powerful Dual P core APUs like Mendocino for this kind of price product.

They're cut down Zen 2 with smaller caches. Full desktop Zen 2 was Skylake class IPC. At 2c4t this would probably be much worse than the N200.

[porina]

14 minutes ago, AlTech said:

I don't think it's going to be like having a quad core Skylake CPU though.

The claim they're Skylake-like has been around since Alder Lake. People have had years to test the claim, and I don't recall anyone shouting it is way off.

 

Edit: 12900k with P cores disabled, leaving 8 E cores running, compares to a 3300X which is 4c8t Zen 2. The clocks either run at in practice wasn't covered so it isn't possible to estimate a relative IPC.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-12900k-e-cores-only-performance/

 

[AlTech]

9 minutes ago, porina said:

They're cut down Zen 2 with smaller caches.

There's nothing cut down about Mendocino or Renoir about it's use of Zen2.

 

Yes it has less cache than Mattise. For 90% of people this is a non issue and certainly not for anybody who's fine with the performance of 4 E cores.

9 minutes ago, porina said:

Full desktop Zen 2 was Skylake class IPC.

Desktop Zen2 was a version of Zen2.

 

Mendocino, Renoir, and Lucienne are no less valid of a Zen2 version for not being Mattise.

 

It had IPC above 10th gen Comet Lake and to say it had Skylake class IPC is misleading. Skylake was Intel 6th gen. It's not AMD's fault Intel rebadged the same CPU design for 4 generations.

9 minutes ago, porina said:

At 2c4t this would probably be much worse than the N200.

I disagree. A dual core Mendocino design would perform similarly.

 

Thankfully though Mendocino also comes in quad core versions so it could absolutely destroy the N200 if Star Labs chose that option.

 

I suspect the CPU choice had nothing to do with CPU performance and was based on them or their ODM having a relationship with Intel and wanting to choose a low cost chip from Intel.

[porina]

16 minutes ago, AlTech said:

It had IPC above 10th gen Comet Lake and to say it had Skylake class IPC is misleading. Skylake was Intel 6th gen. It's not AMD's fault Intel rebadged the same CPU design for 4 generations.

When talking microarchitecture, Skylake is used to refer to all of Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Comet Lake.

 

If you're talking specific product generation, then yes it matters more which one of those you pick as cache/cores/clock configurations vary.

 

Edit: reminds me I did try to test IPC between Zen 2 and Skylake back in the day. It leans towards synthetic testing. Zen 2 was noteworthy as the first AMD architecture in the modern era to surpass Intel. Zen and Zen+ while did well in some areas, they had weaknesses in others so it wasn't a win.

 

 

16 minutes ago, AlTech said:

A dual core Mendocino design would perform similarly.

Don't know if you saw above edit, I found a test TechPowerUp did disabling P cores on Alder Lake. 8 E cores from 12900k compared to a 3300X. They didn't go into clock information, so it is hard to say if things would be much different. Still, at worst that puts 4 E cores comparable to 2c4t Zen 2.

 

16 minutes ago, AlTech said:

I suspect the CPU choice had nothing to do with CPU performance and was based on them or their ODM having a relationship with Intel and wanting to choose a low cost chip from Intel.

Business decisions are usually not hyper optimised for performance first, but things like support weigh heavily too. For example, the IT department at my former employers used to buy Dell laptops. I asked why, and the response was they had the best business support out of the major laptop vendors.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, porina said:

When talking microarchitecture, Skylake is used to refer to all of Skylake, Kaby Lake, Coffee Lake, Comet Lake.

Not by everybody and certainly not by Intel. You might be doing so but not a lot of people do it.

1 minute ago, porina said:

If you're talking specific product generation, then yes it matters more which one of those you pick as cache/cores/clock configurations vary.

 

Don't know if you saw above edit, I found a test TechPowerUp did disabling P cores on Alder Lake. 8 E cores from 12900k compared to a 3300X. They didn't go into clock information, so it is hard to say if things would be much different. Still, at worst that puts 4 E cores comparable to 2c4t Zen 2.

In that case I would choose 2C/4T every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

 

A P core which has better single thread IPC than an E core is still the better option even if they end up with the same multi thread performance.

 

4 E cores are great at background tasks but running an OS will be more responsive on 2 P cores like lower end Mendocino SKUs have.

 

But Mendocino goes up to 4 P cores so you can actually go faster than me is if you want to.

1 minute ago, porina said:

Business decisions are usually not hyper optimised for performance first, but things like support weigh heavily too.

Or an ODM having relationships with Intel. Prior to that company's 5800U product they worked only with Intel for CPUs.

1 minute ago, porina said:

For example, the IT department at my former employers used to buy Dell laptops. I asked why, and the response was they had the best business support out of the major laptop vendors.

That may not be case here. We don't know why they've made their decisions.

 

Frankly I don't know why you feel the need to fight me in this thread or in others.

[porina]

4 minutes ago, AlTech said:

Not by everybody and certainly not by Intel. You might be doing so but not a lot of people do it.

Yes Intel does it. Intel specifically referenced Skylake architecture in Alder Lake slides. The more serious tech press use it also. If it were a marketing exercise then they could have use Comet Lake too, but they didn't.

 

4 minutes ago, AlTech said:

Frankly I don't know why you feel the need to fight me in this thread or in others.

We obviously have different perspectives. To me, you appear to have an AMD bias. I can only guess I may come across with a perceived Intel bias. I try to provide facts along the way. If something can be factually discussed, I may engage.

[Senzelian]

16 hours ago, porina said:

Yes Intel does it. Intel specifically referenced Skylake architecture in Alder Lake slides. The more serious tech press use it also. If it were a marketing exercise then they could have use Comet Lake too, but they didn't.

I call bs until proven otherwise.

[porina]

1 hour ago, Senzelian said:

I call bs until proven otherwise.

https://www.anandtech.com/Show/Index/16881?cPage=12&all=False&sort=0&page=4&slug=a-deep-dive-into-intels-alder-lake-microarchitectures

 

[Mark Kaine]

On 7/17/2023 at 10:14 PM, porina said:

Yes Intel does it. Intel specifically referenced Skylake architecture in Alder Lake slides. The more serious tech press use it also. If it were a marketing exercise then they could have use Comet Lake too, but they didn't.

 

We obviously have different perspectives. To me, you appear to have an AMD bias. I can only guess I may come across with a perceived Intel bias. I try to provide facts along the way. If something can be factually discussed, I may engage.

i always thought you're an amd person.... like last couple of years amd always was better value (overall)  no?

 

 

lets not forget the whole "what is hyperthreading/spectre security disasters" that intel had.