Raspberry Pi 5 - Unofficial PCIe Success - Hacking the Pi5's PCIe into life

[@shodanxx]

That's a lot of reverse engineering for an open source computer

[@ahero4heor]

Well, it's not actually open source on the hardware side though. They're just open about what they can be *cough* thanks Broadcom *cough*

[@forbiddenera]

Yeah I can't believe at least the pinout of an expansion connector isn't available. Don't they want people to make pcie hats?

[@JeffGeerling]

11:02 heh, well at least it is as good a bodge job as the prototype PoE HAT!

[@JeffGeerling]

And 16:42 "impedance matched by side cutters" ha!

[@m1geo]

Hope you didn't mind the section at 8:07 😉

[@JeffGeerling]

@@m1geoOf course not! It's the perfect illustration of fair use :)

[@mk500]

Very impressive George! It's amazing what we can interface to these little ARM boards now.

[@pvc988]

I hope the 5's won't become unobtanium or unreasonably expensive like 4's did. And that PCIe port is really something very useful.

[@hotrodhunk7389]

As someone who has one me too!!! I was super lucky to wake up at 3 am, minutes after Jeff gerling dropped his video. I instantly went and pre-ordered one. I knew it'd be good. Still needs a few software improvements for hardware acceleration of video in Ubuntu but really good.

[@NextLevelCode]

@@hotrodhunk7389it seems like every pi has really bad video drivers when they first come out. I remember the 3 and 4 both having these same issue

[@mrmotofy]

Not likely to have a Covid experience again which caused the whole Domino effect

[@pvc988]

@@mrmotofy Yeah, this time war is a possibility. We already have conflicts popping here and there. And China is also preparing to invade Taiwan now. They are also arguing with Russia over a piece of land.

[@AndrewTSq]

Strange that we dont hear anything about a official PCIE-shield with NVME support from RPI yet. Interesting work you do :)

[@m1geo]

It's coming! I expect they're finalising the documents, hardware, etc.. PCIe on a budget is a big challenge and really you need good signal integrity.

[@RonLaws]

Pi foundation: Adds a connector to make breakout boards possible without having to remove components on the pi to expose the PCIe lanes Hacker community: Removes connector and solders to the pi anyway.

[@m1geo]

It was a mistake! I had planned to use the connector, but wanted to see the traces underneath. I melted the connector in the process! 👍 Top engineer, me! 🙈

[@RonLaws]

@@m1geo Lol! I know, I'm just giving you flack for it 😜

[@m1geo]

Found the old connector while working out what the sideband channels were. It's definitely very dead!!

[@Mtaalas]

@m1geo Those connectors are very unforgiving to removal, you usually destroy it when removing, thus get a spare before you do that. looks like very common ffc connector and their footprints are pretty much standardized, you should be able to get what ever with the same pitch and it'll be fine. though, get one with glass fiber reinforced nylon. they can take much more heat and are more forgiving to hand soldering. had to deal with these for a project long ago and learned it quickly

[@mradminus]

I'm so impressed, what a cool thing to do!!

[@m1geo]

Thanks! It was a fun project! Lots of folks have taken the design and run with it, and I have some boards on GitHub if you're interested in having a play yourself! Link in video description.

[@SmithyScotland]

This is true hacking. Much respect.

[@logannosleep5]

Hey it's a start and something's better than nothing.... Hopefully this leads to raspberry pi 5s being able to use dedicated GPUs.... It'd be cool to see a hybrid pi case that powers both the pi and accessorie 6,8 pin etcs... Also this could really breathe life into all those e-waste gpus...

[@jnharton]

As long as it's fully working, no GPU is e-waste unless you decide to chuck it. --- Also, most native PCIe graphics cards really need more than 1-2 lanes.

[@logannosleep5]

@@jnharton I wonder if the GPIO could be used to get more lanes....

[@Mtaalas]

@@logannosleep5Do you know how PCIe works? :)

[@logannosleep5]

@@Mtaalas not fully other than it's all just I/0s no matter what it's called ... but quickly looked into the pis and seems there conflicting info on the pi5s some people say it has 2 lanes other say it has 4. Feel free to explain to your best ability why GPIO (and pi5s PCIe) could or couldn't support a GPU.

[@m1geo]

@@logannosleep5 the GPIO are hundreds of times too slow. PCIe really is very fast. Gen1 I have is around 2.5 GHz. Gen2 and Gen3 are considerably faster!

[@personalPickle]

Nice work Mr Smart (nominative determinism..? :D) A man after my own heart, I love the 12h reverse engineering mission.

[@m1geo]

It was good fun! I also purchased the Pi on Saturday afternoon, and 2h later had dismantled it! 😬

[@personalPickle]

I'm right there with you! hahaha, when the rpi4 came out, I decided to upgrade the wifi range by soldering in an external antenna.. shorted something and that was that 😂@@m1geo

[@zyghom]

AMAZING! I wasn't even aware that PCIe means: 3 pairs of wires ;-) We shall see then soon the 3rd party cables (to help you a bit with the connections - oh no, yours already passed the point of no return), and 3rd party devices that will make use of this PCI interface. Btw I received RPi5 and having many RPi4 at home I can say: not much has changed comparing between these two, to immediately replace all RPi4 with RPi5 - wherever my RPi4 is deployed, RPi5 would not do much better. But of course: for new projects I would not bother with RPi4 anymore. And of course if you bother to go i.e. Orange Pi 5 Plus way, you will realize that RPI5 is .... far behind the Chinese thingis ;-) Thx again for very informative video.

[@jnharton]

It's /PCIe/ which stands for PCI Express which utilizes serial communications on a number of independent "lanes" to communicate. Before that, we had ordinary PCI which is a shared parallel bus.

[@zyghom]

@@jnharton yea, I know, my misspelling

[@weirdboyjim]

Exceptional Work George!

[@m1geo]

Cheers James! Not my finest, but I was in a rush with time! I've designed a few PCBs and I may do a followup trying different stuff out. But there are others who have taken the design and really run with it! Nowhere near as clever as what you've done!

[@siberx4]

That test board is a beautiful abomination; I love it. I'm surprised you've had to reverse engineer the connector; has the foundation not made schematics/pinouts for it publicly available??

[@m1geo]

It plans to! I just wanted to see if it was possible. I do a lot of PCIe at work, so it wasn't too bad.

[@chrissmith4995]

Great video, very interesting and thanks for taking the time to share @@m1geo

[@dazealex]

This is a work of art! Subbed!

[@m1geo]

Cheers! There's a PCB version and updated schematic at the GitHub link in the video description.

[@stefanp4258]

Nice, i would like to use a cheap ASM1061 2xSATA3-6g card on pi5b.

[@Marc_Wolfe]

My sound card (SB1040) does that PCIe to PCI workaround. That's how I found out my motherboard (SuperMicro X9DRH-7F) cucked some slots with limited bus indexes. Sound card needs 2 indexes.

[@m1geo]

Interesting. Wasn't something I was aware of. Seems like most USB2 cards are like this!?

[@Marc_Wolfe]

I can't say otherwise. Only USB 2 cards I've seen have been PCI, and only USB 3 cards I've seen have been PCIe. I've only owned one USB 3 card, and it doesn't seem to require anything extra, no conversion etc. Orico branded VIA controller that doesn't require drivers to work, even installed Windows 10 with it on my X79 era server. it doesn't handle some things well, but for $13...

[@thomasbjarnelof2143]

PCIe encoding, 8b/10b or 128b/130b, are done in such a way that P-N polarity doesn't matter.

[@m1geo]

Thanks for the confirmation. I had expected it didn't matter, and it was confirmed when I worked out that I had the RX pair crossed (see my issue #2) and it still worked. It does. however, make the PCB layout much easier if you don't have to cross pairs :)

[@Mtaalas]

@@m1geowell not 100% true. PCIe spec does demand that receiver must be able to tell that polarity is wrong and invert it automatically, because they were worried about board layout issues. so electrically it does matter, but if receiver is implemented right, it should work...

[@vishnu62147]

Without any controlled impedance FFC cables, u were able to get PCIe working!!!!..interesting…..

[@dennis8196]

Wait, you have a RPi 5 for real? I pre-ordered mine (2 infact) on the very first day had the pre-order page up. I have now been told I've been bumped to 2024 for delivery at the earliest. 😢

[@m1geo]

Yes. The Raspberry Pi store in Cambridge has plenty of stock (of all Pis). I have one I ordered which is due for delivery in December, too.

[@Tarbard]

Cool components (UK) have a bunch of them in stock just now.

[@dennis8196]

Thanks guys. Going to look at cancelling my order and going elsewhere.

[@Tarbard]

@@dennis8196 btw if you can't find the pi 5 PSUs digikey have some in stock

[@coreforge]

I got mine I preordered (raspberryStore nl) on the first day (albeit a bit late) a few days ago

[@te0nani]

KiCAD bro, very nice.

[@TheBlackFoxMaster]

Готов поспорить, что есть прищепка переходник для этих целей.

[@dewdude]

I feel like the fact the PCIe requires this much hacking just makes me want to avoid the Pi even more. Years of unobtanium? Pathetic SD card storage? Looks like they want to keep hurting the hardware for silly reasons. This belongs in embedded systems. If you don't need GPIO even the Pi5 is a bad choice. I mean I love the hack....please don't take my criticism the wrong way. But you shouldn't have had to hack this. None of this should be required...it's 2023, m.2 should be standard

[@m1geo]

There won't be any hacking need once the offical documents are out. I'm just impatient!

[@M0UAW_IO83]

It's a nice hack and I'll definitely give it a go (perhaps not quite so 'on the metal', I'd have a go at creating an adapter board with ribbon connector) but early next year there'll be no need to hack it, from the Pi blog: "M.2 HATs One of the most exciting additions to the Raspberry Pi 5 feature set is the single-lane PCI Express 2.0 interface. Intended to support fast peripherals, it is exposed on a 16-pin, 0.5mm pitch FPC connector on the left-hand side of the board. From early 2024, we will be offering a pair of mechanical adapter boards which convert between this connector and a subset of the M.2 standard, allowing users to attach NVMe SSDs and other M.2-format accessories. The first, which conforms to the standard HAT form factor, is intended for mounting larger devices. The second, which shares the L-shaped form factor of the new PoE+ HAT, supports mounting 2230- and 2242-format devices inside the Raspberry Pi 5 case." (obvs would have been nice to have them available at launch and possibly nicer to have M.2 on board but it's an expensive option when SD is dirt cheap and boot from USB is so easy)

[@jnharton]

I think you're missing the fact that you clearly aren't the target audience for the product. Just because you can do something doesn't mean it was intended.

[@kangaroo4024]

oooo. you think somewhere down the line we could see a pi with a 1030GT all in a nice neat little package? :)

[@m1geo]

Definitely possible. Just depends on their being Arm drivers for the GPU. Jeff Geerling is documenting tested hardware with the official testing board he has access to.

[@ticooq]

Good morning, Thank you for the info. Where can I find one of your tweezers? hii!

[@m1geo]

They are just cheap ones, bought from AliExpress but they're decent and I like them (I have about 5 sets): www.aliexpress.com/item/32932252157.html -- something like this. Shop around, you may be able to get them cheaper/faster., this was the first link I found.

[@anandmoon5701]

Did you get the schematic for Raspberry Pi 5, Is this available in the public domain

[@m1geo]

No. This work is a reverse engineering of the Pi5 PCIe connector based on measurements, testing and professional experience. I did this for the technical challenge.

[@Stabby666]

This was interesting thanks. So the 5 doesn't use a PCI-E channel for the USB 3.0 ports? I've worked with the CM4 which only has a single PCI-E, which is used for the USB 3.0 ports on the Pi4.

[@m1geo]

The Pi5 has two PCIe RCs (root complexes, i.e., controllers). One is used x4 lanes to the RP1 chip and does USB3. The other is exposed on the connector I mangled.

[@billymeter]

What kind of tweezers are you using? They look pretty high quality, are they?

[@mikestewart4752]

I too lust for non-chinesium tweezers.

[@m1geo]

They are Chinesium, bought from AliExpress but they're decent and I like them (I have about 5 sets): www.aliexpress.com/item/32932252157.html -- something like this. Shop around, you may be able to get them cheaper/faster., this was the first link I found.

[@bestinfinity1]

Do you know of any gpus that might work? Would be intresting having a pi that has gpu powered graphics instead of icpu

[@m1geo]

@JeffGeerling has an excellent resource here: pipci.jeffgeerling.com/ which likely answers your question!

[@makskk6spm275]

this quite cool. great job!

[@m1geo]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@andrewjones586]

Great stuff!

[@m1geo]

Thanks!

[@phil2768]

Broke my 💔seeing the connector destroyed - i'd honestly be gutted if I had done that on my new Pi 5😆

[@m1geo]

I really wasn't overly pleased about it. It's all cleaned up and a new connector placed on the board. I'm just doing the final testing with FPC cable before making a few proper test PCBs.

[@francoisberry3224]

Thank you so much for sharing ! Just a question about the min360 module: Why do you use it? Is it possible to have 3.3V on the 40 pin connector? François

[@m1geo]

The PCIe or NVMe connector needs 3.3V. The Pi5 only has 5V. So you need to reduce the voltage.

[@francoisberry3224]

Sorry if I say something stupid, but pins 1 and 17 of the 40-pin connector are at 3.3V?@@m1geo

[@m1geo]

@@francoisberry3224 if you look on Wikipedia for PCI Express, the full pinout is there. The connector has A and B sides. The Pi connector doesn't have 3.3V power at all.

[@francoisberry3224]

I meant the 40-pin GPIO header!

[@m1geo]

@@francoisberry3224 It can't supply enough current. You need a few amps at 3.3V, so i regulated it down from 12V which is also needed for PCIe.

[@thegeekygentelman]

does anyone know of any raspberry pi adapter that gives you ffc pcie to pcie like this one not ffc to m2

[@m1geo]

@@thegeekygentelman mine is on GitHub.

[@brailorjs1192]

Nice job!

[@m1geo]

Thanks! The hardware isn't, but hopefully the schematic will help others!

[@countbowl]

Did you log your time to JIRA?

[@m1geo]

Of course, mate. I always log my time in Jira. :)

[@FroggyTWrite]

have you played around with the orange pi 5 much?

[@m1geo]

I haven't, actually, but they're getting good reviews.

[@anterprites]

Starting watching: I would suggest using OBS for screen recording instead of camera.

[@m1geo]

Thanks! Unfortunately, I have so little free time, that if I didn't cut corners, I'd never have published it! Originally I was going to just upload the raw video from the phone but it did need a bit of work!

[@oguzhan001]

Firewire daisy chain cluster, is such a thing possible?

[@m1geo]

Sorry, I know very little about firewire.

[@thingi]

TCP/IP runs over firewire no problem (well if you have a mac/linux box, I believe Windows removed support firewire TCP/IP a while back, so I doubt the driver was ever ported to the ARM version).

[@jnharton]

You would first need to add a PCIe firewire card to each system and create proper drivers so the Pi can use the card...

[@thingi]

@@jnharton agreed and since a pcie network adaptor is about the same speed (800 vs 1000) I can't see a reason to do it. No need to worry about the drivers though, kernel support for firewire networking is rock solid, TI chips are so ridiculously everywhere it's built in already, real plug and play.

[@g.o.a.t9804]

Hello, I have a question.. Why do we refer to that ffc connector as a 16-pin connector when it clearly has 20 pins I say we because you're not the only person i hear calling this connector a 16 pin connector. Great video! cheers!

[@m1geo]

The 4 corner pins are mechanical only pins. They are only there to hold the connector to the PCB and add mechanical strength. They do not connect to the FFC. The cable only has 16 conductors. If you look at the datasheet/mechanical drawings for the connector (such as Wurth 687316124422) then you'll see what I mean. My updated schematic on GitHub calls the 4 corner connectors M1-M4.

[@g.o.a.t9804]

@@m1geo Thanks 👍

[@ituregano]

Love the tweezers! model?! :)

[@m1geo]

They are bought from AliExpress but they're decent and I like them (I have about 5 sets): www.aliexpress.com/item/32932252157.html -- something like this. Shop around, you may be able to get them cheaper/faster, this was the first link I found. No affiliation.

[@garygranato9164]

just subscribed to give you 1K :)

[@m1geo]

What a hero! With all this attention, I'll have to buy an actual microphone and do screen captures! At the very least I should dust the workshop!

[@garygranato9164]

@@m1geo ha ha ha ha

[@nil0bject]

gg firewire is gold

[@ghtryn]

You can try using a custom type c female port soldered to the motherboard

[@m1geo]

I'll fix the real connector when the parts for my breakout board arrives!

[@uhohwhy]

time to pair it with RTX 4090

[@m1geo]

If I had one, I would! I do have an older 2080 Super.

[@wiwingmargahayu6831]

westminster chime

[@R1D9M8B4]

Wow

[@lambda7652]

To bad that this is not just open source

[@m1geo]

When they are ready, Raspberry Pi will share the details. I just fancied a challenge.

[@TT-it9gg]

To add a M.2 connector on the back is easy. It can, but it don't. Lousy design!

[@m1geo]

There's a separate board for M.2. See the GitHub link.

[@TT-it9gg]

@@m1geo I knew. All others have build-in M.2 slot. That's the way to go. The M.2 hat is lousy. Had enough on Pi4B....

[@joeventura1]

Next time put the mic inside your mouth because the breathing and the smacking of your lips was only 8 out of 10 on this video. Lets go for 10/10!

[@g.o.a.t9804]

I can hear him very loud and clear. Next time try focusing on thr content and not fetishizing on what's going on in the background. Also, pull that meat out of your ears.

[@joeventura1]

@@g.o.a.t9804 Yes I can hear him LOUD and CLEAR too! I can also hear how many breathes he takes per minute and what is rolling around in his wet mouth.

[@m1geo]

For extra points, you could have mentioned the dust on the screen! 😂

[@altamiradorable]

Filminfg you screen ?? Get yoursefl a PROPER screen capture program !!

[@m1geo]

I should have, but I ain't got time for all that! I had a day free. I spent it playing with PCIe on the Pi5. Maybe next time! Maybe for the NVMe HAT testing video! 😉

[@sergejkoch1432]

I have no words to describe my indignation. "Hecklers" like you give all other "Hecklers" the impression that design specs are written just for fun and PCB design is not a serious profession, just a foolish waste of time. If anyone can just solder a few wires anywhere and get high-speed data rates without any problems, why bother with micrometer-precise specifications for differential high-speed transmission lines and connections. Nobody needs it. After 40 hours of messing around, you go to a real engineer and throw him 5 dollars to do the work for you. That's all it's worth, the bit of soldering. Right?

[@m1geo]

Sure, if you like. 😂 I have a PhD in electronic engineering, and work in PCB design for a large, well known company - you've certainly used our work. Take your 'zero subscribers' troll account and go annoy someone else!

[@sergejkoch1432]

@@m1geo 😂 You are so laughable. All the users showing positive reactions to your video are just like you, bunglers! Anyone with serious interest could learn PCB design if they stick to the literature and reputable electronics channels that don't put on a "show" to present botches and fabricate "fake" functionality.

[@michaellegg9381]

There is a lot of who care's.. they have hats for everything you just did with PCI express slot.. sure the slots faster than the hats but hardware wise you can use hats for the exact same functionality!! Let us know when you have a GTX 1650ti or a GTX 1080ti or a RTX A2000 working on pi5 that actually outputs video and uses 3D acceleration and gsync ext.. so we only really want to add dedicated GPU to the pi5 that is what we want to make a pi5 a viable replacement for a low power consumption extra tiny form factor build.. till then i don't care about a PCI express network card or PCI express nvme card that's just boring and have work arounds for both of these card.. p.o.e network hats 2.5gig which is plenty sound and mic is already on the pi5 and is good enough to not need to use PCI express slot for sound or game port or something else similar.. we need GPU horse power thats it nothing else matters right now.

[@m1geo]

There are no offical hats yet. There will be, but not yet. If you want a cheap one, you can build mine (see GitHub link) for around £5. And I couldn't care less about a GTX1080ti, graphics acceleration or GPUs in general. I have my own need for PCIe. Saying things like "that is what we want" just broadcasts how little you know. Just saying! 😉

[@khanra17]

why are you suffering to speak

[@m1geo]

Huh?