I have an Odroid HC2 with an Exynos 5422 8-core processor running Armbian Buster. When I perform a computational task that loads all the cores to close to 100% (in my case, pigz, which is a multithreaded gzip), the entire system locks up after a fairly short time, to the point where it won’t even respond on the UART bus. The only way I’ve been able to fix it is to pull the plug and plug it back in.
I also tested the system with a four-core load, but it’s fine. It seems that it only has a problem when all 8 cores are pinned at near 100%.
I don’t think it’s running out or memory, but I’ve seen the chip temperature get to a maximum of almost 120 C, though I would have assumed it would thermal throttle if it got to hot instead of just crashing, especially since it’s a mobile chip.
Has any experienced this with Armbian? Anyone know what might be causing it or how to prevent it? One thing of note is that the Exynos chip is designed for (fairly old versions of) Android and has four high power and four low power cores. Not sure if that’s relevant, but maybe it’s being caused by Armbian not knowing how to deal with this kind of processor?
Sounds like an overheating problem. I guess thermal throttling isn’t working well enough. Do you have active cooling on it?
It might be that the SoC itself is staying cool enough, but the RAM modules are over-heating. Quite often they do not have passive coolers on them and it might be worth retrofitting those.
Does the heat-sink get very hot as well when you run it like that?
Actually, not really. It gets hot to the touch, but it certainly doesn’t feel like “it’s cooling a 120 C chip” hot. I can keep my finger on it for quite a while before it gets painful.
[maybe] the RAM chips are over-heating
The RAM is on top of the chip, so I assume it’s cooled by the heatsink too.
