# Julia in Raspberry Pi 3+: Is there any advantage in building from source?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-in-raspberry-pi-3-is-there-any-advantage-in-building-from-source/11073>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Created:** [May 22, 2018, 3:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-in-raspberry-pi-3-is-there-any-advantage-in-building-from-source/11073 "2018-05-22T15:09:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![v-i-s-h](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/v-i-s-h/32/46152_2.png) [@v-i-s-h](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/v-i-s-h)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 3:09pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-in-raspberry-pi-3-is-there-any-advantage-in-building-from-source/11073/1 "2018-05-22T15:09:43Z")

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Hi,  
I’m trying out Julia on a raspberry pi B3+. My aim is to benchmark the performance of Julia on pi B3 and B3+. I downloaded the generic ARM build available for from the official site. Upon running, I’m getting these outputs:

```julia
julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 0.6.2
Commit d386e40c17 (2017-12-13 18:08 UTC)
Platform Info:
  OS: Linux (arm-linux-gnueabihf)
  CPU: ARMv7 Processor rev 4 (v7l)
  WORD_SIZE: 32
  BLAS: libopenblas (NO_AFFINITY ARMV7)
  LAPACK: libopenblas
  LIBM: libm
  LLVM: libLLVM-3.9.1 (ORCJIT, generic)

julia> peakflops()
7.838128763624185e9

```

Will there be any benefit if I attempt to build Julia from source in raspberry pi? Previously I had a similar experience with my desktop where official download was not correctly identifying my CPU, but a build from source gave me almost 4 times speed up because of the correct opnBLAS setting. Is there any such tricks available on raspberry pi to speed up julia?

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**Author:** ![simonbyrne](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/simonbyrne/32/19_2.png) [@simonbyrne](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/simonbyrne)\
**Post date:** [May 22, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-in-raspberry-pi-3-is-there-any-advantage-in-building-from-source/11073/2 "2018-05-22T21:00:21Z")

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I’m not really sure, but I would doubt it. Despite being ARMv8, Raspbian only runs in 32-bit mode, so it is likely that it will still only use ARMv7 instructions (it may even end up using only ARMv6 instructions, because Raspbian is compatible with Pi One/Zero boards).

If you want to try it, the main thing you’ll need to do is increase the swap size, see [https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/README.arm.md#device-specific-instructions](https://github.com/JuliaLang/julia/blob/master/README.arm.md#device-specific-instructions).

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**Author:** ![v-i-s-h](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/v-i-s-h/32/46152_2.png) [@v-i-s-h](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/v-i-s-h)\
**Post date:** [May 23, 2018, 3:58am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-in-raspberry-pi-3-is-there-any-advantage-in-building-from-source/11073/3 "2018-05-23T03:58:41Z")

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Thanks @simonbyrne. I will try building it to see whether I makes a difference.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![v-i-s-h](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/v-i-s-h/32/46152_2.png) [@v-i-s-h](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/v-i-s-h)\
**Post date:** [June 4, 2018, 11:05am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/julia-in-raspberry-pi-3-is-there-any-advantage-in-building-from-source/11073/4 "2018-06-04T11:05:29Z")

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I have creates a review of Julia on raspberry pi on Pi B3 and PiB3+. See [https://www.element14.com/community/roadTestReviews/2733/l/try-out-the-raspberry-pi-model-3-b-plus-review](https://www.element14.com/community/roadTestReviews/2733/l/try-out-the-raspberry-pi-model-3-b-plus-review)  
I shows that Pi B3+ has come a long way from Pi 3B and provide a improved performance.
