Black-eyed Pies reel from BeagleBoard's $45 Linux micro blow Open-source hardware outfit BeagleBoard has formally announced a major revision of its BeagleBone board computer that ups the spec and downs the price. The BeagleBone Black's single-core processor jumps from its predecessor’s 720MHz to 1GHz. It’s a Texas Instruments AM335x system-on-a-chip, which uses ARM’s Cortex-A8 …
Strange, I have distinct memories of it's backers harping on about how they were influenced by the likes of the Acorn Atom and ZX Spectrum and wanted some thing to throw at kids in schools to help influence them in to carrying on the UK tradition for tech thinkers and doers.
The fact it can be used as a half decent PC was purely a side benefit.
If you look at the i/o capabilities of this board then it actually throws a glove to the rpi experimenting wise.
But for many hobbyists they already have the cheaper rpi and they will not upgrade just for the sake of an already outdated cortex a8 core. Raspberry is still cheaper than this thing here and does deliver the basics that most hobby things (robots etc.) need (robust i/o smashed with the power of common linux utilities out of the box).
Since the mpeg-2 licensing has been worked out for the raspberry-pi it also has become a quite vivid multimedia board, just enough to deliver the hd video that people might want to use it for.
The only real use case for this thing is where you already have something that almost works on a rpi but lacks 10-20% of cpu power or requires more i/o ports. That's a weird niche market to go after.
If you really want to beat Raspberry PI - beat it's price.
(and compared to a desktop from 2013 none of the two devices is anywhere remotely near a desktop experience - what you accept as 'ok' lag on your 3 year old htc phone (similar cpu's back then) is not ok behind a desktop).
>"Mali400, OpenGL ES GPU (which means a proper Open Source Graphics driver is in the works and will >remain there for years and years.)"
>
>Fixed!
Runs Quake3 faster than binary blob : YES
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/02/06/1417217/open-source-arm-mali-driver-runs-q3a-faster-than-the-proprietary-driver
Source Code publicly availale: Yes
http://malideveloper.arm.com/develop-for-mali/drivers/open-source-mali-gpus-linux-kernel-device-drivers/
X11 display driver: Yes
http://malideveloper.arm.com/develop-for-mali/drivers/open-source-mali-gpus-linux-exadri2-and-x11-display-drivers/
There!? FUD Fixed.
Excellent, that looks like a step in the right direction - IO has been a major bottleneck in these devices for a while, and having SATA available is a huge step forward at that price point. The only small ARM/SATA boards I've seen before came in around the $200 mark. Granted they had quad-core marvell chips in them, but still... looks like a great board.
"Is a HD in a USB caddy that slow?"
Well, it's partly because it's a bit slower, but also because if it's USB 1 or 2, things are poll/interrupt driven (I forget the term and several words atm, as I need more coffee). USB 3 can work in a more DMAish way.
This might seem like splitting hairs, but when you're busy doin' thangs with the host CPU, the USB becomes a bit of a overhead (plus attached USB media devices get buffer underruns, also). SATA with a halfway-decent controller would be a lot nicer than USB 1 or 2- especially on a little machine with limited CPU power.
Point taken, but at the same time using the CPU as a gatekeeper helps to block potential memory exploits. FireWire has better throughput because of Direct Memory Access, but it also opens the door to potential memory exploits (and since FireWare was two-way you had to allow two-way access to the memory). Looks like a hard one to solve: place a gatekeeper and you lose the speed and efficiency advantages; don't and you risk memory exploits.
Don't be silly, having physical access to a machine is a potential security risk (especially an open board like the BeagleBone or the Cubieboard). Since SATA slave devices can't initiate transfer or destination address then no, this isn't enough extra risk to be concerned about, and it's much more important to offload tasks from the CPU when you haven't got much power to start with.
Is a HD in a USB caddy that slow?
No, but an SSD in a USB caddy is. Actually the extra power drain of a USB to SATA chip may be greater pain, if whatever you are doing is supposed to run off a battery. (In which context an SSD eats far less electricity than an HD).
"Is a HD in a USB caddy that slow?"
If it's USB 2.0, yes it is.USB 3.0 can be a lot better. But yes, even spinning rust on USB 2 is badly limited.
If they had USB 3 then that would be just awesome, you can get some USB 3.0 sticks now that are coming up to 1/2 SSD speed, and that's awesome.
Up until the Cubie started shipping, the cheapest viable SATA equipped alternative I could find was the UDOO.
Their succesful Kickstarer project will allow that project to progress towards commercial scale production.
The dual core version @ $109 comes with 10/100/1000 Ethernet and WIFI.
The quad core version @ $129 has SATA.
http://www.udoo.org/
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/435742530/udoo-android-linux-arduino-in-a-tiny-single-board
And there are also these, all based on the SoCs from same vendor:
http://www.marsboard.com/#specifications
https://www.miniand.com/products/Hackberry%20A10%20Developer%20Board
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/A13-OLinuXino-WIFI/
It's good to see competition in this space.
If I wanted to do something that needed graphics I'd probably choose a Pi. If I wanted something that either didn't need graphics or only needed a simple GUI (a lot of industrial controllers could come into this category) then I'd consider the BeagleBoard. As it is, my Pi has been commandeered and lives behind the TV as a media centre, so I need a new one to play with.
A glance at the AM3358 spec sheet suggests it has a PowerVR SGX530 GPU core in it. It's probably enough to run a simple desktop although there is no mention of hardware decoding for audio / video and I doubt the CPU has the power to decode it in software either. The chip (and the board) seems more targeted towards control devices really as opposed the Pi which has slower but more media capable CPU.
That said, the Pi isn't very good for media playback either, at least under the standard XBMC GUI. The UI is fairly responsive when nothing is streaming, but start streaming and navigating at the same time and the CPU chokes. A dual core or 1.5GHZ Pi would probably resolve these issues, or perhaps a simpler playback interface.
There are also a LOT of very cheap Android stick / boxes powered by the likes of the Allwinner A10, A20, A31. Since XBMC is on Android now, there is a chance that these could be viable platforms for people who want to play media. What would be lacking is the community support.
"There are also a LOT of very cheap Android stick / boxes powered by the likes of the Allwinner A10, A20, A31. Since XBMC is on Android now, there is a chance that these could be viable platforms for people who want to play media. What would be lacking is the community support."
I've given Android XBMC a try. Last I checked, its graphics support needs work. It was chugging on my Galaxy Tab 7.0+ (no slouch--1.2GHz dual-core Exynos and Mali 400MP GPU).
XBMC isn't the only solution on Android though. There must be dozens of DLNA clients on the store and they could be coupled with VLC or some other video player. Providing the media framework is hooked up to use hardware codecs, the performance should be okay.
I think XBMC is a bit too fancy for its own good on low performance devices though. Even the Confluence skin is a bit of overkill. I expect a skin that dials back on the animation, transparency and overall memory consumption would probably squeeze a few % of performance which might make the difference between usable and unusable.
As the (happy) owner of two Raspberry Pis, I think this is great. The more choice there are the better, so far as I'm concerned. And it's good to know that there are cheap alternatives to buying a conventional desktop PC, for those of us who prefer Linux and get grumpy about UEFI.
Although, speaking as someone still in the dark ages who doesn't have a TV with a HDMI socket, or even a monitor with a DVI socket, I won't be upgrading to a beaglebone until I've finally got around to upgrading my TV, so there are some of us who wouldn't even consider throwing away our pis....
I see more than 2 X 26 pins.......more like 100 pins altogether unless they are not all connected...
The biggest driver in these devices is not the performance or resources or even price...it is the ability to generate a big enough community to create an inertia...The beagle board has a big enough geek community, but the pi beats on presence in wider culture rather than feature set.
How about a £20 DIY Forth based computer? It's selling like hot cakes in Uni's and schools. They like the simplicity of the Forth programming language:
"FIGnition Rève is the definitive £20 educational DIY computer! It works like an 8-bit home Micro: outputting to composite video and ready to be interactively programmed from the moment you switch it on. The Rève now has bitmapped graphics; sound and audio saving/loading as well as 8Kb of RAM; 384Kb of storage; an 8-key keypad and runs a variant of FIG-Forth. It uses USB for power; firmware upgrades and program downloads."
https://sites.google.com/site/libby8dev/fignition
Full disclosure: I have no affiliation with the above mentioned device, other than thinking it's ace.
I think that the more important aspect of this is that we now have two different (three if you want to toss Arduino in) platforms for cheap, powerful computers on a small / hobbyist scale. Ignore the bits about whether or not this can be your new replacement desktop or your HTPC. Instead, imagine what can be done with this level of power in such a small, portable, CHEAP package? Build your own robots! Build even more cool high altitude experiments! Make your own interplanetary probe! How about deep sea exploration? The low cost of these platforms allows for a new revolution in homegrown science. This is a great thing! =D
@IcebergTitanic
"I think that the more important aspect of this is that we now have two different (three if you want to toss Arduino in) platforms for cheap, powerful computers on a small / hobbyist scale."
Well, there are more than three!
http://www.marsboard.com/#specifications
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/getting-started-with-pcduino/hardware-tour
https://www.miniand.com/products/Hackberry%20A10%20Developer%20Board
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A13/A13-OLinuXino-WIFI/
Enjoy hacking! :)
@billium
I don't care what the target market is. The MK is a much samller, much more powerful device, more RAM and flash, with USB, HDMI, SD and WiFi that you can put Linux on. It does everything these boards do, much more and better for cheaper. You even get a case (which you can cut off if you want your device to look like an unfinished hobby mess).
The mk808 doesn't have i2c, spi, masses of gpio or the BB's gpmc.
The mk808 also only has very out of date kernel sources available and rock chip has no interest in actually respecting the GPL. Those TV sticks are fine if you to mess around with android but you can't use them for serious business (tm).
To everyone who seems to be commenting about some older board - HERE http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone%20Black is the new board - yes it has 3D accelerated GFX and it's expansion options (called capes) are quite impressive - see http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBone_Capes
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
