Hands On With The Atomic Pi As A $35 Intel Atom Alternative To The Raspberry Pi

[Slobodan]

No, YOUR mother.

that's not how power distribution works, you sheepson.

If your load is asking more power than what the PSU can provide the voltage will drop dramatically. This causes instability in digital systems.
Case on point: some older Apple macbooks that had a undersized power brick that was unable to provide full power for the system 100% load, so they needed to be run with the battery inside at all times. The battery was used to provide additional power in case more was required. These systems would simply crash if loaded more than say 60% without a battery.

Scum, that is only true for "dumb" (like you) loads. CPU is not (unless someone like you designed it). So if it does not have enough supply power will throttle itself and work at the power it can get.

[Slobodan]

P.S. Blacklisted.

[starshipeleven]

Scum, that is only true for "dumb" (like you) loads. CPU is not (unless someone like you designed it). So if it does not have enough supply power will throttle itself and work at the power it can get.

There is no such feature, it's not really even possible given how most power supplies work.

You can set modern CPUs for a specific power target (laptop CPU/APUs for example do have this), and then yes it will throttle or do shenanigans to stay within the limits you set. But it still has no way of telling if the PSU is actually able to provide that for an extended period of time. If you aren't providing it the power it requires, the voltage will lower and the system will become unstable.

[starshipeleven]

P.S. Blacklisted.

P.S. that feature is broken in this forum

[danmcgrew]

It's torn innards from a failed robotics company that went belly up. It's not even designed to be an SBC.

Your name automatically defines and declares your response.
Get a life. No, better yet: stay an absolutely incapable-of-independent-thought Raspberry Pi lackey...the entertainment you types provide is invaluable.

[nomadewolf]

That's not what a SBC is for, if you need a mini-pc you just go and buy a mini-pc.

This isn't 2012 where the smallest PC still had to be mini-itx (so kind of big and expensive), Atom-based mini-pcs are a thing and you can find them on ebay, banggood, aliexpress and all those places that deal with chinese stuff for 100$.

This thing might look cheaper but in fact it is just a crappy mini-pc motherboard, i.e. it is missing things, like a case, like a power supply. It also looks like total ass with that heatsink and is huge for what it does.

Atom-based Mini PCs (same identical hardware) look more expensive at around 100$ (let's see if the next batch is still costing 35$) but are more compact, actually come with a case that does not look like ass and a power supply.

Seriously I've seen enough people buying some form of SBC + adapters + cases + power supply + heatsinks and then fight with the crappyness of the system when they could have bought a mini-pc for that price that would have worked so much better.

SBCs are for hardware tinkering and fast prototyping, for god's sake.


Same story for people shellling 400$ on some "high end router" because they need powerful hardware for QoS or routing or VPN, when for like 250$ you can get a full-blown quadcore x86 system with 5 gigabit ethernet ports with the form factor of a ethernet switch, that supports AES-NI crypto acceleration and can run any of the firewall distros like IPFire or pfsense, or even OpenWrt, and blows even 600$ embedded devices out of the fucking water.

Wake up sheeple!

Generally, i agree with what you said about SBCs.
The only reason i consider this is that it packs an Atom CPU. The case, is not really needed. Something that could be an issue is powering the board...
Sure, SBCs aren't made to browse the interwebs, but the portential is still there IMO. If only there were decent drivers...

About 'high end routers' what you say is also true, if we're talking about someone who knows how to configure and IPBrick machine.. Which most won't even bother.


There's a lot of wishful thinking in my comment, i know. But we can always dream...

[edwaleni]

I think Starship is simply calling out people who want extended PC like functionality out of SBC's. Many SBC's follow the Pi model of format (or very close) and it is very, very difficult (nee expensive) to add that functionality successfully to such a small form factor.

Heat, RF, PCB real estate...which impact connection types, all play a role in the size, cost and ability of modern SBC's.

I test lots of SBC's types when I can and I do see how well they can handle a day in-day out productivity use case just for the fun of it. Some have made a lot of progress.

But the use cases for many people are all over the spectrum in functionality. Some just need good data loggers, some need robotics support, some want to prototype clusters, some are building a NAS controller and the list goes on.

The biggest benefit to many of these SBC's is in their flexibility. It is very apparent that many will give up that compute power to get a more flexible platform to work with. All that and run within a 5V/1A power window.

But for those who always rue the lack of compute power or connection options on SBC's, they will always be reminded they are straying very close to the standard PC design model and that is not a bad thing.

[starshipeleven]

The only reason i consider this is that it packs an Atom CPU.

Don't get your hopes up, it's still crap-grade x86. It will struggle. If you have tried an Intel tablet you know how that feels.

This is the stuff that is powering this generation of touch cash registers and automated cashiers and whatever else. It's not really great by any means.

Sure, SBCs aren't made to browse the interwebs, but the portential is still there IMO.

SBCs are for kids and adults learning to code, for making functional robot arms or robots, drones, be the brain of a small automation project, control complex 3D led displays, run a small cluster, try out Linux's gadget subsystem (i.e. make a device that disguises itself as a keyboard/mouse and breaks havoc on a target system, or more benignly shows itself as a DVD player and loads isos from the sdcard) and so on. That's what they are for.

Making a web kiosk or media player thing is boring, they won't perform nearly as well as dedicated hardware, and in most cases it's also redundant. Don't you have a laptop or something already? How many screens must show lewd anime tiddies around you?

[starshipeleven]

I think Starship is simply calling out people who want extended PC like functionality out of SBC's. Many SBC's follow the Pi model of format (or very close) and it is very, very difficult (nee expensive) to add that functionality successfully to such a small form factor.

Yes, people just see that it is cheap and bite the bait, but then don't realize that they are not buying a full product for their use case.

[tuxd3v]

The only reason i consider this is that it packs an Atom CPU..

That is exactly why I don't consider it..
Wrong tech..