Hardkernel Launches $35 Development Board That Can Smash The RPi

[brent]

This also has hardware floating point, so again the power consumption of the Pi is smashed there as well. I assume it takes more power at max load, but that is a pointless comparison compared to the energy consumption for the same load.

The ARM11 in the Pi has a pretty capable FPU as well. This isn't the first time I'm seeing people claim that it doesn't have an FPU. Where are you people getting that from?

From the PI FAQ: "Typically, the model B uses between 700-1000mA depending on what peripherals are connected"

That's maximum power consumption, i.e. at full load with USB devices attached. 400-500 mA is more typical for old models, and it's much less with the new B+ and A+ models. Baseline power consumption is ca 1 watt, i.e. 200-300 mA. See http://raspi.tv/2014/raspberry-pi-a-...r-does-it-need

Also, again I have to wonder about the quality of vendor support. Hardkernel has a whole bunch of different boards. I can't imagine they get anywhere close the level of the Raspberry Pi in this regards. The Pi has seens tons of improvements over the last 2 years, both from the Foundation and the community.

For instance, does any other ARM board have a camera module available that works as well as the Pi's? By that I also mean good software support, which is now top notch on the Pi. I'd like to do computer vision type things. The Pi camera is pretty damn awesome, but unfortunately the Pi is a little bit too slow for my needs. On the other hand, no other ARM SBC seems to have a good and well-supported camera module like the Pi.

[vadix]

The ARM11 in the Pi has a pretty capable FPU as well. This isn't the first time I'm seeing people claim that it doesn't have an FPU. Where are you people getting that from?

It seems I thought that because originally the repos from various distributions did not compile for hard float support on that core, so the OS didn't make the context switch properly to use floating point. Now both Raspbian and Arch seem to be doing that though, so that is no longer an issue.

[drSeehas]

AMD?

Written by Michael Larabel in AMD

Why AMD?

[tuxd3v]

this alone makes it worth it, hard to get a SoC with that anywhere near this price range.

The Olimex boards are very good...

https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware

they have sata, 4gb flash and a lot of other things...they have dual core ARM A7 at only 1Ghz, but the backup batery possibility, and other things are a must.

Altrough the price of odroid is very good, but it is more a computer, than a hackable board...

regards

[caligula]

Like people here said, Rpi is still better for its tasks. It's a) lower power at idle, b) non profit vs for profit capitalism that won't help poor children c) rpi ia about the fpu and free powerful cuda class GPU with free drivers in the works d) better support e) bigger community f) better fame g) still over $10 cheaper since it's exactly $25 vs $35 + shipping + VAT + customs h) i like bigger HDMI connector more.

[caligula]

Also the arm5 instruction set here is even exotic than rpi's arm6. Successful inheritor of rpi legacy should be either arm6 or arm7

[CrystalGamma]

Also the arm5 instruction set here is even exotic than rpi's arm6. Successful inheritor of rpi legacy should be either arm6 or arm7

But the Cortex-A5 is an ARMv7 core ...

[blackshard]

Also the arm5 instruction set here is even exotic than rpi's arm6. Successful inheritor of rpi legacy should be either arm6 or arm7

ARM architectures have a nomenclature that may be a bit confusing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture#Cores

Raspberry Pi (bcm2835 soc) is an ARM11 architecture with an ARMv6 instruction set
This ODROID-C1 (amlogic s805 soc) is an ARM Cortex A5 architecture with an ARMv7 instruction set

Both the SoCs above have their nice FPU

[Apokalypz]

For the price it's pretty solid. Wikipedia says 1.5 dmips per MHz per core which is about half of the a15. Not sure about flops though.

For something cheap and with such a low power draw, I don't think those numbers really matter all that much if it is a RPi replacement. The specs are better but we won't know real world until someone tests it or puts up a detailed article of it on some well known and loved Linux news site.

I however did notice on the amlogic site that it supports H.265 hardware decode. Since arm released their newest Mali drivers, other chips with this GPU don't have stutter problems. So more than likely it is definitely a good choice for a media box (assuming the VPU has hardware support in Linux and XBMC/KODI).

One thing to watch out for though is odroids don't have hardware audio passthough. They only have PCM out. I'm not sure about CEC though.

Given the price, I'm probably gonna put this on my Christmas list anyway.

[kevinf28]

If form factor is important, and you want Sata + Usb3, with hardware video decode... go AMD G-Series.

industrial:

http://www.seco.com/prods/usa/secopitx-gx.html

consumer/hacker:

http://www.gizmosphere.org/products/gizmo-2/