Libre Computer's Tritium Is A Line Of Low-Cost Allwinner ARM Boards

[ddriver]

High performance contemporary AMR chips are not good candidates for SBC, because that tends to require a degree of openness which is more than vendors are willing to offer. Cost is another reason why SBC SOCs usually trail behind the cutting edge. It's just more profitable to put those in 1000$ phones.

If Pi3 is not enough, there are alternatives that are more expensive, but worth the money, as they do offer a proportional increase in performance.

I am really happy with boards from hardkernel, shipping costs are a tad high for a single board, but if you buy a few, it is a good deal. The XU4 is almost twice as fast as the Pi3 for 60$. There is an even more powerful board coming soon, that also has a pair of SATA connectors.

It doesn't have the community of the Pi, but the essentials are all provided, which is enough unless you are making baby steps in the area, and need someone to hold you by the hand.

For even more power, one simply has to look beyond arm. There are some promising board incoming that are based on embedded Ryzen like the Udoo Bolt. There is also intel's embedded and IoT solution that nobody seems to want use unless intel gives them away for free, really poor purchase value those boards. It is not a market for intel, which aims for like 60% margin...

[DrYak]

I think that the power delivery capabilities of USB3 would be nice to have in some cases: I have tried to power an SSD in a SATA to USB converter from a Raspberry PI, and at start-up it has drawn so much current that the Raspberry PI has been resetting itself.

Raspberry Pi in its current form is still limited by its power circuit. It can only receive up to 2.5A (I think) on its micro USB port and is even more limited on its USB output.
In the current state of the affair you would need a separate power circuits that bypasses Pi's powerchip and directly feeds into the +5V pins (lots of "micro UPS" for Pi tend to fit this bill), and also you might want to feed your peripheral from that pin too (usually most of such peripherals have a Y splitted cable, with one true USB to plug into the computer, and one extra power-only USB plug for extra power, just solder pins to the later).

What would a hypothetical Pi4 needs is USB-C for powering with a more modern chip that supports more input power.
That would solve most current power problems, but at the cost of added complexity, more modern (and thus expensive parts) and also rely on a much more recent connector for which the target audience (schools, week-end hobbyist, etc.) might not already have 20 different laying around (as opposed to hard core geeks).

There are no useful SBC powered USB3 dongles that dont work in USB2 mode.

On the other hand, some of them would benefit from the added USB3 bandwidth.

Storage is an example, it could be both faster, and could be a bit simpler (using UAS mode instead of Bulk mode, not all USB2 chip can manage UAS mode as it only became official standard with USB3, and Pi's USB core is one of those who can't) - UAS makes some things much simpler (passing SCSI command through : SMART, TRIM, etc.)

Also remember that Wifi and Network are on the same USB2 bus. They are eating aways the limited bandwidth.

So having an USB3 bus on an upcoming Pi4 would actually be helpful in this regard. (e.g.: for use case like small fileserver. It could help a little bit over all performance, although it's already okay as a "network connected USB key")

(I predict a 2x USB3 and 2x USB2 layout, with the two extra USB3 lanes coming out of the hub chip instead wired into the pure-USB3 Network and Wifi, so the whole thing could work on a 4x way hub instead of 6x)

But again this comes at cost of extra hardware.

And remember that Raspberry Pi's absolute topmost priority is being bloody chip and as widely available as possible to build a ginormous community (that even week-end hobbyists can easily google around to solution to problems).

So Raspberry Pi 4 will only happen at a point of time where making a Raspberry Pi 4 doesn't cost more than the price at which all previous models have been selling.

[edwaleni]

I think everyone would like a Pi 4 with upgraded SoC, with faster CPUs and [significantly] faster GPU.

It's time that this low-end SoC family moved to a tighter node than 40nm. 28nm would be the obvious next step. For cost reasons, I don't see them going to 16nm or lower.

I guess we will find out in the first half of next year.

Eben has already stated that there won't be a major Pi update for awhile.

He said research shows moving to the next node type won't fit in the Pi's price pure and simple.

Also noted was he doesn't expect the pricing for that node type to go down anytime soon.

[sykobee]

i would like to see a cortex a55 board honestly, it should be about time for a raspberry pi 4 with a 55 gigabit and usb3

I think everyone would like a Pi 4 with upgraded SoC, with faster CPUs and [significantly] faster GPU.

It's time that this low-end SoC family moved to a tighter node than 40nm. 28nm would be the obvious next step. For cost reasons, I don't see them going to 16nm or lower.

I guess we will find out in the first half of next year.

[chithanh]

Simple, cheap, basic I/O, USB, Ethernet (non-esoteric WiFi is a bonus).

I guess the Cubietruck would fit the bill then. However it is rather old and more expensive than similarly equipped boards.
Slightly less expensive but without wifi there is the A20-OLinuXino-LIME2-n8GB.

[zoltanp]

There are no useful SBC powered USB3 dongles that dont work in USB2 mode.

I think that the power delivery capabilities of USB3 would be nice to have in some cases: I have tried to power an SSD in a SATA to USB converter from a Raspberry PI, and at start-up it has drawn so much current that the Raspberry PI has been resetting itself. I ended up using a powered USB hub between the Raspberry PI and the USB to SATA converter.

[caligula]

i would like to see a cortex a55 board honestly, it should be about time for a raspberry pi 4 with a 55 gigabit and usb3

Raspberry is already perfectly fine for schools that teach tinkering with the board. It's actually almost too powerful. You don't need gigabit speed for anything. 100 Mbps LAN can even stream h265 4k video. It also leaves some ethernet cable wires free for POE. There are no useful SBC powered USB3 dongles that dont work in USB2 mode.

[sireangelus]

i would like to see a cortex a55 board honestly, it should be about time for a raspberry pi 4 with a 55 gigabit and usb3

[milkylainen]

milkylainen
What kind of specs are you looking for?

Cubieboard, Cubieboard 2, Cubietruck
Orange Pi i96 / 2G IoT
MIPS Creator CI20 (beware, uses MLC NAND)
a lot of OpenWrt supported routers also have NAND flash (typically 128 MiB)

Simple, cheap, basic I/O, USB, Ethernet (non-esoteric WiFi is a bonus).
SLC NAND or LB/SPI NOR. Mem and Storage is usually enough on included boards 256M+ / 64M+

Linux support without separate branch. Ie, dts description can be out of tree.
But vanilla Linux need to support the board with little to no modification of drivers.
I don't need to get a GPU up and running.

I intend to use it as an I/O training board with minimal resources. Not: "Look, you can install Ubuntu with 4G RAM".

[Michael]

Michael,
It would be interesting to test, the RockPro64

i test the boards I am sent out and haven't received any offers yet about the RockPro64.