La Frite: A Libre ARM SBC For $5, 10x Faster Than The Raspberry Pi Zero

[V10lator]

running Mali 4XX-series graphics means it'll never be truly "libre"

Why not? AFAIK they are cooperating with BayLibre to make this a reality:

https://baylibre.com/kernel-recipes-mainline-aml-s905x-cc-le-potato/

https://baylibre.com/elc-2017-3d-mainline/

https://baylibre.com/linux-v4-12-baylibre-contributions/

http://linux-meson.com/doku.php (see for example all the "WIP"s and even the "Yes" for 3D Acceleration)

[L_A_G]

Why not? AFAIK they are cooperating with BayLibre to make this a reality:

I was referring to how it still uses proprietary binary blobs similarly to Nvidia's GPUs. Hence the use of "truly libre" rather than "libre in the sence most people understand it".

[Guest]

Not sure if the Pi Zero is the right point of comparison for this considering it's still the size of a Model B board.

The photos Michael used are of the original model. This new campaign is for shrunk down versions that are indeed more comparable to a Pie Zero

[reavertm]

64 bit cores that you can actually run at 64 bit? Sounds great.

And how do you plan to gain from those 64bits, given 512MiBs of memory? Sounds more like a waste than anything.

[Slithery]

Are Pi's ports fake?

No, but they're mini HDMI and micro USB rather the the full-size equivalents. There's no LAN on a Pi Zero either.

[caligula]

There is a 16MB SPI flash chip which it can boot off of (or load a bootloader from). I'm not sure if that's necessary to be programmed to get something other than eMMC to boot. I've asked a question on the kickstarter page for it.

Even 16Mbits would be enough to store the whole kernel. U-boot + SPL can be configured to produce a < 500 kB binary. Without U-Boot it can be smaller. You can easily fit a headless Linux in 3,5 MB when using xz compression. Maybe even include busybox and init. This is with all drivers. If you compile extra drivers (everything except mmc and filesystem) as modules, it's gonna be easy.

[tildearrow]

It's cheap because it's Mali.

[cbxbiker61]

And how do you plan to gain from those 64bits, given 512MiBs of memory? Sounds more like a waste than anything.

There are use cases that would benefit from 64 bit ops over 32 bit. Apps that moves data around in memory a lot would benefit. One app that I'm using that does this a lot is the Mycroft voice app. I'd go with 1G of memory every time over 512M.

[dungeon]

La Frite is a low-end offering with their 512MB model shipping for just $5 USD or the 1GB version for $10... In other words, aimed squarely at the Raspberry Pi Zero and intended for IoT use-cases and other purposes.

In other words this sounds like - if they ship board without memory.price would be $0.99

[milkylainen]

Hello La Frite! This is perfect. I have been looking for a cheap lab-board with NOR-flash. I hope they don't clutter it with bad crap-mandatory firmware blobs.