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

[dungeon]

Let them complain. I'd buy one.

0.5GB model costs $5, 1GB costs $10, 2GB costs $25, 4GB $50, 8GB $100 and so on...

Simple progression of RAM prices Say, SBC boards without RAM plays in area of $0.99 to $29.99

[caligula]

Other board--like the Orange Pi--have several proper USB HOST controllers and native ethernet controllers--directly on the SoC.
-- Each port has it's own bandwidth. This not only allows the boards to perform better, but it makes them more consistant as there are fewer surprised because of unknown shared resources.

I think RPi is like the Arduino. You can buy better ones at the same price (e.g. STMicro Blue Pill), but it's the one you want if you don't know how to use it because you'll get the best support from other newbies who don't know what they are doing. You'll end up giving it away or selling it sooner or later so it doesn't really matter. Just like Arduino buyers, the RPi buyers also typically end up buying the wrong board of all the brand boards available. For example Arduino Nano is much more versatile than Arduino Uno, but Uno is more popular. You'll also get Nano for $1.75, while the Uno may cost $30 in a shiny colorful retail box.

[Ardje]

Also, it is not Libre.... It uses ARM and many other things that are proprietary and limited. In 3 years they won't even be able to procure the required components to release another batch!

Although I am not a fan of AMLogic, saying that ARM and many other things are proprietary and limited is a very limited look at the computing world.
When it comes to the amount of Libre, it will trump any Libre intel architecture based notebook.
Intel architecture stopped being libre with the introduction of the 586 or maybe even earlier.

[Ardje]

Has anyone looked at the video decoder support on similar boards? From what I can gather the Mali-450 has at least some support. Trying to figure out if this would make a good Kodi host.

The mali has nothing to do with video decoding.
Nor has the mali anything to do with video output.
It's nothing more than a 3d gpu.
I don't know the video decoder unit on an amlogic.
I know the samsung exynos are completely supported as they created v4l2 m2m for that.
I think the pi decoder/encoder now also has v4l2 m2m support.
I assume the amlogic is on it's way or is already finished.
To be clear: you have arm cpu cores, a mali gpu, a video decoder/encoder, a video mixer (that mixes X11 bitplanes with video bitplanes for instance).
Video mixers still have no correct abstraction in the linux kernel. Samsung tried a few (together with rotaters), but it usually got rejected. They even tried v4l2 abstraction.
Anyway: as code kodi goes, look at the odroid c2, I think it has almost the same SoC.

[danmcgrew]

Post #3:
"Are Pi's ports fake?"

About as fake as you can get--it was obvious when the Raspberry Pi 3B+ was announced, that the Raspberry Pi Organization themselves were feeding 'fake news" to ALL the technical media. The 3B+ was promoted as having "...GIGABIT ETHERNET...", and only after REALLY digging could you find out that the Raspberry Pi's "GIGABIT ETHERNET" could only run at a max of 300 Mbps, due to Ethernet being run through the USB controller--and this is the current situation.

It was obvious, from the uniformity of this announcement across almost ALL tech media that it had to have come from the RPi organization; and it was almost universally NOT qualified in any way, except by a small handful of high-quality tech journalists who obviously value their hard-won reputations.

You will still see, with no qualifications, the Raspberry Pi 3B+ advertised as having "Gigabit Ethernet".

"Are Pi's ports fake?"

Depends on who you ask: if you ask Bill Clinton if the RPi's 3B+ Gigabit Ethernet port is fake, the response will be, "What do you mean by 'fake'?"
Based on the fact that there has been absolutely no firm position--and no backing down--regarding clarification of this specification by the Raspberry Pi Organization, you'll probably get the exact same response from them.

Credibility is a terrible thing to lose.

[coder]

Post #3:
"Are Pi's ports fake?"

About as fake as you can get--it was obvious when the Raspberry Pi 3B+ was announced, that the Raspberry Pi Organization themselves were feeding 'fake news" to ALL the technical media.

Sir, step off the soapbox and put down the crack pipe, please.

m132 was clearly referring to the Pi Zero, and probably this sentence from the article:

The $5 ARM SBC is said to be 10x faster than the Raspberry Pi Zero plus having real HDMI, Ethernet, and USB ports.

The USB-rooted limitations of the Pi's SoC have already been discussed in this thread. I don't like it either, but we don't need your rant against "the RPi organization" concerning different products than the ones referenced in the article.

Credibility is a terrible thing to lose.

Protip: referencing Bill Clinton in a post about the Raspberry Pi that's already off-topic doesn't exactly help your credibility.

[starshipeleven]

Oh, agreed, you *can*, but my point is with no uSD card I can stuff in there and not buying an eMMC module, what can I do to boot it when I receive it. Does the SoC already have a boot ROM that knows how to probe USB and/or do PXE over the ethernet port? Or are they counting on the BROM to boot from the SPI and some secondary bootloader (like uboot) will take over. I can't find that info. I'm trying to get ready for when my board shows up. I'd like to know just what I need to have on hand. If the BROM only knows how to boot from eMMC, uSD, and SPI, but the SPI comes blank, then I'm up a creek without a paddle. I'd need to get out my pomona SOIC clips and rig up an SPI flash programmer and figure out what to put on it. That's a lot more work than burning a premade image on a USB stick or setting up a simple PXE boot server.

I asked this question on Kickstarter and got this reply:
"The SPI is flashed with u-boot. It supports network/PXE boot."
Elsewhere they replied to someone asking about boot sources and they replied:
"You can boot via USB sticks, USB hard drive, eMMC, or network boot."

So, it looks like BROM knows how to boot from uSD (not on the board), eMMC, and SPI. The SPI has a secondary bootloader that knows how to network boot and boot from USB.

That's all I'll need. I can just burn an image to a USB sitck, plug it in and be done. Yay, thanks Libre Computing Project!

Afaik they are using upstream uboot (or at least they did with their other boards with a similar Amlogic SoC) to boot from anything. The BROM is only used to boot u-boot from SPI.
u-boot is so damn powerful on its own that it's asinine to use the BROM as the only bootloader. u-boot is tiny, it will probably reside in the first half MB of the SPI chip, leaving the rest of it free to store a firmware.

As long as that thing has a serial TTL pins you can connect a TTL-USB dongle, you can serial in and configure the u-boot or use it to flash stuff.

using u-boot is the whole point of their "Unified Images with ARM64 Linux Kernel" initiative. That's an u-boot thing. https://embedded-recipes.org/2018/ta...ded-platforms/ "EBBR specifies a subset of the UEFI standard that can be implemented with upstream U-Boot"

[starshipeleven]

I am noticing that kickstarter rarely works for hardware like this.

1st Release - Large number of users back it and potentially they can make a batch for release, everyone is happy.
2nd Release? - Everyone who wanted it, already has one so doesn't need another

2nd Release never reaches critical mass to afford a batch and the whole project fails.

Things like the Helios4 NAS is at the second batch and it reached critical mass allright.

They did fail the initial crowdfunding though as they screwed up on goals and asked too much.

Also, it is not Libre.... It uses ARM and many other things that are proprietary and limited. In 3 years they won't even be able to procure the required components to release another batch!

Libre isn't about being made of components you can find forever, it's about making a product that will still be able to run the latest upstream Linux in 3 years.

If you want to make a long-lasting project you can choose from a big list of Marvell and NXP SoCs that are marketed to industry and networking, so they have decades of support and availability. If you pay the price for that.

[kpedersen]

Libre isn't about being made of components you can find forever, it's about making a product that will still be able to run the latest upstream Linux in 3 years.

No that is incorrect.

Libre is about freedom and using truly free (i.e potentially BSD, GPL, MIT licensed) hardware and firmware. La Frite hardware is unfortunately neither.
Lifespan is about future linux support and future procurement of hardware components.

Often they go hand in hand but the use of "Libre" in this hardware's marketing resource is incorrect and I feel false advertising.
I don't go around saying my closed source software that will probably work on Linux in 3 years is libre. So why should hardware developers do the same?

Although I am not a fan of AMLogic, saying that ARM and many other things are proprietary and limited is a very limited look at the computing world.

Don't get me wrong, I am fine with using hardware like this and I own more powerful proprietary hardware (i.e a simple thinkpad). However what is starting to get annoying is the misuse of the word "libre" with this kind of hobbyest stuff.

"Hackable" is fine. Even "Open" is correct but "Libre" is just plain wrong and misleading. When a truely "libre" system comes out, it will have compete against frauds like these because the users won't know the difference.

How would you guys differentiate a board like this with one that is made up of entirely open-source components and firmware? Perhaps even ones you could fabricate yourself? What would you call them? "Libreist libre", "Truely very libre", "Ultimate libre"?

[starshipeleven]

I don't go around saying my closed source software that will probably work on Linux in 3 years is libre. So why should hardware developers do the same?

Opensource or Libre or FOSS is a fundamentally communist thing, it works only if the proletariat seizes the means of production.

To compile your software you don't need to contact one of the few foundries on the planet and place a large order to manufacture hundreds of thousands of hardware components at a time to be able to lower the cost-per-part to a reasonable level.

People can't build my hardware designs from source either so they can't really trust them much more than a non-free design anyway.

Until IC design and manufacturing costs are lowered significantly, the license of the IC design itself is irrelevant.


The only true "libre hardware" is the electronics made of dumb components (simple non-programmable ICs) and electronic boards, where everyone can have a few boards made for less than 40$ shipped and buy the generic simple components from Mouser or other electronic component retailer.
Which is also where the "open hardware" or "libre hardware" movement originated in the first place.

The misuse of the word "libre" with this kind of hobbyest stuff.

It's probably a consequence of Raspberry and similar shit-grade boards abusing the "open" or "opensource" word to describe themselves when in fact no they are not and still require blobs.

This thing is much more open than that and it needs some way of showing it. I'll allow that.

"Hackable" is fine. Even "Open" is correct but "Libre" is just plain wrong and misleading. When a truely "libre" system comes out, it will have compete against frauds like these because the users won't know the difference.

Theoretically? Yeah.

In practice? See above. It's not going to happen in a way that is comparable to opensource software, so... does it even need to? No it does not.

Even a GPL-licensed processor can be full of DRM-enforcing shit and "security coprocessors", and you can't do shit about it unless you are in charge of a billion dollar company that can modify it, take the design to foundries and have it mass-produced at a decent process size.

How would you guys differentiate a board like this with one that is made up of entirely open-source components and firmware? Perhaps even ones you could fabricate yourself? What would you call them?

Unobtanium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unobtainium