ODROID Rolling Out New Intel-Powered Single Board Computer After Trying With Ryzen

[schmidtbag]

The only thing I don't really like is how we have yet another tiny Intel system. There's NUC, Brix, UDOO, UP, and I think Zotac makes some too. I'm not sure if there are others. The only AMD boards I'm aware of are the Gizmos, and there aren't many of them and I don't think any are currently based on Zen. Hardkernel would've been better off with the slightly higher price to use a less common product.
To my knowledge, there are no small devices like this available with GPU processing power similar to the Tegra series but based on x86. It's pretty much an un-tapped market.

[coder]

IMHO, it stops being SBC once a moderately powerful x86 chip is used. Once that low power benefit is lost ...

If your concern is with power consumption or dissipation, why does it matter whether the uArch is x86, ARM, etc.?

The original UpBoard uses an older, low-power x86 SoC originally designed for use in cell phones. There's also this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Edison

[coder]

I'm on the fence about this. On one hand, I like Odroid and all their neat products; on the other hand, I'd rather have a Ryzen powered unit even though it would cost more because Ryzen has a much better GPU platform and I'd really only use one of these to play emulated games.

Only GPU? You forget these only have Golmont+ cores, which should be no match for Ryzen CPU cores.

They said price was the stumbling block. You can get Ryzen APU performance, but you'll have to pay for it.

[coder]

Now, create NAS-like case, and this would sell well... Having Linux powered NAS with OS on m.2 SSD and two spinning mirrored drives for data. Would be great!

If you read their original forum thread (second post), they show a rough design for exactly such a case.

https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=32536#p236117

[Nille]

Where did you get that from?

From an German Article and that another Device with this Chip and 2GB Ram is at 170$

[Otus]

Yes, but U in AMD's nomenclature means - standard mobile chip, these are FP5 not AM4. AM4 only have lower power 35W, but not real low power.

Oh, right. But that does show the chip can do it – it's the same silicon as desktop chips. So a BIOS level downclock and maybe downvolt could make it work. Probably not worth it, though.

[horizonbrave]

Very beautiful board but very disappointed by the lack of support forECC ram. It's a pity especially considering the crowds of home lab people outthere will to pay the premium (or what about designing a board able support both ECC and non-ECC?). It just gives you that extra piece of mind for server like applications especially if using COW enabled file systems. The DIY/home NAS market is not a small one and would definitely would benefit from a bit more attention to the detail and break the boring monopoly of overpriced Synology/Qnap devices!

I just recently found out about this project:

https://kobol.io/helios4/

It support ECC RAM but it's sold out, but I read somewhere they should come up with a successor... finger crossed

[dungeon]

Oh, right. But that does show the chip can do it – it's the same silicon as desktop chips. So a BIOS level downclock and maybe downvolt could make it work. Probably not worth it, though.

Of course not worth it, AM4 is desktop socket - bigger, while FP5 is notebook - smaller. Both are flexible but in different power ranges, AM4 goes in range of let say 35W to 105W, FP5 in range of 12W to 54W.

Basically diff is kind of - cut in 2 max or cut in 3 min Optimal base of AM4 is 65W, base of FP5 is 15W. It is totally different POV on these, on Desktop you want performance so these desktop lower TDP ones are called power optimized, while in notebook space it is the opposite these are designed for low power in the first place so these with more TDP are just power bumped up ones

Further small and down is possible, but that is ultra low power designs with simplified cores, like this Intel's Goldmont+ one here or AMD Cats before (Bobcat, Jaguar, Puma, Puma+), you know AM1 platform or gaming consoles PS4/XBOne these have ultra bumped up Jaguars instead...

He, he, on XBOne X they even calls it 'AMD-customized Jaguar Evolved', it is just good old Jaguar+++ but architecture optimal power is actually more than half that, about 9W... really it is for ultra low power laptops or tooked down further even for tablets, since that way could go even bellow 5W, Mullinses were like 3.95W TDP or 2.8W SDP

For AM1 socket one can say 25W TDP or 16W SDP, as these can't go further - only if you OC them Like on RPi 3+ B, you can OC that, power will go up a lot, but it does not make sense as it can't do much more

[NotMine999]

Very beautiful board but very disappointed by the lack of support ECC ram. It's a pity especially considering the crowds of home lab people outthere will to pay the premium (or what about designing a board able support both ECC and non-ECC?). It just gives you that extra piece of mind for server like applications especially if using COW enabled file systems. The DIY/home NAS market is not a small one and would definitely would benefit from a bit more attention to the detail and break the boring monopoly of overpriced Synology/Qnap devices!

I just recently found out about this project:

https://kobol.io/helios4/

It support ECC RAM but it's sold out, but I read somewhere they should come up with a successor... finger crossed

You have a long wait ahead of you. Have a look at this (link to Intel's ARK page for the 4105 SoC):

https://ark.intel.com/products/128989/Intel-Celeron-J4105-Processor-4M-Cache-up-to-2-50-GHz-

As for NAS use in the current design, you are limited to the 2 SATA connectors. If you want more than 2 SATA drive connectors, then an intermediate chip, like ASM1061/ASM1062, has to be added, and that requires a hardware respin, but then your SATA throughput might/should be throttled by the interconnect link speed between the SoC (4105) and the add-on SATA controller.

It is nice to see the ability to use a M.2 silicon-based storage device. I suspect that takes away some of the PCIe links that would otherwise be used for links to SATA devices.

[NotMine999]

It just occurred to me -- with these being x86_64 and them testing them with a 2x16gb configuration, these would make a damn fine ZFS based home file server with a dedup enabled mirror. Now I'm very interested in this.

Current design limited to 2 SATA devices only, so why bother with ZFS when RAID-1 will also work and with less "overhead"?

Also, using "mdadm" (for RAID-1) does not taint the kernel or require that you depend upon (that means "wait for") 3rd party developers to keep ZFS in sync with Linux kernel versions.

Finally, the Intel 4105 SoC is limited to 8GB or non-ECC RAM support per it's Intel ARK page. So how is 32GB of RAM going to help you? Even if the system does initialize by the BIOS, I suspect you might see Linux "dmesg" error messages saying there are MTRR issues that prevent all 32GB from being accessible in Linux. I have seen that with the Intel 3700/3710 SoC where the system would boot with 2x8GB of RAM installed, but Linux could only access 8GB due to MTRR issues, so I replaced the 2x8GB sticks with 2x4GB sticks and all is well.