That's "competition" as in a product competing in the same market segment as another.
That's "Pi" as in this is an alternative product for those who might be thinking of using a Raspberry Pi board.
But anyway I guess you were joking.
More importantly, as we are on a Parallax forum I don't see any relation to Parallax or it's products. So let's make one.
Looks like that board is another item on my Christmas wish list. It's going to run Simple IDE and all the open source Propeller tools marvelously. Having a credit card sized development system for the Propellers cannot be bad.
The BIG one ($135) hung off the back of a BIG HDMI monitor would do 90% of what I do (ok, be nice) and clear up a lot of real estate and power from my desktop environment. The 2GB of memory makes it really sweet. Put some NAS storage out on the network and life would be pretty complete. Need a set top box for the TV, $35-$70 and XMBC and you're ready to go.
I can imagine this little ARM board can pretty much do everything that the huge stonking great PC under my desk does for me.
Back in the day the little cheap micro-processors, and Intel started much of that, displaced minicomputers. They were not so fast and powerful and perhaps had less memory and I/O capability. But hey, they were dead cheap and useful and soon everybody had one.
Once we get away from the "I need Windows for my software" hence "I need Intel for my Windows" mentality then we are in a whole new world where small, low power and cheap rules.
I'm not saying the "Wintel" PC is going away very soon. But the writing is on the walls as it was for the PDP/11 back in 1976.
I've looked at ARM board replacements for PCs for quite some time. As my platform is Linux it doesn't matter if the CPU is x86 or not (it could be any of x86, MIPS, Sparc, PPC, Alpha, ARM, PA-risc, ia64 - I've ran Linux on all of them in the past).
What's been missing from ARM-based platforms has been SATA support built into the chipsets (SoC/PoP). Mass storage has usually been via SDIO or SPI or some such, and much too slow for a PC replacement. But I've hope that this will change soon, if it hasn't already. I've kept an eye on those odroid (hardkernel) boards for a while now - they're pretty impressive.
That's right. ARMs have not been targeting desktop use. Not since the original Archimedes PC anyway. Quite wisely I guess as going directly against Intel in that space would have been a disaster. So they mopped up in the phone/tablet mobile space and a lot of embedded systems instead.
But now they are growing upwards, Recently there has been announcements of 64 bit ARMs for server use. Power consumption in server farms is a big issue.
At the same time PC are disappearing. A lot of what most people do with a PC does not need a huge honking Intel chip, hence the rise of tablets and such.
We can only hope that ARMs with nice fast storage interfaces will arrive soon. Looks like it's going that way.
... "I need Windows for my software" hence "I need Intel for my Windows" mentality ...
The answer, Windows 8 RT. I have been looking at the Windows Surface tablet, a nice unit, but I am waiting for the Intel version, just to see what is offered in that version, than we shall see what I end up with. So, Microsoft is getting into the ARM computers, can not get rid of MS that fast.
The solution that I am really looking for is, getting rid of the PC tower box that is cluttering up my desk area. I know they have the "all-in-one" solutions but they do get a little pricey. Would be nice to have something about the size of a cigar box, or smaller, with a processor that is maybe about 3.0GHz, sitting next to my 24" monitor, what would I do with all that extra space that has now appeared?
But good luck finding all you fav apps to run on an ARM machine in the near future.
Most people I know have dumped big box PC's for laptops. Even if they are huge laptops that I would not want to carry anywhere.
What you are describing is a MacMini kind of form factor. Something I would love as well as the two two tower boxes hanging around my desk are 90% empty space.
Pick a up a used Asus netbook for $90, slap Linux on it and call it good. That way you don't need a ARM board and then having to buy a case, power supply, keyboard, mouse, HDMI display that will altogether set you back as much as a new netbook. Of course it doesn't have the coolness of being a quad core CPU.
Look if your main goal is to have a small portable development system, there are already nice net and note books that fit the criteria.
Now buying it to learn how to code for multicore ARM's, that's a different story. Multicores are the way of the future. Freescale already has 8 core SOC's.
Hmmm. what an incredible shrinking hobby. We are now down to half-credit card size while up to 1.7Gb clock, 2Mb ram, and 4 cores. And all for $89 USD.
I suspect I should start collecting these for my non-existent grand-children. One of everything starting with the Propeller C3, the Raspberry Pi, and so on.
I am still holding out and waiting delivery of a Cubieboard as I actually think it will work better for me by being a bit larger with some features that make more sense to me. It is due to arrive before Christmas.
Powering off of a USB port is rather silly as 500ma just isn't enough to run other USB ports. This is an honest 2 amps rather than a phoney 500ma.
I don't understand who is the market for these quad cores outside of entertainment oriented handhelds. You don't need a quad core to run a C compiler or even Quartus or use a Office suite, a single core works great for any of these. For sheer number crunching the Nvidia GPU's have that market sewn up.
I don't understand who is the market for these quad cores outside of entertainment oriented handhelds. You don't need a quad core to run a C compiler or even Quartus or use a Office suite, a single core works great for any of these. For sheer number crunching the Nvidia GPU's have that market sewn up.
With modern multitasking OSs it's nice to have the multiple cores/cpus. One to run the OS another for your web browser, another for libreoffice and another for your C compiler!
I don't understand who is the market for these quad cores outside of entertainment oriented handhelds. You don't need a quad core to run a C compiler or even Quartus or use a Office suite, a single core works great for any of these. For sheer number crunching the Nvidia GPU's have that market sewn up.
My multi-core I3, I5 and I7 systems seem to be able to use more than one core when running Linux, OS X and even Windows 7. You only use one core??
Now I see. The thought is this device is going to compete WITH the RPi for market share. I was thinking there was a competition USING the device. Although I did wonder whether folks were going to pay a bunch of money to enter a contest.
I guess I don't see everything as an "either/or" choice. I don't have to choose either Phillips screwdriver or a standard screwdriver, I have a whole set of both, and use which ever one best fits the job.
Offerings for chip and end products are not a zero sum game. It doesn't matter which processor sells more, it only matters that lots and lots of people are using more processors and making cool stuff happen. The more cool stuff there is, the more folks are attracted, and the market expands.
Look if your main goal is to have a small portable development system, there are already nice net and note books that fit the criteria.
If your main goal is portability then yes. But what if you just want to make those huge PC boxes disappear whilst keeping your nice big screens and keyboards on your desk? Doing that with a laptop is messy.
What if you want to build some kind of embedded system that could do with being small? We have used PC104 form factor Intel boards for that for years now we have something else.
Now buying it to learn how to code for multicore ARM's, that's a different story. Multicores are the way of the future.
Indeed. But having ARM is not a requisite to getting into multi-core programming. You can always use C and OpenMP on any multi-core machine. And now we have Google's Go language that makes multi-threaded multi-core programming much easier.
You don't need a quad core to run a C compiler...
Perhaps not need, but compiling propgcc on a Raspberry Pi takes about twelve hours. That compilation of thousands of files can be spread over many processes and cores for a big speed up on PC. So it can be done on multi-core ARM as well. Except currently the bottle neck here is storage access speed.
Pick a up a used Asus netbook for $90, slap Linux on it and call it good. That way you don't need a ARM board and [..]
The main reason I'm attracted to the idea of ARM netbooks is the power consumption. All small x86-based netbooks fail in that department. I spend a lot of time in cafeterias and elsewhere where I hack away on a laptop or notebook, and if I intend to do more than just check may email and leave I have to find a table where there is an electric outlet. I compile C code and run and debug my applications, and no battery in any x86 that's even remotely portable can handle a day on battery-only there. In addition to be limited to where there's electricity I also have to carry around that x86-notebook / laptop transformer, and they are always big and tip the scale to make the backpack uncomfortable to carry around.
Contrast that with my (multi-core) ARM-based Asus Transformer.. tons and tons of battery time (and in any case the charger is tiny compared to even my smallest x86 notebook's) and if it didn't run Android but a standard Linux inst I would have nearly what I wanted. What's missing is the SATA interface and a big SSD disk. With the new designs on the market (like the Odroid X) we're so close to having a fully compatible (usage-wise) notebook / laptop replacement which can run on battery only, all the time.
I agree with Tor, an Asus notebook is a better value because everything is already integrated. Buying a used one is almost a steal.
Has anyone looked at the actual support site? There are an awful lot of items that much be purchased in addition to the board. And the big heatsink is just a starter. I am loosing interest due to hidden costs and some potential issues with getting you interface to the real world the way you want it.
BTW, stick with an Asus notebook. I switched to a Toshiba and it just isn't a durable. You want a real glass monitor screen, note a sheet of clear plastic that is easily damage by wash fingerprints and smudges away. And now, the top of my Toshiba is breaking at one of the hinge points.
However for long hours of serious work I want a big screen, preferably two. I want my big clunky keyboard with proper keys. I want a nice mouse. I want a a big desk area for all my assorted notes and junk.
I don't want that huge PC box hanging around. Currently there are three on or under my desk.
I wish someone would make a transformer sized, or smaller, device with no screen and no keyboard. I'm not often into working on the go, except for checking mail and surfing for which I have phones and tabs already. That device would just get lost behind my screen and free up a lot of space.
These new ARM boards are such devices, nut without the nice packaging. If only we could hook up terabyte drives and SSD's.
Via has introduced the Artigo A1250 (PICO-ITX), no price mentioned, but I think it will be around $350.00? It looks like it was designed to attach to the back of a large monitor, but at 1GHz, it might not be powerful enough for what I want to do. I will be keeping an I on this one.
However for long hours of serious work I want a big screen, preferably two. I want my big clunky keyboard with proper keys. I want a nice mouse. I want a a big desk area for all my assorted notes and junk.
I don't want that huge PC box hanging around. Currently there are three on or under my desk.
I wish someone would make a transformer sized, or smaller, device with no screen and no keyboard. I'm not often into working on the go, except for checking mail and surfing for which I have phones and tabs already. That device would just get lost behind my screen and free up a lot of space.
These new ARM boards are such devices, nut without the nice packaging. If only we could hook up terabyte drives and SSD's.
Asus did, maybe still does. It was part of the EEEpc product line.
I really like Asus. One can do a lot worse and it is very difficult to do a lot better in mainstream computers. Why so? They used to and now their offshoot, Pegatron makes a huge share of the OEM motherboards for everyone.
I really like Asus. One can do a lot worse and it is very difficult to do a lot better in mainstream computers.
I really like their motherboards, but their laptops, are junk. I made the mistake of buying an Asus laptop, luckily I was able to take it back and get a Lenovo laptop, they are very very good laptops.
It was the 15" screen model, but I cannot remember the model number. Two of the biggest problems were, a very mushy keyboard, and I mean mushy. The second, and maybe the biggest was access to the memory. It had a slot exposed for one stick of memory expansion, the existing memory stick was under the chassis, so if you ever wanted, or needed to change it out you would have to take the unit apart. The unit itself looked and felt like a very cheap build, now when I think about, I do not know why I purchased that piece of junk. The unit was purchased at the beginning of this year, so it was not one of their very first models. I was very disappointed with Asus, but not their motherboards.
Ray,
What was the problem with your ASUS laptop?
I was just taking a shine to some of their products, almost ready to slap down some cash.
I never got an Asus laptop but I did get one of their netbooks a while back. Worked nice and I liked it until I dropped it an broke the case around the display. I wasn't expecting warranty repair but was just trying to find a way to send it back to them or a dealer here in the US to get it repaired. The process was to make a lot of calls to their support line that could understand what I was saying clearly without issue until it was time to give them an email address for them to send me and RMA. At that point they couldn't understand what I was saying and after three day with 20+ calls (I have CDO) with promises of an RMA that never arrived I finally gave up. At that point I promised myself that I'd never get another Asus laptop or netbook as they're not supported by Asus.
That's rather sad. Here in Taiwan, I just walk into their service center. But I do know that they have to do a lot of different things in different countries to support products.
I bought a Sony CLIE PDA for about $550 USD just because it had both Chinese and English interface. Added about $200 USD in software and then it fell of a table 30 days later and the screen went inky black.
I took that into Taiwan's Sony repair an they told me they would not touch it because it was intended for export to the USA only. I was furious and the service manager had to duck rather quickly as I tried to bean him with it. It hit a concrete wall behind him and was history.
Nobody likes hitting a dead end when they want something repaired that claims to offer that service. To this day, i won't touch another Sony product.
~~~
I know nothing about laptops of any brand, but I had an EEEpc 701 that I dropped twice on concrete ... including once down a set of stairs and it just had a mark on its corner. That was a lovely piece of equipment. Of course, the very tiny screen helped to prevent damage. And a solid state hard disk will stand up to a lot more than a regular one.
My Toshiba NB250 is not holding up very well. The case cracked around the hinge in the last day or two. I had to replace the screen as washing it cause it to go blank and the Toshiba service department here first told me to just buy another one. Now I know why. Battery died last month.
BTW, my CubieBoard is on the way. It is not a Quad, but I like the features better than the Raspberry PI. Cost $49 or up... depending on extras and shipping.
jdolecki
Posts: 726
Comments
Quad core micro board is pretty cool though!
That's "competition" as in a product competing in the same market segment as another.
That's "Pi" as in this is an alternative product for those who might be thinking of using a Raspberry Pi board.
But anyway I guess you were joking.
More importantly, as we are on a Parallax forum I don't see any relation to Parallax or it's products. So let's make one.
Looks like that board is another item on my Christmas wish list. It's going to run Simple IDE and all the open source Propeller tools marvelously. Having a credit card sized development system for the Propellers cannot be bad.
Life is getting very interesting, indeed!!
You just made the "not friends of robots list"
So when the robots take over watch out!
Ha
Agree on both.
I can imagine this little ARM board can pretty much do everything that the huge stonking great PC under my desk does for me.
Back in the day the little cheap micro-processors, and Intel started much of that, displaced minicomputers. They were not so fast and powerful and perhaps had less memory and I/O capability. But hey, they were dead cheap and useful and soon everybody had one.
Once we get away from the "I need Windows for my software" hence "I need Intel for my Windows" mentality then we are in a whole new world where small, low power and cheap rules.
I'm not saying the "Wintel" PC is going away very soon. But the writing is on the walls as it was for the PDP/11 back in 1976.
What's been missing from ARM-based platforms has been SATA support built into the chipsets (SoC/PoP). Mass storage has usually been via SDIO or SPI or some such, and much too slow for a PC replacement. But I've hope that this will change soon, if it hasn't already. I've kept an eye on those odroid (hardkernel) boards for a while now - they're pretty impressive.
-Tor
That's right. ARMs have not been targeting desktop use. Not since the original Archimedes PC anyway. Quite wisely I guess as going directly against Intel in that space would have been a disaster. So they mopped up in the phone/tablet mobile space and a lot of embedded systems instead.
But now they are growing upwards, Recently there has been announcements of 64 bit ARMs for server use. Power consumption in server farms is a big issue.
At the same time PC are disappearing. A lot of what most people do with a PC does not need a huge honking Intel chip, hence the rise of tablets and such.
We can only hope that ARMs with nice fast storage interfaces will arrive soon. Looks like it's going that way.
The answer, Windows 8 RT. I have been looking at the Windows Surface tablet, a nice unit, but I am waiting for the Intel version, just to see what is offered in that version, than we shall see what I end up with. So, Microsoft is getting into the ARM computers, can not get rid of MS that fast.
The solution that I am really looking for is, getting rid of the PC tower box that is cluttering up my desk area. I know they have the "all-in-one" solutions but they do get a little pricey. Would be nice to have something about the size of a cigar box, or smaller, with a processor that is maybe about 3.0GHz, sitting next to my 24" monitor, what would I do with all that extra space that has now appeared?
Ray
But good luck finding all you fav apps to run on an ARM machine in the near future.
Most people I know have dumped big box PC's for laptops. Even if they are huge laptops that I would not want to carry anywhere.
What you are describing is a MacMini kind of form factor. Something I would love as well as the two two tower boxes hanging around my desk are 90% empty space.
Look if your main goal is to have a small portable development system, there are already nice net and note books that fit the criteria.
Now buying it to learn how to code for multicore ARM's, that's a different story. Multicores are the way of the future. Freescale already has 8 core SOC's.
I suspect I should start collecting these for my non-existent grand-children. One of everything starting with the Propeller C3, the Raspberry Pi, and so on.
I am still holding out and waiting delivery of a Cubieboard as I actually think it will work better for me by being a bit larger with some features that make more sense to me. It is due to arrive before Christmas.
Powering off of a USB port is rather silly as 500ma just isn't enough to run other USB ports. This is an honest 2 amps rather than a phoney 500ma.
With modern multitasking OSs it's nice to have the multiple cores/cpus. One to run the OS another for your web browser, another for libreoffice and another for your C compiler!
My multi-core I3, I5 and I7 systems seem to be able to use more than one core when running Linux, OS X and even Windows 7. You only use one core??
I guess I don't see everything as an "either/or" choice. I don't have to choose either Phillips screwdriver or a standard screwdriver, I have a whole set of both, and use which ever one best fits the job.
Offerings for chip and end products are not a zero sum game. It doesn't matter which processor sells more, it only matters that lots and lots of people are using more processors and making cool stuff happen. The more cool stuff there is, the more folks are attracted, and the market expands.
What if you want to build some kind of embedded system that could do with being small? We have used PC104 form factor Intel boards for that for years now we have something else. Indeed. But having ARM is not a requisite to getting into multi-core programming. You can always use C and OpenMP on any multi-core machine. And now we have Google's Go language that makes multi-threaded multi-core programming much easier. Perhaps not need, but compiling propgcc on a Raspberry Pi takes about twelve hours. That compilation of thousands of files can be spread over many processes and cores for a big speed up on PC. So it can be done on multi-core ARM as well. Except currently the bottle neck here is storage access speed.
Contrast that with my (multi-core) ARM-based Asus Transformer.. tons and tons of battery time (and in any case the charger is tiny compared to even my smallest x86 notebook's) and if it didn't run Android but a standard Linux inst I would have nearly what I wanted. What's missing is the SATA interface and a big SSD disk. With the new designs on the market (like the Odroid X) we're so close to having a fully compatible (usage-wise) notebook / laptop replacement which can run on battery only, all the time.
-Tor
Has anyone looked at the actual support site? There are an awful lot of items that much be purchased in addition to the board. And the big heatsink is just a starter. I am loosing interest due to hidden costs and some potential issues with getting you interface to the real world the way you want it.
BTW, stick with an Asus notebook. I switched to a Toshiba and it just isn't a durable. You want a real glass monitor screen, note a sheet of clear plastic that is easily damage by wash fingerprints and smudges away. And now, the top of my Toshiba is breaking at one of the hinge points.
However for long hours of serious work I want a big screen, preferably two. I want my big clunky keyboard with proper keys. I want a nice mouse. I want a a big desk area for all my assorted notes and junk.
I don't want that huge PC box hanging around. Currently there are three on or under my desk.
I wish someone would make a transformer sized, or smaller, device with no screen and no keyboard. I'm not often into working on the go, except for checking mail and surfing for which I have phones and tabs already. That device would just get lost behind my screen and free up a lot of space.
These new ARM boards are such devices, nut without the nice packaging. If only we could hook up terabyte drives and SSD's.
-Tor
Ray
Asus did, maybe still does. It was part of the EEEpc product line.
http://hothardware.com/News/Asus_Eee_PC_Desktop_Eee_Box_Unveiled/
http://eeepc.asus.com/
I really like Asus. One can do a lot worse and it is very difficult to do a lot better in mainstream computers. Why so? They used to and now their offshoot, Pegatron makes a huge share of the OEM motherboards for everyone.
The EEEbox seems still alive and well.
http://www.asus.com/Eee/EeeBox_PC/EeeBox_PC_EB1035/
Ray
What was the problem with your ASUS laptop?
I was just taking a shine to some of their products, almost ready to slap down some cash.
Ray
I never got an Asus laptop but I did get one of their netbooks a while back. Worked nice and I liked it until I dropped it an broke the case around the display. I wasn't expecting warranty repair but was just trying to find a way to send it back to them or a dealer here in the US to get it repaired. The process was to make a lot of calls to their support line that could understand what I was saying clearly without issue until it was time to give them an email address for them to send me and RMA. At that point they couldn't understand what I was saying and after three day with 20+ calls (I have CDO) with promises of an RMA that never arrived I finally gave up. At that point I promised myself that I'd never get another Asus laptop or netbook as they're not supported by Asus.
I bought a Sony CLIE PDA for about $550 USD just because it had both Chinese and English interface. Added about $200 USD in software and then it fell of a table 30 days later and the screen went inky black.
I took that into Taiwan's Sony repair an they told me they would not touch it because it was intended for export to the USA only. I was furious and the service manager had to duck rather quickly as I tried to bean him with it. It hit a concrete wall behind him and was history.
Nobody likes hitting a dead end when they want something repaired that claims to offer that service. To this day, i won't touch another Sony product.
~~~
I know nothing about laptops of any brand, but I had an EEEpc 701 that I dropped twice on concrete ... including once down a set of stairs and it just had a mark on its corner. That was a lovely piece of equipment. Of course, the very tiny screen helped to prevent damage. And a solid state hard disk will stand up to a lot more than a regular one.
My Toshiba NB250 is not holding up very well. The case cracked around the hinge in the last day or two. I had to replace the screen as washing it cause it to go blank and the Toshiba service department here first told me to just buy another one. Now I know why. Battery died last month.
http://cubieboard.org/