Adios Intel and AMD, hello Rock-chip and Allwinner
LoopyByteloose
Posts: 12,537
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/chinese-upstarts-rockchip-and-allwinner-put-pressure-qualcomm-and-intel-tab/2015-08-21
I first became aware of Allwinner when I purchased a Cubieboard2 which I felt was superior the Raspberry Pi at that time. Now I see that these ARM chips out of Cambridge have been setting the world on fire - jumping to 27 percent of the current market share.
Of course, the Raspberry Pi is still included in that, but try taking a look www.cubieboard.org as we are up to the Cubieboard5.
I first became aware of Allwinner when I purchased a Cubieboard2 which I felt was superior the Raspberry Pi at that time. Now I see that these ARM chips out of Cambridge have been setting the world on fire - jumping to 27 percent of the current market share.
Of course, the Raspberry Pi is still included in that, but try taking a look www.cubieboard.org as we are up to the Cubieboard5.
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"Meanwhile, Allwinner does not just get chips to customers quickly, Ben El Baz, a company business development manager, told Bloomberg. "Until that first customer gets the first tablet off the production line, our engineering teams basically live in the factories of the customers," he said. "They do whatever it takes. You don't get that in the U.S.''
No Ben, you don't get exactly that in the U.S.
"Rockchip and Allwinner have focused on being fast movers that throw caution to the wind. For example, instead of designing, making and testing a chipset, and then repeating that process, they use basic ARM building blocks to jump quickly through the "make and test" phase and skip the re-testing. "
You do however get re-testing, which is not there simply because the Manf wants to waste money.
Chinese company with 1/4 the labor costs is able to undercut rivals by not doing any R&D, cutting corners and having lower labor costs. News at Eleven.
ARM is gearing up to take on Intel in the server space as well. Where the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, the NSA etc are wanting to reduce their greatest expense in running those huge spying operations, err, data centres: power consumption.
For that ARM is moving to 64 bits to allow for the huge RAM spaces required.
I have an order in for an 8 core, 64 bit, ARM board. This one:
https://www.96boards.org/products/ce/hikey/
I'm sure there will be many like that coming down the pipe soon.
That only leaves Intel the super computer market space and the ever dwindling desktop PC market. Of course they could start producing ARM by the bazillion with their huge chip fab capacity. But profits would be a lot slimmer than they are used to. Perhaps they can't even make a profit out of it up against the existing competition.
On the other hand....those cunning Chinese, always looking to cut price, could well decide that licensing ARM cores is too expensive and slow to negotiate. With their supreme agility, as the article you linked to points out, they could quickly switch to the royalty free and Open Source RISV V architecture. In a trice ARM could be out of the running!
ARM x64 will probably be a big help, however with all the high-level interest Risc V seems to be getting from the players, I can see them possibly being eclipsed.
Depends upon whether or not Risc V can scale up to significant comparable IPC.
China is already dragging the world into a recession, and with India attracting investment as the 'new China', will be interesting to see how they compete against someone with an even lower labor cost, and relatively higher education portion of population.
College and university >
35.89% Ranked 3rd. 50% more than China
Labor Costs (Bloomberg)
Nov 6, 2014 - The hourly labor cost in India for manufacturing averages 92¢, compared with $3.52 in China
IIRC, they produce 1.2M Engineering graduates per year.
And CubieBoard does have a 8 Core 2Mhz.
www.cubieboard.org
Try there for specifications of something available and working.
This savage price cutting started a long way back. I recall in the 1970s that all the major MBA programs in the USA were pushing cost reductions on all and everything. (Perhaps that is how the US got Walmart and Costco.) I fear it is just another case of China learning from the West.
If you are in the market for a small cheap desktop, the CubieTruck (aka CubieBoard3) with added case and power supply is very available, including space for a hard disk of some kind and lithium ion battery pack for independent power. The CubieBoard4 seems to have limited GPIO and eliminated the SATA interface, not sure what is going on. and there is a new Einstien board series.
Meanwhile, Intel has purchased Altera... not sure what that means about anything. There are other FPGA concerns that are leaner and meaner with less that 10% market share.
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I just saw the article and noticed it confirmed a change that I have been suspecting for quite some time.
What's the thing with the CubieBoard and 8 Core 2Mhz?
I can't glean anything from those links. Anything more specific?
Yeah, I've looked a couple of times, and tried Google.
Darned if I can find basic stats on the CB/Truck 5.
Either way, everything I've read on various Linux small device boards seems to indicated that Allwinner and Rock are misery to try and develop for. Not a lot of documentation, and that available is often wrong or something. Hate when people say 'my time is too valuable for x,y, or z", however penny wise, pound foolish is worth considering in my opinion on some of this stuff.
You may be right.
I haven't done much with my CubieBoard2 other than load it with Android and Ubuntu Linux.
Heater,
If you go to the graphic image of each generation of CubieBoard and click on that image, it will open a page that lists specifications and documentation. I suspect a lot of people just are not finding their way to the product specifications and documentation pages.
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Everything was fast and pretty in Android, but in Ubuntu it was obviously much slower. There does seem to be a proprietary side to the video in these little SoC devices. And of course, there may be a language barrier as well. Primary documentation may be in Chinese.
Nonetheless, the growth in market share is there. And my prime interest is the original CubieTruck aka CubieBoard3 as it does include that all important SATA interface for mass storage.
Do yo have a direct link to that "8 core 2MHz feature" of Cubie?
All I'm finding is "Dual Cortex A7" bla bla...
Now, I am not so sure the 8 core is 64bit. It seems the GPU is 64 core and that spec might have gotten confused with 64bit processing. One could seek out the specs from Allwinner for UltraOctaA80 chipset.
http://system-on-a-chip.specout.com/l/950/Allwinner-A80
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubieboard
Try Googling 'CubieBoard 8 core' to follow the news releases. Allegedly, the CubieBoard/Truck 5 (aka CubieTruckPLUS) is on sale somewhere in the world, but I've no idea of where or how to purchase one.
http://cubieboard.org/2014/05/04/cubietech-will-promote-a80-high-performance-mini-pc/
"Recently, Allwinner Technology has given permission to Cubietech for jointly development of open source development Cubieboard 8 microcomputer based on UltraOctaA80 chipset. A80 is a 28nm 8 -core high-performance application processor with a CPU dominant frequency of 2GHz. It also has the following amazing features:
1. A new generation of 64-core GPU graphics core PowerVR G6230
2. A new generation of display engine that supports H.265 hardware solution, 4K resolution codec, 3-screen simultaneous output
3. It supports more than 2GB of memory
4. It supports USB 3.0
5. It supports 16 million -pixel high-definition camera" -- excerpted from 2014/05.04 news release
http://cubieboard.org/2015/07/14/the-prototype-photoes-of-cubieboard5/
That new Cubie does of course sound very attractive. The proof is in the pudding of course as koehler points out. If the thing is not documented and supported well enough to get everything working it's a waste.
The Propeller Forums are primarily here at the convenience of the the host, Parallax.
I come here to learn more about Parallax products. I have always felt that all the Linux based devices -- BeagleBone, PandaBoard, Raspberry Pi, and CubieBoard are an entirely secondary topic to the actual use of the BasicStamp and the Propeller.
Linux, Android, Windows, and OSx are huge topics in regards to proper care and feeding and have other sites that support them. I have at least three other workhorse Linux OS systems up and running that I do learn on and work with. So the CubieBoard is tucked away for a rainy day.
My primary points with the CubieBoard versus the Raspberry Pi remain obvious.
A. Better construction of the power distribution so that one doesn't have to cobble together power for the mouse and keyboard with a powered USB hub.
B. The availability of a SATA port makes the CubieBoard more useful as it can support mass storage, or a DVD player.
And I seem to recall that my CubieBoard has twice the DRAM of the Raspberry Pi I was comparing it to at that point in time.
As always, I agree with you that a Cubie or many other ARM boards or even non-ARM boards have attractive features that may make them preferable to a Pi in many cases. If you need those features then they are what you need, not a Pi.
That does not detract from the Pi in anyway. It is what it is. It does what it does. It was ground breaking in the ARM board world. Notably on price vs performance. It has massive support and documentation. For a vast ocean of hobby and even non hobby applications it suits fine. And the price still cannot be beaten (Can it now ?)
As it happens I have never had to "cobble together power for the mouse and keyboard". SATA would only have jacked up the price and is not actually required for the intended use. Similarly more RAM is always nice but I'm guessing it would rarely be used for the types of applications Pi's are put to.
It's all trade offs. Pay for what you need.
Which way would you like to go?
I'm going to be a bit miffed if ARM grows up and kills off Intel (And AMD). I have no love for the x86 architecture but swapping one dominant supplier for another does not seem to be progress. We can only hope the open standard of RISC V catches on.
Bashing? Being a resident rabid protector of the Raspberry Pi is just plain rude.
Why am I being shamed for not using my Cubieboard?
Why am I being ambushed in a judgmental way for whatever I post?
And why are you asserting that one doesn't have the right to say anything that opposes Raspberry Pi?
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You have obviously stepped beyond the pale and decided to harass me for a personal preference.
The simple facts I have tried to present here are:
1. ARM sales have substantially taken a growing position in the market place.
2. Rock-chip and Allwinner seem to be pushing to win greater prominence.
3. Cubieboards happen to use Allwinner chips, so there is a chance to actually use these. And I happen to feel I get a better value by doing so.
I have always felt that there were significant educational advantages to Parallax products not having an OS system inherent due to the limits of resources and the ability to be completely deterministic in architecture.
I am here primarily because of my interest in the BasicStamp and the Propeller. And not to engage in debate about the whole of the computer industry with an uber-troll.
FWIW, Allwinner ARMs show up in lots of low-priced tablets. I've got several myself. The new $9 Computer will also use an Allwinner ARM. It will be interesting to see if a critical mass can build around that board.
Weeelllll, there is a giant qualifier on that claimed 27%, which is "tablet chip sales".
So the Intel 800lb gorilla is a very long way from being threatened here...
I love the idea that AMD is building 64 bit ARM for servers.
Just now they are not available and production has been delayed at least a year so far.
You can get dev kits from AMD but the $3000 price tag bight be a bit off putting.
Edit: On the other hand we may soon be able to get hold of a much cheaper Opteron board: http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/06/28/amd-announces-96boards-enterprise-edition-server-board-powered-by-opteron-a1100-processor/
Loopy, I think you are reading way more into Heater's reply than he meant.
I think his comment was basically how can you really be arguing that the Cubie is superior to the Pi if you've never really given it a go. I kind of agree, although I like that the Cubie was faster, more memory and SATA.
I do not currently use the CubieBoard because it is just too much for most of my interests in microcontroller. I don't want to deal with Tool Chains, File Systems, C libriaries and exotic cross-compiles to learn microcontrollers if I don't have to.
I enjoy merely loading an simple IDE, studying a focused bit of code and working close to the microcontroller hardware.
In all honestly, I don't know what I would desire to do with Raspberry Pi. It just seemed too small and too awkward to use.
The Cubieboard awaits the rainy day when I want a tiny full desktop build for myself or a friend.
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What soap opera?
Well, there is a ton of history here... going way back to when the pre-release claims of the Raspberry Pi first appeared back in 2011, after a lot of excitement about an earlier small Linux board -- the BeagleBoard.
The Raspberry Pi pitch was to be the cheapest (at a target of $25 USD), the smallest (at the size of a credit card), and educationally superior (useful and easy for 10 years old and younger).
From the start it had difficulties. They very quickly went to a $35USD credit card size board, production was halted due to the wrong kind of RJ-45 plug, and the first boards indeed required a USB hub to properly power a mouse and keyboard to work along with the HDMI video.
At the same time I discovered the Cubieboard was about to be released (a six month longer wait), which was a bit larger, had SATA, had twice the DRAM and a later ARM chipset (A10 instead of A7). So even though it was more costly, it seemed a better value; and it seemed that Cubieboard had a better idea of what they were engineering. The whole educational mission seemed dubious at that time, and to this day it seems mainly a UK effort with not much in Taiwan.
I received my Cubieboard, load up Android and Ubuntu and played with it for awhile, and then put it away until I actually see where it will be really useful to me. I have lot of other devices that also go unused.
Into the rukus came a lot of talk about the 'educational mission of the Raspberry Pi' and how shameful it was for me to say anything bad about such a noble mission.
Being a teacher professional, this was disconcerting to me and I take a professional view that most good teachers don't get into this kind of hype. There are realities about what you can teach a 10 year old and younger. And the computer industry as long indulged in the kind of promotional hype that encyclopedia salesmen have done so with parents.
My view is that the BasicStamp is quite adequate for young people, and teaching them to work through a whole LInux OS to toggle GPIO is rather daunting and unnecessary. At about this point, Raspberry Pi started touting Python on the Raspberry Pi as the way to teach the young. I honestly don't know how to teach anyone Python.
Also, I had by that time seen Parallax have a very good teaching mission with the BasicStamp2 and strongly felt that Raspberry Pi was doing pretty much the same invasive promotional activity on the Forums that Arduino had done in about 2005 about 'educational mission'. I have other doubts and concerns over Arduino's approach to educational programing and electronics. The whole shift to 'artist' and 'sketches' seems to defer really learning the fundamentals.
Anytime I said that I didn't support Raspberry Pi I was pummeled and shamed for not doing so with arguments that never did get down to a real rational hardware comparison of my Cubieboard of that era against the Raspberry Pi of that era, nor any realistic educational curriculum.
Raspberry Pi Foundation promised a lot in advance and premised their educational value on future users, teachers, and writers provided the educational material. It seem now that the Raspberry Pi Foundation does have some funding for such in the UK.
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To this day, it seems if I mention Raspberry Pi I get an aggressive challenge that I have no validity for my own preferences for something else.
I did make an open effort to drop the whole issue for the sake of the Parallax Forum readership. But being that these challenges seemed to me to be part of an all out effort to promote the sale of the Raspberry Pi on Parallax's Forum, it has felt like an hostile invasion to me by a group that aggressively exploited Parallax's liberal discussion policies in order to launch competing product.
Sadly, we had previously had an Arduino invasion on the Forums years earlier and that was an unwelcome distraction.
Sorry, but I still feel that way. And I have heard too many revisions of the Raspberry Pi story to feel that I will ever get to the truth of the matter.
In my own case, I feel that both Arduino and Raspberry Pi have abused Parallax Forum's hospitality and benefited from the promotional exposure they created.
But I repeat --- I did not start this thread about Rockchip and Allwinner in order to blast Raspberry Pi.
And I did not start this thread to get in a face off with Heater or any one.
I am merely not rolling over and playing dead when challenged. And I am very wary of non-profit enterprises that heavily partner with industry. I'd simply rather deal with Parallax, a for-profit enterprise and know what I am buying than listen to all the altruism and idealism compelling me to by something 'for the children'.
If I see the arguing continue I (or another moderator) will close this thread.
A few afterthoughts.
jmg seems to think that 'tablet chip sales' are unimportant. But the reality is that desktop computer and laptops have not been growth markets for chips in recent years. Tablet chip sales are the most important growth segment in chip sales in Taiwan at this point.
And the fact that Android works extremely well on the Allwinner chips while the video on Ubuntu is not so great seems to indicate that Allwinner is doing something in video for specific enhancements that work well with Android.... perhaps a Google partnership of some sort.
By and far, I just was attempting to be newsy. But Heater and I are pretty much a pair. I suspect some thing we should just get married.