The English on the official BananaPi website troubles me...
Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
11–20 of 54 posts
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#12Olimex already have a board based on this same SoC (and others from the same family of AllWinner SoCs), but unlike the Raspberry Pi, are completely open source hardware. (Banana Pi doesn't seem to be open, given the limited information too). The price is the same, and I'd much rather support open source hardware efforts.
The schematics and Eagle files are on their github page. More info here: https://www.olimex.com/wiki/A20-OLinuXino-MICRO
They're already working on a board for the next generation A31 SoC too.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#13I want a dual-core 1.4+ GHz ARM board with 2GB RAM (comparable to last years smartphones).
Why is there no Raspberry Pi C announcement already? The type B is already a bit dated and who needs the "compute module"?
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#14Who benefits from it though? When you buy a Raspberry Pi some of the money goes to the Foundation who then use it to promote programming in schools.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#15I actually don't want a faster version. What I want is a more energy efficient version (still ARM) with roughly the same performance that makes it feasible to run on batteries or solar. Does that exist?
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#16I was hoping for a cheaper board.
Even if the Raspberry Pi foundation were to just take the old model A and drop the analog I/O ports and LED lights - with their economies of scale and the natural decrease in chip prices, I'm guessing they could ship a ~20$ board.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#17For those more technical than I, is there actually any benefit in having the 1000Mbps NIC on a board with still a relatively slow processor?
I fear the processor can't handle anywhere near that amount of throughout that NIC could support, so to me it looks like a feature for the sake of being different to the Pi.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#18For those more technical than I, is there actually any benefit in having the 1000Mbps NIC on a board with still a relatively slow processor? I fear the processor can't handle anywhere near that amount of throughout that NIC could support, so to me it looks like a feature for the sake of being different to the Pi.
At the minimum it is useful because it is connected to CPU/memory by something more meaningful than USB as is the case with Raspberry Pi.
Also for many interesting workloads (essentially anything that involves scatter-gather DMA from some other peripheral, eg. routing, file/storage server) you don't need that much powerful CPU to saturate gigabit ethernet.
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#19$74 after shipping? Newegg will sell you a motherboard with a dual-core x86 CPU for $50 ($32 after rebate). With a new AMD AM1 platform, you can get a four-core x86 and a motherboard for $69. Raspberry Pi is a nice thing for $35. For $75, much nicer alternatives exist.
Actually, I hadn't thought about this.
My uncle's in need for a media center (he's already got the home theatre and the forty-something-inches LED T.V. and I was thinking of gettin'im a RPi with the rest of the fancy stuff but you totally would get waaaay better performance with a little bit more "expensive" board. The last time that I checked for this kind of solutions I was fancying some Zotac box but that one was ~US$350. Which $75, much nicer alternatives are you talking about here? :)
Re: Banana Pi: The next generation of single-board computers?
#20Where are all the perfunctory Betteridge's law comments?