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Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

neutis.io

101–110 of 123 posts

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#101
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But by that definition, what linux isn't 'based on mainline linux'? Unless they're offering some guarantee that they'll keep their patches up-to-date...

There some boards out there still running on 2.6.x series, and many running 3.0 - those would not qualify as “mainline linux״ at this time. Some boards can boot a kernel.org kernel without patches; those run “mainline Linux”, not something “based” on it.

Do you know of any board that can run mainline Linux with support for all components?

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#102
post #55

My flabber is gasted at people complaining about paying a meaty $49 for a quad-core, 64bit, cpu with 8gb of local storage. Twenty years ago I was writing docs for the SGI Challenge[1] with its four MIPS R4000s in a tidy cabinet the size of a two-drawer file (disk drives mounted externally) weighing about 250lbs. This thing far exceeds the capacity of that machine, costs several orders of magnitude less, and FITS IN A…

It really depends on what you want to do with this product. What you're getting for $49 is hopefully a stable, tested, and well-supported platform which can really help when all you want to do (or can afford to do) is concentrate on the other aspects of your product. Built-in OTA upgrades and pre-built manufacturing tools are very helpful as well. The $49 price point however, assuming a retail product, probably puts your final retail price north of $100 by the time you add in all the other components you're going to need to make this work plus profit. If your product fits into that space then you could save a lot of time going with a solution like this (but I do see a cost-reduction round in your near future).

If you're trying to stay below the magic $99 retail price point though, you may be in for a challenge. Do you need a battery? Is that chip antenna good enough or do you need to have a better one made? Plastics? Power supply? Those DF40-80 connectors alone are going to account for north of $1 in manufacturing quantities. And after all that, you still have to pay for whatever it is your product actually does.

When I'm designing products, I sweat over every dollar, and big ticket items like this really need to be justified. If I don't need 8GB of flash, I don't buy it. Likewise quad core - how big a battery am I going to need to drive that thing for whatever my requierment is? Could I save $5 on the battery by dropping to single core (and save another $1 there too)?

As with anything, I think the use case for this amounts to "It Depends". I think the price point for this puts it out of range of the IOT space, and it is over-spec'd for a basic RF bridge type application (plus all the issues that go with trying to control noise when you don't own the chip layout). Maybe as the driver for a custom touchpad or something like that. Suffice it to say that I think it has a market, but that's probably not competing in the IOT space, and likely not the prototype space either.

$.02

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#103
post #16
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the identical CPU of a Raspberry Pi 3. 512 MB of RAM with 64 bit is a pain, and that Mali GPU is a proprietary piece of shit. What's the market for a SoM for "makers and hardware startups" that has negligible upstream support. That's before you consider that they chose a SoC with considerable GPU/VPU capabilities that can only do HDMI or composite, the first you would never use in an embedded application wher…

It's not identical to the RPi 3. Raspberry Pi is using a Broadcom chip, this one is an Allwinner H5. They are similar, but at least the H5 has far better support in mainline Linux. Still Mali, though. Which I totally agree is crap. And no drivers for other display types.

> but at least the H5 has far better support in mainline Linux

Could you elaborate on this?

My experience has been that the BCM2710 (and the RPi 3 board, in general) has had better (and earlier) support in mainline than the Allwinner H5. A client of mine is shipping a product based on the RPi3 after evaluating both (including building their own H5 based board), because support for H5 on mainline was poor and lagging compared to the RPi3.

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#104

Does this require any of the binary blobs that are in the mainline Linux kernel?

> the binary blobs that are in the mainline Linux kernel?

There are binary blobs in mainline?! Or do you mean the linux-firmware project?

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#105
I am new to hardware things and just wanted to check. Is Neutis N5 suitable for making something like PocketCHIP but in more compact form (smaller device)? If so I would definitely prefer 49$ over 5$ rpi0, just because of better performance and much smaller form factor.

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#106

I think this looks good! I also think the price is reasonable, and the linked page also mentions volume discounts. Extended temp range, long-term supply, CE & FCC certification, BSP with OTA upgrade support, manufacturing tool, and best of all: "we rely on Neutis ourselves in our line of Reach M+ and Reach RS+ RTK GNSS receivers". What WiFi+BT chip is used? Webpage mentions Debian briefly. How good is that support to…

I don't know firsthand, but "Debian" is primarily responsible for userspace binaries, which just need to be built for aarch64. Just about everything specific to the chip & peripherals is handled in the kernel. (Yes Debian has a linux-image deb but I don't think anyone uses that on ARM. You build your own kernel.)

I am oversimplifying a bit, but you should be able to take these instructions [1], combine with a kernel and bootloader built for this board, and write the resulting image to eMMC/flash. You need to configure a few things correctly, boot cmdline & bootloader options but that's it.

Source: have used debootstrap to build custom distros for a couple ARM modules as well as x86.

[1] https://www.olimex.com/wiki/AM335x#File_system

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#107
post #102
post #55

My flabber is gasted at people complaining about paying a meaty $49 for a quad-core, 64bit, cpu with 8gb of local storage. Twenty years ago I was writing docs for the SGI Challenge[1] with its four MIPS R4000s in a tidy cabinet the size of a two-drawer file (disk drives mounted externally) weighing about 250lbs. This thing far exceeds the capacity of that machine, costs several orders of magnitude less, and FITS IN A…

It really depends on what you want to do with this product. What you're getting for $49 is hopefully a stable, tested, and well-supported platform which can really help when all you want to do (or can afford to do) is concentrate on the other aspects of your product. Built-in OTA upgrades and pre-built manufacturing tools are very helpful as well. The $49 price point however, assuming a retail product, probably puts…

> When I'm designing products, I sweat over every dollar, and big ticket items like this really need to be justified.

If you can spend (just) a month or two designing, debugging, and procuring a cost-optimized variant of this that costs $25 instead, your time spent on that is equivalent to just buying a thousand of these. One of the big things in the "it depends" question is how many of these things you plan to sell. If it's less than thousands, buy modules.

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#108
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on what you want to do with this product. What you're getting for $49 is hopefully a stable, tested, and well-supported platform which can really help when all you want to do (or can afford to do) is concentrate on the other aspects of your product. Built-in OTA upgrades and pre-built manufacturing tools are very helpful as well. The $49 price point however, assuming a retail product, probably puts…

> When I'm designing products, I sweat over every dollar, and big ticket items like this really need to be justified. If you can spend (just) a month or two designing, debugging, and procuring a cost-optimized variant of this that costs $25 instead, your time spent on that is equivalent to just buying a thousand of these. One of the big things in the "it depends" question is how many of these things you plan to sell.…

The problem is that there are a dozen Chinese companies that have already designed, debugged, and produced a cost-optimized variant of this for less than half the price.

The Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 for example has the exact same SoC, same 8GB MMC, Wifi/BT, and is $20. Not saying that this board necessarily isn't worth it but clearly there is stiff competition in the SBC space and a lot of the boards are extremely cheap. The size is an advantage. It has mezzanine connectors instead of rows of headers. They claim they'll actually keep the kernel up to date which is a major problem with many of these SBCs, though I am rather skeptical given that they're using Allwinner chips. They cannot magically produce a new kernel without sources from Allwinner.

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "ecosystem" doesn't actually matter much (if "ecosystem" means maker/ tinkerer mindshare) for commercial applications. All you need is (1) kernel support for the chip including drivers e.g. for video/ peripherals, and (2) good userland support for aarch64. You can debootstrap a Debian rootfs that will work on any aarch64 chip. As mentioned elsewhere, it sounds like the H5 chip has good kernel support which co…

There is no real demand for alternatives to the RPi. People who buy RPis don't care about specs and price. They usually buy only one for $35 and use it to get linux experience or they already have a specific usecase in mind like retropi, pihole, etc. I once wanted to work on the mali open source driver but now I'm thinking: What's the point? Nobody (including me) gives a shit about it anyway. Just spend $15 more on t…

> There is no real demand for alternatives to the RPi.

Only if you quality that with "among consumers." There is tons of demand for ARM-based modules that are designed to be embedded in a commercial product. Comparing this product to any SBC such as RPi3 or Orange Pi completely misses the point. Just look at the headers on pretty much every SBC. If you see 0.1" pitch headers, it's meant for hobbyists, not commercial application.

As mentioned elsewhere, you can compare this to CM3, but there are tons of other players in this space (and there have been for longer than the CM has been around.) To name a few: Anything from Variscite, Myir, Toradex: note many of these cost well north of $50 because they're meant for commercial/ industrial. Samsung Artik 053, Chip Pro, Olimex SOMs and SOPINE are some newer players that have been pushing the price down a bit in this space. So this product is price competitive, esp since there aren't many aarch64 modules out there.

Specifically: if you were designing a product that needs Ethernet (esp GbE) you almost certainly would not choose the RPi CM because it's not on the BCM chip. i.MX and AM335x support 10/100 MAC/Phy, H5 supports GbE. If you were doing an automotive product, RPi and H5 do not have CAN, so you might choose an AM335x SOM. There is definitely a real demand for alternatives to the RPi in the space that this product is targeting.

Re: Tiny quad-core system-on-module for makers and hardware startups

#110
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so? $49 is way too expensive for this. i can get a x86 from ebay way more cheaper than this. who would even bother, the rpi zero is $5.

The RPi Zero at $5 is a (hardly verifiable) reality only for a few lucky purchasers, especially writers in some blogs/magazines, but an urban legend for everyone else. 10 people every now and then telling the world they got it at $5 mean nothing when there are thousands who can't get it without price inflating bundles. We already know why it is produced in so scarce quantities, so I won't comment further. Besides tha…

I'm not sure where you live, but the Pi Zero isn't a myth. Just this week I bought two Pi Zero HW's and a standard Pi Zero. The standard Zero was just over €5 + shipping. I could only buy one zero, but I could have bought 50 or more of the HW's as they don't have the purchase restriction.

The Pi Zero is easily obtainable now Adafruit have it for $5+shipping in the US, Kiwi-electronics have it for €5+shipping in Europe and Pimoroni have it for £5+shipping in the UK. Hardly a myth.

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