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Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

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Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#71

Post by Nursie »

brigade wrote: post #69
Nursie wrote: post #5

This is kinda cool actually. I had been looking at the ODROID-X (hardkernel.com) and various other single-board machines for a while. Whilst this isn't particularly powerful (ODROID is quad core exynos), it does have an advantage I haven't seen anywhere else - SATA. Does anyone know of any other boards that have a SATA connector?

Nitrogen6X and SABRE Light do ( http://boundarydevices.com/products/ ), and should be $200 in a week. Wandaboard ( http://www.wandboard.org/ ) should have a SATA connector on future configurations, but nothing concrete has been announced.

Cool, thankyou, the SABRE looks awesome.

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#72

Post by st3fan »

justin66 wrote: post #62
throwaway1979 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize there was a significant speed difference between SD and SSD technology! After some googling, I found a good video that gives the relevant figures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fxAQv_KDV0 In short, the class 10 SD card I got for my Raspberry Pi is rated for 10MB/s. An SSD drive can do 1GB/S (I imagine the numbers vary for reads vs writes). Also, SD cards seem to be able to take a lot fewer writes p…

To be fair, a class 10 SD card could be ten times faster than the figure you quoted. Still a big difference, of course, and I imagine there are some write queueing feature differences as well.

In theory. On the PandaBoard I max out a class10 card at 30 MB/sec.

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#73

Post by reefab »

fsiefken wrote: post #40

I am looking for a portable i386 compatible chip&board instead of ARM for running windows programs (wine doesn't work on arm), does anyone have tips?

Not sure about windows, but VIA is making something somewhat similar but with a x86 processor: http://apc.io

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#74

Post by anotherbadlogin »

agumonkey wrote: post #65

Reflecting about all this, I find the rpi design curious. Most of the SoC is wasted and impose heavy side effects (lan over capricious usb). The graphical applications (video processing, etc) seems to be limited by what is already in the GPU blob. Honest question, isn't there more simple SoC (armv6 + basic 2d gpu) with sane default and i/o chipsets ? How much of the closed source binary is due to the GPU ? With a sim…

"How much of the closed source binary is due to the GPU ?"

The Pi team addresses this on their site. I think the answer to your question is "a lot."

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#75

Post by protomyth »

alexkus wrote: post #3
protomyth wrote: post #2

Looks nice, a little worried about how low some of the funding options were. I do wish someone would build an ITX sized motherboard with SATA, actual ram slots, and gigabyte network ports. Perhaps when the 64-bit version is more available someone will.

There are plenty of commercial ITX motherboards with those specs, i.e. http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~DH61DLB3 or http://www.mini-itx.com/store/~Z68-ITX-A-E for dual gigabit LAN. Or am I missing something? (Ah, you probably want ARM rather than x86[_64]).

Yes, I want an ARM not an x86.

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#76

Post by Strshps1MoreTim »

plaes wrote: post #28
EwanToo wrote: post #4

One interesting thing about the Cubieboard is the SATA port, otherwise it's very similar to a lot of other ARM boards out there (e.g. Beagleboard, Pandaboard, etc). This makes it much easier to stick a low power SSD on the device, rather than rely on a hugely slow SD card. What I'm looking forward to next are Cortex A15 boards, the first CPUs are shipping (In the new Chromebook), so hopefully we'll start seeing them…

In case you want something hackable, check out Olimex.com.

In case you're afraid of real hacking ...

FTFY ;-)

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#77

Post by wtallis »

throwaway1979 wrote: post #33
EwanToo wrote: post #4

One interesting thing about the Cubieboard is the SATA port, otherwise it's very similar to a lot of other ARM boards out there (e.g. Beagleboard, Pandaboard, etc). This makes it much easier to stick a low power SSD on the device, rather than rely on a hugely slow SD card. What I'm looking forward to next are Cortex A15 boards, the first CPUs are shipping (In the new Chromebook), so hopefully we'll start seeing them…

I didn't realize there was a significant speed difference between SD and SSD technology! After some googling, I found a good video that gives the relevant figures: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fxAQv_KDV0 In short, the class 10 SD card I got for my Raspberry Pi is rated for 10MB/s. An SSD drive can do 1GB/S (I imagine the numbers vary for reads vs writes). Also, SD cards seem to be able to take a lot fewer writes p…

1GB/s is a bit much for an SSD, since SATA currently only goes up to 6Gbit/s. PCIe-based SSDs can do it, but for a good SATA SSD, you can expect speeds ranging from 100MB/s to 500MB/s depending on the workload.

Most of the speed advantage SSDs have comes from having a dozen or more flash chips that are internally treated as something like a RAID array. Memory cards and USB sticks usually have only one or two chips.

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#78

Post by guiambros »

stan_rogers wrote: post #58
subsystem wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"in families that couldn't afford a 'real' computer, or couldn't/wouldn't allow kids to try potentially damaging things on the family machine." How many of those families are going to buy a rpi, have the knowledge to teach set it up and teach their kids, etc? What's going to get kids programming is a really cheap "normal" computer, just like it always has.

Schools were and are the primary target. Just go back and read the story behind Raspberry Pi[1]. The point always was to get back to the days of the BBC Micro and a general introduction to computing fundamentals (as opposed to mere "using the applications" training) for British kids (although kids in other places can benefit as well), based on the notion that broad exposure would mean a larger cohort of people to dra…

Thanks Stan, for setting the record straight.

It's amazing how many people totally miss the point about R-Pi. There's so much hate (here and in other forums) because the Pi is not fast enough, or open enough, or supported enough, or available enough.

People don't realize that it was never intended to be a replacement to your desktop computer, or a completely open hardware platform, or widely available at retailers, or a commercial system widely supported. The primary target are schools and young developers, interested in learning. Honestly, kids don't really care if the GPU is open sourced or not. But they'd love things like this: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/freshers/raspberrypi/tutorials/os/.

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#79

Post by michaelt »

ojiikun wrote: post #66
michaelt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a few companies that make "pico-ITX" boards that run x86 processors [1]. Mostly low powered chips like Atom, but you can get Core 2 Duo boards if you've got the cash. Prices started around $300 last time I checked. [1] http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/eng/meng/wmr/projects/uav/...

Does anyone know the exact model of board in that photo? Clicking around their site yielded only images, and sadly little text.

A Kontron something-or-other, sticker's on the USB port. Similar-looking things (without the heatsink) here: http://uk.kontron.com/products/boards+and+mezzanines/embedde...

Re: Raspberry PI alternative: Cubieboard 1Ghz 1GB RAM

#80

Post by justincormack »

Nursie wrote: post #36
justincormack wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cubox does http://www.solid-run.com/products/cubox and a few others.

Hmm, looks good (and tiny) but seems slow. Certainly has a lot of interfaces! And mainline linux support which is a bonus.

I dont think its that slow. Its got fall hardware floating point and a newish CPU. Depends on what you compare against....
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