For when a Pi is just too expensive...

Could have some interesting applications:

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(does not say much about its I/O alas)

Reply to
John Rumm
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Copying comp.sys.raspberry-pi.

Reply to
James Harris

I'm mildly impressed with the $9 price tag, but not entirely impressed with the lack of decent video. The $9 board needs an even pricier daughter card for HDMI or VGA video. They include wifi but not Ethernet. Only 1 USB port so you need a hub or a Bluetooth mouse. Not as fast or as much memory as the rPi 2. Just not impressive for a product that won't be out for nearly a year.

Reply to
rickman

Here's an article

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Biggest problem: the Allwinner A13 processor. AllWinner has numerous GPL violations against it for borrowing from many open source projects (including FFMPEG) without respecting the license, and trying to embed binary blobs into the Linux kernel under a non-kernel license.

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Developers say that Allwinner devices are terrible to develop for -- and it is largely because it's difficult to form a development community around a device where the manufacturer is using outright deception to try to hide GPL violations.

Reply to
Dave Farrance

I don't see that as an issue in reality. Its going to be embedded (i.e. headless) applications where something like this will shine. Leaving off the VGA just lowers complexity, cost, and power consumption.

ISTM the product is "out" now.

I don't see this as a competitor for the pi directly (at lease not in many of its intended rolls). Its more of an Arduino like platform.

Reply to
John Rumm

Great if that is your app. But why have composite video if that is the case? Eliminate the connector and even more power consumption. VGA is passe, HDMI is the way to go. I don't even know what you would connect composite to these days.

Why do you say this? The kickstarter campaign has started and they say they won't deliver any production boards until the end of the year. Boards are scheduled to be available to the public until this time next year. This is just the schedule, it may not actually be available until later even.

Reply to
rickman

I think this is more like the ESP-8266.

Most will not care about the GPL, they just want cheap and functions in the embedded environment they want. ( small helps )

Reply to
hamilton

Video is a non-issue. No one is saying this is a Pi competitor outside the media looking for a known quantity to compare it to. There is a whole world out there of embedded systems that simply have no need for video. This has composite out, I can see _some_ value for debugging but but wouldn't be willing to pay much for it. At $9 you clearly are not.

So no, it isn't as powerful as a Pi 2. It's still got plenty of grunt compared to many of the alternatives in its price bracket which is a different one to the Pi which IS too expensive for many tasks, especially when the extras for a complete set up are added. It is akin to maning that my modern little Citroen isn't as fast as a GT40 from 50 years ago - they are aimed at different audiences at one is not even attempting to be the other.

I do see a few niceties that make this board much easier to integrate into something than the Pi, and at $9 it's just another component. The board layout seems to lend itself quite naturally to a daughterboard configuration, mounted on its connectors with a couple of securing bolts through it and motherboard if you are feeling paranoid. At a stroke that simple change makes integration a lot easier than for the Pi. OTOH I too am unhappy with the lack of wired Ethernet. For some tasks wireless would be acceptable or even a necessity, but for anything that ends up being installed in place it smells too much of a potentially problematic toy option.

Reply to
Andrew Smallshaw

I understand what you are saying, but the rPi is the yardstick against which all others are measured because it has been soooo successful in so many ways. Sure, the board will be useful in a lot of apps because of the $9 price tag. But it won't be nearly as successful as the rPi because of the tradeoffs made. You even point out the potential issues with the wireless rather than wired Ethernet... but then you can always plug in a hub and a USB Ethernet adapter... and the list of issues goes on.

No one is saying it is a bad board, but in the world of the rPi at $25 a price point has been reached where the cost really doesn't matter and lowering it to $9 doesn't make it much more appealing. The one area where I can see this board having a real advantage is in the IoT. If you can wire in a sensor and supply power, then a $9 price tag vs. $25 enables some apps where you would have used a CM3 or CM4 before.

I remember some 10 or more years ago when they were projecting that Linux would be available on a single chip. It is two or three chips when you count the I/O, but still, it is amazing how it all just keeps marching on.

Reply to
rickman

The Raspberry Pi A+ in front of me only has 1 chip. The memory is a separate chunk of silicon, but it's packaged as a second layer on the SoC with the ARM.

There isn't any Ethernet, but it does have HDMI and a single USB port.

Looking harder, there is another tiny chip or two over in the power supply corner.

Reply to
Hal Murray

That layer also contains the GPU, and the memory is shared.

Yes, regulator. In fact most Pis have THREE regulators - two more over by the I/O pins.

Reply to
Bob Eager

I haven't studied the rPi extensively, but I thought the USB had an external hub chip? Does the A only have one USB port? Looking at some images I see the Model A only has one USB and so the SMSC chip is not needed at all. I don't count the power supply devices, they are a given for nearly any CPU design.

Again, I'm not 100% positive, but I am pretty sure the memory chip is indeed a separate package soldered piggy back on the CPU package, not two die in a package. That is what they do on the Beagle boards. An easy way to tell is to read the markings. If the visible markings are for the ram chip it is piggy back. If the markings are for the Broadcom CPU it is a dual die in one package.

Here is a link for the B+, clearly showing Samsung memory markings.

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Reply to
rickman

As I said, the second chip is GPU and RAM. And yes, it's soldered on top.

Reply to
Bob Eager

It's just RAM. The chip underneath is the GPU and CPU.

Reply to
Dom

It's all a bit meaningless these days, when a 'chip' may actually be a collection of silicon dice inside the same package (CPU+DRAM+flash, wifi controller+RF, or 8 flash dice to make your many-GB micro SD card), either stacked up or on a PCB-like silicon interposer. So if it was a die stack you wouldn't be able to tell (without getting the fuming nitric acid out anyway)

Theo

Reply to
Theo Markettos

Except it doesn't have a GPU inside... View a picture of the Pi and get the part number of the memory. Then go to the manufacturer's web site and look at the data sheet or even just the description they give on the web page. GPU won't be there.

Reply to
rickman

Yes you can tell. The price will be higher. It is still cheaper to solder the parts on top. You can also tell by looking at the edge for the gap. It may be small, but there will be a gap.

But when you mention SD, they aren't sold as chips, they are modules. Very different.

Reply to
rickman

"rickman" wrote in message news:miodk7$n1a$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me... [snip]

Semantics and support hardware aside, I believe the "Linux on a Chip" {Pournelle in Byte/Chaos Moanor "Dirt cheap Linux"} was intended to describe the miniaturization curve, not the actual black plastic encapsulation count. "...Moore's Law is inexorable, and yes, I know I am generalizing, I know what CHIPS are..."

_EATING YOUR CAKE, YET HAVING IT TOO_ Eight microSD TransFlash cards of 128 GigaBytes each will fit in the pen cap of a Sharpie marker, that's a terabyte folks, in case you haven't noticed. Just one of my little microSD TF cards of 8GB will easily balance on my little finger nail. Loaded and fully functional on it are nine versions of Linux, which I can boot at whim on my RPi or anyone else's (perhaps requiring an adaptor, does that count as a chip - no.) The point is that there are more than eight million RPi's in the hands of the populace (not in sealed Data Centers, surrounded by corporate Druids in black ties on white shirts) which can be easily swapped or transported in an Altoids tin. If you were to go back to 1999 and show Jerry Pournelle today's RPi, he'd say that's exactly what he was talking about - and want one to play with. That's EIGHT Linux on one chip (even though I could care less about Scratch, if it didn't come free it wouldn't be there, I'm too busy having other fun to trash Scratch,) and the credit card sized computer board to run it will slip easily inside the void of my DVD/HTMI/DTV combo. Central Processor/Graphics Processor/Memory as two chips stacked to appear as one - semantics. Power support chips (necessarily separate) - semantics. Device connection/buffers - semantics. Boot image on removable storage - semantics. What we have here, gentlemen, is a failure to conflagrate! The fact is that the RPi is the realization of the Linux on a chip, system in you pocket with programming languages for everyman which was the dream envisioned. Truly we've had the Linux on a chip long before the RPi, add a screen, keypad, battery and radio gear and loose the express ability to use as a software development platform - you've got a mobile phone. How's that for a magic black box you can slip in your pocket, entertain you infants, customize with applications and still call home you'll be late - some of those magic function "black box"s are much more than "Linux on a Chip." Most of our granddaughters could tell you how to configure and use them better than we care to know. And so what?! My granddaughter upgraded the memory on her phone, so, pointing out it was still useful I backed up the old TF card, flashed NOOBS onto it and restored the backup data, then stuffed it in the RPi and got her started learning Python to examine her .mp3 files - on what would have otherwise been hand-me-down scrap. She's got her personal Linux, languages, lounge music and more on a chip which can easily be lost at the bottom of her pocket. If her friends have an RPi she can mount her personal computing environment faster than swapping cartridges of a Nintendo console. If she decides to get an RPi for herself, it's vastly less expensive than the year adjusted price of any game console I've ever bought - which I STILL had to hook-up to a display/TV. Semantics says the device upon which it runs is credit card sized, but the microSD TransFlash card is the chip which balances upon my little fingernail with room to spare and spare space for plenty of personal files and data as well as several additional Operating Systems/Versions plus several programming languages -THAT is Linux on a chip.

You want Linux on a cloud? Set up your RPi to boot from the network.

Reply to
DisneyWizard the Fantasmic!

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