
Intel unveils tiny $99 MinnowBoard Max open single-board computer - voltagex_
http://linuxgizmos.com/intel-unveils-tiny-x86-minnowboard-max-open-sbc/
======
tdicola
This looks neat for people that want a cheap board to hack on embedded Linux.
However for serious control of signal generation, acquisition, PWM, servos,
etc. you really don't want to be running a multitasking OS. Something like the
Beaglebone Black, with its dedicated 200mhz programmable units in addition to
embedded Linux, is much more interesting for hackers and makers IMHO.

~~~
cmicali
Agreed - we used the PRUs for high speed data acquisition (~3.4msps.). What
would have normally required a lot of outboard logic ended up being almost all
software. Very much an underrated feature, although the Learning curve is not
so great though for anything non-trivial.

~~~
TD-Linux
I kind of wish the PRU's were Cortex-M0 or something that can be targeted with
GCC. That said, they are a very nice idea.

I'm currently using the Zynq for a project and it's basically the extreme of
the idea. FPGA's are kind of horrible in other ways though, such as the 30
minute build times and power inefficiency.

~~~
GeorgeHahn
I considered writing a LLVM backend for the PRUs, but put it aside while I
wait to see if the rumors of a TI provided compiler pan out.

------
josteink
Tangentially relevant, I'd love to follow more news from MirrowBoard on this
project (and similar projects), but all they seem to have is a Google+ page,
and I refuse to sign up for that for a handful of reasons, none which I can be
talked out of.

What happened to good old RSS? I'd subscribe to that in an _instant_ , but
every time I'm directed to a Google+ feed I close the tab and forget about the
company.

I'm pretty sure that for quite a few techies, looking to try out new gadgets
and technology, a Google+ requirement is a deal-killer.

~~~
visarga
Use a throwaway account.

~~~
mjolk
Eh. If you use the same browser, Google can just associate the two accounts.
Also, it's more of a hassle than just saying "forget it."

It's entirely possible that if I went to a non-G+ page, I could be convinced
to drop $60-100 on a whim. If you make me do stupid little things like
remember credentials for a "throw-away account," then you lose the chance to
capitalize on that impulse.

~~~
coolnow
You shouldn't need to really remember any individual credentials for websites.
Use something like KeePass.

~~~
ipsin
mjolk: KeePass is a local password storage solution.

~~~
mjolk
Whoops -- I was thinking lastpass. Thanks for correcting me.

------
silversmith
This seems like the ideal home server solution - powerful enough to run backup
solutions / media server for couple people, small enough to fit wherever you
want it to.

I recently went with a mini-itx BayTrail-D solution as my BTSync / Plex server
- a breath of fresh air after year of fighting with ARM board in the same
role. This would have been even better, as it would allow me to maintain the
same form factor, instead of making way for comparatively bulky mITX case.

The only thing I'd like to know is how would you power a SATA drive attached
to this?

~~~
sdfx
There are external power supplies available that connect directly to a disk. I
would be more skeptical regarding I/O-performance. As far as I can see, there
are only two SATA-ports available.

~~~
jbaiter
For a cheap x86 NAS, you might want to look out for the Asrock Q1900DC which
was presented at CeBit this year and is supposed to come out soon.

It has 4x2ghz Intel Celeron J1900, 4 SATA2 and 2 SATA3 ports and 19V DC input,
so no more need for a bulky ATX power supply (though for a NAS you need to
find a way to power those hard disks).

Judging from the prices that similarly specced boards are fetching (between
50-70€), this one should be below 100€ as well.

Here is a slide from the Asrock CeBit presentation with the specs:
[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1wOiaMWiiXw/Ux7HGzZAl6I/AAAAAAAAHQ...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1wOiaMWiiXw/Ux7HGzZAl6I/AAAAAAAAHQ4/fRiF1XFwOUs/s1600/Q1900DC.jpg)

------
pietrofmaggi
Original site is not working for me.

You can find board specs on the minnowboard official website:
[http://www.minnowboard.org/meet-minnowboard-
max/](http://www.minnowboard.org/meet-minnowboard-max/)

\--update (it's working again now, slow but working) contains a lot of useful
information, the link I posted contains just the specs.

~~~
asaddhamani
Original site not working for me either. Something interesting like this gotta
get a lot of traffic.

~~~
pietrofmaggi
Intel News announcement (still shown at EELive in San Jose till April 3rd):
[http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014...](http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014/03/31/chip-
shot-intel-based-minnowboard-max-to-further-embedded-open-source-design)

Other sites reporting the same news:
[http://liliputing.com/2014/03/minnowboard-max-99-intel-
atom-...](http://liliputing.com/2014/03/minnowboard-max-99-intel-atom-powered-
single-board-computer.html)

[http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/04/01/0051224/intel-
up...](http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/14/04/01/0051224/intel-upgrades-
minnowboard-baytrail-cpu-nearly-halves-price-to-99)

[http://www.bit-
tech.net/news/hardware/2014/04/01/minnowboard...](http://www.bit-
tech.net/news/hardware/2014/04/01/minnowboard-max/1)

------
Jach
Nice... I'm glad we're finally getting into the 64-bit age on microcontrollers
so 4+ GB of RAM isn't too far off... I've been using the latest Cubieboard
([http://www.cubietruck.com/collections/frontpage/products/cub...](http://www.cubietruck.com/collections/frontpage/products/cubietruck-
cubieboard3-cortex-a7-dual-core-2gb-ram-8gb-flash-with-wifi-bt)) for a project
and it's been performing pretty well, but having more RAM and x86_64 would be
great.

~~~
sliverstorm
I think we are getting 64-bit microcontrollers because everything else is
64-bit, so 64-bit has become the natural/cost-effective choice. Rather than
because uC's are regularly utilizing 4+ GB. It seems unlikely that 4+ GB of
RAM will be common just yet.

~~~
ah-
I wouldn't call the minnowboard a microcontroller, it's more similar to other
single board computers like the Pandaboard and the odroid boards. And 2GB are
already common for such boards, so 4GB are really not far off.

------
cottonseed
Are the chip docs open? Does linux need binary blobs on this board?

~~~
Torgo
Apparently the UEFI implementation it requires to boot is not open source :-(

~~~
mark-r
Any way to replace it with a BIOS, e.g. Coreboot?

------
elnate
How does this compare to a Raspberry Pi?

~~~
vonmoltke
Comparing the $99 version to the B ($35):

    
    
      - Double the clock speed (1.46GHz vs. 700MHz)
      - Double the RAM (1GB vs 512MB)
      - 8GB of on-board flash
      - Gigabit ethernet instead of 10/100
      - A USB 3.0 port
      - A SATA II port
      - A PCIe 2.0 lane
      - JTAG
      - x86 architecture
    

Overall, probably worth the extra cost if you need the power and features. The
question is, who does? I'm considering this for no other reason than I want a
board in this form factor and power class that has SATA and PCIe.

~~~
jbit
Small correction: The MinnowBoard MAX only has 8MB of on-board flash, not 8GB.
(It's an SPI chip to hold the firmware)

~~~
vonmoltke
Whoops, you are right. Reading comprehension fail on my part.

------
outside1234
Does anyone know how the performance on something like this stacks up to
something like the Raspberry Pi?

~~~
wmf
A 1.4 GHz Silvermont must be many times faster than a 700 MHz ARM11.

------
kqr2
Intel also has the Galileo board which is hardware and software pin-compatible
with shields designed for the Arduino Uno* R3.

[http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/intelligent-
systems/g...](http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/intelligent-
systems/galileo/galileo-overview.html)

~~~
tdicola
Be careful though, the Galileo emulates AVR code and is orders of magnitude
slower than a real Arduino. Don't expect to pick up any shield and make it
work, unfortunately.

~~~
jpwright
The Galileo actually only emulates a subset of the Arduino libraries. The AVR
libraries themselves are, for the most part, not supported. This makes many
popular libraries unusable even when hardware is not an issue.

------
MichaelMoser123
It has an Atom E3800 processor. How does power consumption/heating of this
Atom processor compare to its competitors?

------
tim333
Google cache
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hLPlk9M...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:hLPlk9MjDewJ:linuxgizmos.com/intel-
unveils-tiny-x86-minnowboard-max-open-sbc/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
jmnicolas
IMHO what we need is not more powerful boards but more affordable ones.

At $99 it's too expensive for small projects.

~~~
mariuolo
The big advantage is x86 compatibility.

I'd pay a premium for that.

~~~
marcosscriven
Just curious why you view that as an advantage, unless you mean to run
commercial, closed-source applications on it?

~~~
wycx
Because trying to run open source on almost all ARM SoCs is a massive pain in
the arse. Is there a single modern ARM SoC for which you can download a Linux
install image with a mainline kernel and everything `just works'?

~~~
joezydeco
Freescale i.MX. Here's their git repository:

[http://git.freescale.com/git/cgit.cgi/](http://git.freescale.com/git/cgit.cgi/)

~~~
wycx
That's not mainline.

The almost universal lack of Mainline support is what makes ARM so
frustrating. If it is not mainline, I don't want to know. Get a Minnowboard
MAX and I suspect all the SoC functions will be available with a mainline
kernel.

Get any ARM SoC and you are stuck with choosing between a mainline kernel with
incomplete functionality OR a custom kernel that might have more functionality
(if you are lucky). iMX6 might be the closest SoC to getting kernel sources
for full functionality (but still stuck with blobs for Vivante GPU), but how
much of that has made it to mainline (genuine question)?

~~~
joezydeco
If it's mainline, then you're probably not an experienced SoC developer
because we've been dealing with off-track drivers and chip-level craziness for
decades. We're happy to get a kernel that exposes 75% of the chip's blocks, at
best.

Not sure what you mean by "full functionality" other than GPU driver source,
and most of us using these for production purposes don't really care about
that at this point.

Does it _need_ to be mainline to make your product functional?

~~~
wycx
I am most definitely not an experienced SoC developer, and I am not trying to
make products.

Rather my experience is merely playing around trying to use ARM-based devices
as general purpose computing devices in the same way you would use an x86
device, e.g. Allwinner A10 set top box as a low power server and the Samsung
ARM chromebook. In that context, I think mainline support is important.
Otherwise, as someone who is not a developer, getting even simple things to
work requires so much more screwing around than anything x86.

As for "full functionality", look at an SoC like the Allwinner A10/A20 and see
how much of the functionality they built into the SoC can actually be used in
linux, despite the excellent efforts of the Linux sunxi team.

------
rem1313
This could be excellent as Plex client if it does support HDMI CEC. Raspbery
Pi is too slow for this

------
girvo
Okay, this is _perfect_ for my low-cost Haiku box project. I'm definitely
getting one to hack on. Well done, Intel, and the whole "launching with
Android and Linux" thing seems to be indicating an interesting shift...

------
samcrawford
Does anyone know what would be a reasonable network throughput to expect on
this device? I see it has a 1Gbps port, but whether or not the CPU can
saturate that is not obvious.

------
josteink
Interesting to see it announced with _Linux and Android_ support.

If this doesn't signal a shift from a Microsoft-oriented (Intel) world to a
new era, I don't know what does.

~~~
exelius
I think it signals diversification for Intel; not necessarily a shift away
from Windows. Running Windows on ultra-low-end boards like this makes no
sense; the license would cost more than the board itself and the board isn't
powerful enough to run anything approximating a modern version of Windows.
It's an order of magnitude slower than your cell phone.

Ultimately though, the x86 PC (aka Windows) market is not a significant growth
market for Intel. They'll keep pumping money into it as long as they get their
3-5% growth, but if Intel wants to move the needle for the company, they need
to find new markets.

~~~
mark-r
> It's an order of magnitude slower than your cell phone.

Really? I'd like to see some evidence of that. I'd assumed they were roughly
the same ballpark.

~~~
exelius
The base $99 model is a single core 1.4 gHz E3815. The graphics core is
significantly slower than a cell phone SoC as well. Intel is not an inferior
company or anything; just this product at this price point is slower than a 3
year old cell phone.

------
Tepix
I'd love to see a small, low power board (ARM or Intel) with Dual SATA ports,
ethernet and preferably a serial console instead of the HDMI port.

~~~
voltagex_
Dual SATA seems to be the sticking point. I'm still using a GlobalScale
Dreamplug [1], but you'd be insane to pay retail (~250US) for it now. It's an
800mhz ARMv5 with 512mb of RAM and a single SATA port. It's well supported by
the mainline kernel (with an upgrade to uBoot).

The FreeScale iMX6 would seem to have enough I/O for two SATA ports
(apparently it even has PCIe!) but I've never seen this in a retail board.

At this stage you might be better off going for an off the shelf NAS,
something that can run FreeBSD and ZFS.

[1]:
[http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.as...](http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-dreamplugdetails.aspx)

------
viciousplant
HD4000...hmm can we play Diablo III on it?

~~~
Narishma
It's not HD Graphics 4000. It's just HD Graphics, with no numbering. It only
has 6 execution units (compared to 16 on HD 4000) and is clocked much lower.

~~~
vonmoltke
Actually, per the datasheet[1] it has 4 EUs. I could not find any information
about clocking the core, but I didn't search the entire 5100(!) page document.

[1]
[http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/...](http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/datasheets/atom-e3800-family-
datasheet.pdf)

~~~
brightghost
I can see this being big with the media-art crowd for installations if it has
any sort of real graphics oomph. From what I've heard the pi is just barely
capable of hd video, anyone able to divine these tech specs into a comparison
with the pi's graphics capability?

------
mschuster91
Hmmm... can it run Windows 7? Serious question, I'm after a cheap base system
for a HTPC and this looks quite like a fit.

~~~
voltagex_
If you built a UEFI stick (basically drop the contents of a Windows 7 DVD onto
a FAT32 (not NTFS) drive) then maybe. XBMC will run on this, but I'm not sure
if it can decode 1080p H264.

------
dxbydt
can you connect a bunch of these in parallel and run, like, map-reduce or
something ?

~~~
wmf
Sure, that's called microservers. It's not a good idea, but you can do it.

~~~
pm90
Why is it not a good idea? Genuinely curious

~~~
srdev
If I had to guess, probably because you could get equivalent performance
cheaper with standard servers. Plus, there's a good chance that your
distributed solution could fit on a single server, removing the overhead.

~~~
wmf
Yep. If you compare a $1,000 Xeon E3 server with a $1,000 cluster of ten
Minnowboards, the E3 will deliver more performance. Likewise, a $10,000 E5
server beats a cluster of E3s in many cases.

------
frade33
what sort of devices it would support mobile or laptop?

~~~
damian2000
Neither, its really designed for general purpose hacking, connecting to
external electronics, sensors, motors, etc. just like the Raspberry Pi ...

------
rednukleus
Is there any way of upgrading the RAM on this so that it can run SteamOS?

~~~
rbanffy
I don't think an Atom SoC would be adequate in terms of processing power. This
is for more modest chores.

------
andyl
I had hoped to use BeagleBoneBlack for a mobile low-powered application, but
the overhead of the different architecture was too much hassle, and I ended up
using an Intel NUC.

With NUC I can use the same OS as our high-end servers, same 64-bit apt-get
repos, and Docker.

MinnowBoard looks like what I've been waiting for - fingers crossed...

------
math0ne
Well the Pi had a good run, honestly longer than I thought it would but the
big boys have entered the arena now.

Also imagine what the prices on services like kimsufi and online.net will look
like once these guys have hundreds of thousands of them rack mounted. Good
times to come.

~~~
eloisant
The PI is still a third of the price, depending on you want to do with it, it
might be amply enough.

~~~
ah-
There's also the ODROID-U3, which is roughly comparable to the Minnowboard,
and it's just 59$.

[http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php](http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php)

~~~
beagle3
But do note that it is a "community price, one for customer" only offer. I
doubt they are losing money on it, but I suspect you'd have to buy a few
hundreds (or maybe thousands) to get that price if you actually want to build
something around it.

~~~
lgeek
The regular price is $65.

[http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code...](http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G138745696275)

