
$89 Exynos4412 1.7Ghz ARM Cortex-A9 Quad-Core 2GB - 6ren
http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php
======
edtechdev
This seems to be the closest I could find to a complete list of these kind of
things: ODROID, Raspberry Pi, PandaBoard, BeagleBoard, etc.:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_single-board_computers>

Also, plug computers like FreedomBox:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_computer>

And single board microcontrollers like the arduino boards, make controller,
basic stamp, etc.: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-board_microcontroller>

I personally would like to see a build-your-own tablet type of thing that can
run android or ubuntu. Of course there already is the nexus 7 though.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
One of the first controllers I played around with was the BASIC stamp, by
Parallax.

There is no single word for the horrible, utterly disgusting, nasty setup that
these things required. There is some sort of tokenizer for Linux that kind of
makes the required upload. The GUI is BAD. And when they had serial
interfaces, you had to buy a USB-RS232 from them because they did screwy shit.

Thank the gods for the Arduino. Working with that cheap microcontroller is
pleasant.

~~~
irq
Actually, at the time the original BASIC Stamp was released (early 90s),
programming a microcontroller directly from your serial port was a huge
improvement. Most microcontrollers back then required a separate, expensive
programming board, in addition to non-free programming software. You also had
to remove most microcontrollers from your circuit to program them.

I agree that by today's standards, programming via serial port is cumbersome,
but it's actually a good thing that the STAMPs are still available because
they are used in a _ton_ of embedded applications that are still in use and
need maintenance and replacement parts.

~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
I'm well aware of what we came from.

My dad had a few of these. One I distinctly remember was a 2 part combo. To
write, you put the chip in a ZIF socket (he changed this from a socketed to
ZIF) in a huge metal box, and what looks like a parallel port to the computer.
Then, you realize that wasnt a parallel socket, but something going to an 8bit
ISA card.

To erase, you had to untape the window and put the chip in a UV box for a few
hours.

I've still got it around here, somewhere...

~~~
bio4m
Thats an old school EPROM setup; never used one myself but heard they were a
right pain to use.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPROM>

~~~
vanadium
Newly-minted video game prototype collectors over the past decade have found
themselves wondering why one-of-a-kind games in their collection kept coming
up unreadable although they were perfectly usable when they first purchased
the cartridge. In most cases, it's because they found themselves fiddling with
the EPROM window and/or carelessly storing the cartridge until bit rot ran its
course.

There was plenty of benefit to EPROMs back in the day to a developer, but
long-term data retention was certainly not one of them.

------
e1ven
Very cool. I'm building a new HW project, based on the Raspberry Pi, and I'm
always looking for options that are similarly sized, but pack a bit more power
;)

The thing I wonder for things like this, though, is at what quantity I can get
them, and what the reliability looks like. One of the things I like about the
Pi is that it's well tested - Even if it's a bit slower, they're making 4K of
them per day, and everyone's using one, helping map out the gotchas, etc.. If
you go with a lesser known board, you're a lot more on your own..

~~~
nullc
> a bit slower

The rpi is far more than a bit slower, more than the cores and clock counts
imply. The pi is a slower microarch and is cache deprived too.

For somethings this doesn't matter but many of those things should probably be
done on a proper microcontroller.

The odroid stuff appears to have a lot of users too, and these devices are
less 'weird' than the rpi— they're more like the pandaboard and beagleboard—
so there are less sharp edges to figure out.

~~~
mtgx
That's why I'm hoping the next-gen Raspberry Pi will be 64-bit based on Cortex
A53. They should skip the ARMv7 architecture and jump from ARMv6 to ARMV8. It
should make things easier for the people maintaining the Raspbian OS,too, if
they didn't have to support 3 architectures at once.

~~~
ersii
I have been assuming that it's most likely they won't make another board - or
at least not another design.

I assume that, because in that case - they'd be fanfaring a lot more about how
their newer design is being worked on. I'm seeing that they're more focusing
on developing the userbase and utilities of the current board.

ie. with expansion cards, refining the software stack and such.

------
hosay123
Note Ethernet is via a USB device, which limits throughput and latency, and
generally increases CPU load. Hard disk connection is the same: USB only.

Something like this with SATA and Ethernet on a fast bus would be awesome

~~~
leoc
I'm sure there is (or was?) a low-cost MIPS board with four gigabit Ethernet
ports. I can't find anything about it now though.

EDIT: this was it, the Ubiquity Networks RouterStation Pro
<http://www.ubnt.com/rspro> ; it was the basis of an official "MIPS Linux
Starter Kit" <http://store.mips-store.com/mips-linux-starter-kit.html> which
is now "[t]emporarily out of stock". 1 × USB2, 128MB RAM, JTAG, no video. $79
USD MSRP.

~~~
epnk
There's the Carambola:

<http://www.8devices.com/product/3/carambola>

Runs OpenWRT

------
steevdave
I've got a Linaro build running on mine. (It arrived on the 24th, so I had a
good Christmas!) it's actually stable overclocked to 2GHz and the Mali in it
is also stable at 800MHz.

~~~
elteto
Could you comment on getting Linux up and running with the ODROID boards? I'm
thinking of using one of them for a hardware project and even though I haven't
really looked into it yet, it seemed to me that a full blown distro was not
ready yet.

~~~
steevdave
Well, I had a bit of a fuss as they are using ARM TrustZone, so the 3.0.15
kernel didn't want to compile with a newer gcc than the one that Hardkernel
uses by default (CodeSourcery 2010q1 - which translates to roughly GCC 4.4.1
with their extras.) - through the help of a friend that is patched up (but
sadly breaks it building with CodeSourcery (heh) - patch is at
<https://gists.github.com/4395518> \- that will let you build with GCC 4.6.3
(Linaro/Ubuntu defaults) - if you want to build with 4.7.2, you will also need
to edit line 234 of drivers/video/samsung/s3cfb.h and remove the inline.

After that, it's just like every other rootfs. I focus on Gentoo, so other
distros... I don't know, but they will have an Ubuntu image up soon.

There are no graphics until X though, so you're stuck with ssh or serial
console until then.

Kernel sources come from the BSP download on hardkernel's site. Should be a
tarball in there named kernel_4412.tar.gz

------
ergo14
The problem with all those board - except rapsberry pi is that there are no
proper gpu hardware drivers for them - at least under linux. So one can't
build linux based XBMC media centre on them to play HD movies :( When it comes
tocheap boards only r-pi can do this, other boards can only do this when you
use Android on them :(

~~~
mightytarzan
Depends on what you mean by "proper" drivers. The GPU drivers for the
Raspberry Pi, like the drivers for most other development boards, consist of
an open-source shim and a closed-source userspace blob [1].

HD decoding on these boards is performed using a digital signal processor
(DSP) integrated into the SOC, the CPU (even with GPU support) is too slow for
1080P h264 Content. This is not specific to Android, for example TI supports
use of the DSP of the Pandaboard on Linux as well [2] (it is still not very
stable, at least on the OMAP 4430 version of the Pandaboard).

[1] <http://airlied.livejournal.com/76383.html>

[2] <https://launchpad.net/~tiomap-dev/+archive/release>

Edit: formatting

~~~
ergo14
yes - but for exynos or allwinner 10 you dont even have that shim :( - thats
what i meant - you basicly cant run XBMC on linux on those with acceptable
performance as of today. Im hoping this situation will change soon, but it
looks like there is no interest by soc vendors to provide necessary tools.

I know this works on pandaboard and some others, but those boards are about
150$ range if i remember correctly.

~~~
mightytarzan
Hmm Allwinner A1X and Exynos 4412 both have integrated Mali 400 GPUs, so there
should be at least some GPU support on Linux [1].

There is an unofficial XBMC port for A1X devices which supports the HW Video
Decoder of the SOC [2]. I have an A10 device at work, but unfortunately won't
be in the office to play around with it for some time.

[1] <http://linux-sunxi.org/Mali400>

[2] <http://linux-sunxi.org/XBMC>

~~~
ergo14
[http://www.j1nx.nl/xbmc-allwinner-a10-apologies-received-
acc...](http://www.j1nx.nl/xbmc-allwinner-a10-apologies-received-accepted/)

According to what XBMC devs say - it doesnt work at this point, and there is
some online drama going on ;-)

Although i would be super happy to see progress on this.

One of the links you gave me: "Allwinner officially only supports the Mali GPU
driver on the Android platform only." :(

------
mrb
Does anyone know of a small ARM computer board supporting gigabit Ethernet?
The ones I find are physically too large, eg:
[http://www.tweaktown.com/news/24233/via_introduces_amazing_4...](http://www.tweaktown.com/news/24233/via_introduces_amazing_49_apc_android_computer_we_go_hands_on/index.html)

~~~
hosay123
What is your project? At GigE line rate you have approximately 8 CPU
cycles/byte at 1Ghz, which doesn't count for much on ARM

~~~
mrb
My project is a tiny box in the living room that copies Blu-ray discs over NFS
to a multi-TB fileserver. The difference between 100Mbps and 1Gbps when
copying a 40GB image is 55 min vs. 5 min...

I should add that with DMA and checksum offloading, even a (relatively) slow
CPU can handle 1Gbps data transmission rate easily.

brigade: thanks for the board tips!

------
holgersindbaek
Why is this cool?

I'm a designer who also programs, so don't fully understand why this is cool.
Can someone explain?

~~~
brigade
This is the fastest computer you can get for $80 (plus shipping from Korea)
Also it's smaller than a 2" cube and draws around 6 watts under load.

Just six years ago, a computer this fast would probably have cost in excess of
$1000 and have been at least a minitower drawing 100 watts.

------
ynniv
It feels like splitting hairs, but at 10W this uses significantly more power
than a Raspberry Pi ("A" is 1.5W, "B" is 3.5W). Just a heads up.

~~~
rorrr
Raspbery Pi is 700 MHz, single core, 256MB RAM.

This is 1.7 GHz, quad core, 2048MB RAM.

If anything, it's more efficient per watt than RPi (and per dollar).

~~~
nacs
The Pi (Model B which all the new ones they ship are), is 512MB RAM.

~~~
rorrr
Shared with GPU, btw.

------
Kerrick
I've been thinking of building Linux From Scratch [1] as an effort to better
understand the workings of GNU/Linux. Would this be a good machine to build it
on? It certainly seems to fit the bill!

[1]: <http://www.linuxfromscratch.org>

~~~
asdfs
I'd do LFS in a VM first. If you try doing it on one of these devices, then
either you're cross-compiling (which can be somewhat finicky), or you're
compiling on this device (which will be slow).

------
harrydoukas
I think it is still expensive, manufacturers in China ship Android HDMI-usb
dongles for samples at 55$ featuring 1.6GHz A9 dual core, quad core GPU,
builtin 802.11n, BT 2.0 and HDMI output featuring Android 4.1 and more..

~~~
BadDesign
Any links to the "manufacturers in China"?

~~~
drone
Here's one for you, no need for samples - retails $51.99 with free shipping:
[http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Android-4-1-Mini-PC-TV-Box-
Ro...](http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Android-4-1-Mini-PC-TV-Box-Rockchip-
RK3066-1-6GHz-Dual-Core-1GB-RAM-8GB/643888657.html)

------
MechSkep
Cool to see this on HN. We're sticking this board on our little legged robots
for vision processing.

Power consumption is the issue though, even 3W is going to tank our battery
life. I've looked around, but can anyone come up with something that is better
in terms of a 'processing power to power consumption' ratio?

------
angersock
Does anyone happen to know of any MIPS-based things like this? I'd seen quad
and 16 core MIPS packages earlier--anybody know of attempts to put them on a
board like this?

EDIT: Also, did anyone else notice the full credit-card number on the
picture...? I hope they fix that. :(

~~~
ZachPruckowski
The credit card number is the same set of 4 digits repeated 4 times - it's
probably shopped.

------
taypo
Looks like a good upgrade to an xmbc on raspberry pi. This might be a stupid
question but does anyone know if HDMI-CEC would work on it? I want to be able
to use my tv remote just like on rpi.

~~~
marcosdumay
The elephant in the room is always how well the Linux driver for the GPU works
(if it exists).

------
ww520
This looks pretty cool, with plenty of power, and coming with the case. Adding
the Wifi built-in would be better. Now it needs to add the bulky USB based
wifi piece.

------
neya
Whoa! Amazing stuff. Gonna build something this new year :)

------
fulafel
caveat emptor with development boards, the term implies it might not be
product quality. eg the sheevaplugs I bought died within a few months of
purchase.

------
izak30
What's up with the full photo of a credit card? (I understand the size
comparison aspect).

~~~
jsnell
What aspect is unclear then? Security? It seems safe to say that 4412 4412
4412 4412 is not a real CC number :-)

------
drivebyacct2
There are a gazillion of these. (Most of these are dual, there are a few quad
cores mixed in. For XBMC, the dual core is more than powerful enough. The quad
core won't fix software rendering, it's up the OEMs to get CedarX working
(it's close) or Pivos to push out more amlplayer updates for utilizing the
Mali GPU for accelerated playback.)
[http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=prod...](http://www.alibaba.com/trade/search?fsb=y&IndexArea=product_en&CatId=&SearchText=cortex+a9+quad+core+set+top+box)

It's like the AMLogic-M3 f16ref. There are a dozen different flavors of these
and the roms are interchangeable but there's no community around them to get
continuous integration and good builds of XBMC setup. There should be an
effort to get a distro that will generate nightly builds to target these
devices with Linux/Android and optionally XBMC.

I keep rehashing this and everytime I do I say I should start a blog or set of
resources for this... I need to follow through but my other projects are more
immediately exciting :S

~~~
Aissen
> _There are a gazillion of these._

Nope there aren't, not at this price. Even the pandaboard ES is more expensive
(and TI is discontinuing OMAP :-(( ). Sure there are quite a lot Allwinner and
Rockchip based boards, but these don't compare to a Samsung Exynos. Not yet.

~~~
vonmoltke
TI is not discontinuing OMAP. They are discontinuing the tablet-oriented chips
and refocusing on embedded. What that means for the hobbyist SBC market
remains to be seen.

------
rorrr
What ARM needs to do is start a multi-core revolution. Give me 64 cores, 128
cores, 1024 cores. That shit would be so useful for video encoding.

~~~
graue
Parallela, featured on HN a few months ago, is aiming to do exactly that:
[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-
su...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-
supercomputer-for-everyone)

~~~
rorrr
It's not clear what the instruction set is. Is there any software that can run
on it (and not on ARM A9 like in their demos)?

It's also not clear whether it's a SIMD solution. If that's the case, they are
basically reinventing GPUs.

~~~
vidarh
All the architecture documentation is available. The instruction set is
custom. There's a gcc port. The OS is hosted on the ARM, but several of their
demos involve calculations offloaded to the Epiphany chip, otherwise there
wouldn't be much point.

It is _not_ SIMD. Each core is totally independent of the others. Basically
the cores are structured in a grid, and all cores have 32KB in-core static
RAM, but can also access the memory of all the other cores (at the cost of a
few cycles delay), or main memory.

You could certainly use them as much like a SIMD if you wanted to, but then
you'd likely get better performance out of a GPU.

We'll see when they deliver on their kickstarter project what type of
performance people get out of it in reality...

