
Ryzen Boards Reign at Embedded World 2018 - pepsi
http://www.electronicdesign.com/embedded-revolution/ryzen-boards-reign-embedded-world-2018
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rubbingalcohol
> This pairs up with AMD’s VESA GPU.

Pretty sure they meant _Vega_, unless we're back in the 1980s.

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all_blue_chucks
Call me with AMD launches something that supports extended ISA.

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the_grue
Why would anyone _call_ on you if they can just _mail_ you the news?

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SmellyGeekBoy
I hear they even have electronic mail now.

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biggc
I'm excited for a NUC-like device running a Ryzen processor for my home media
server.

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pythonaut_16
From what I've seen so far, none of the Ryzen APUs pack as much graphics power
as the Vega-powered Kaby Lake Gs, which is disappointing.

I was hoping for a Ryzen NUC that would be powerful enough to use as an HTPC
and ultra-portable gaming machine, but it appears that won't be happening.

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zanny
A Ryzen "7" series APU with the same 4 core / 8 thread setup as the 2400G but
with double the CUs (so 22 CU) and a big beefy L4 buffer like Intel uses in
their high end GPUs to be able to use the extra gpu horsepower would be game
changing.

Maybe in the Navi generation? It would make for a very pretty lineup to have,
say, Navi 10 / 14 / 24 be APUs, Navi 36 / 44 be a budget discrete GPU pair,
have Navi 56 / 64 be shrunk Vega cards, and then some high end 2080 Ti
competitor series of new cards called Navi 80 / 88[1]. If they can get power
under control and have the TDPs like up like 45 / 65 / 95 / 120 / 150 / 170 /
200 / 210 / 250 watts they could have a really viable lineup no matter what
Nvidia pulls...

[1] Having a GPU called the 88 would just be marketing bliss. "When we get
this thing up to 88 compute units you are going to see some serious shit".

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bitL
2400G's 65W is waaaay to much for NUC. Even current dual-core 15W i5 can be
quite noisy. And 2400G allows you to play games only on lowest details with
>25fps anyway.

For home HTPC even an old BayTrail-based NUC is sufficient (Kodi/Plex) at
1080p though. I run one for ~3 years and haven't had any need to upgrade so
far.

For gaming get one of those ZOTAC Magnus machines with 1070, as large as Mac
Mini, quiet and powerful. I use one as a SteamBox and couldn't be happier.

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rb666
Honestly curious: why get a ~$1300 Linux console over say a Nintendo Switch or
regular PC? Seems to me SteamOS was a great idea but is dying? Anything I am
missing, any killer apps/games?

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bitL
It's a very fast, general-purpose computer; 1070 also can be used for crypto-
mining, so when you aren't playing, it can run ETH/XMR/etc. mining and as it's
pretty low power, you might even be profitable. Deep Learning model training
can be done too if you have such a need as well. I bought it as I wanted to
help SteamOS not to die and bought all AAA titles that were available on
SteamOS.

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nottorp
Those seem to be 25+W CPUs, plus whatever the rest of the system needs.

What's available these days that's x86_64 and is 15W or under, and comes on
mini ITX boards? Slow is fine, as long as it's reliable.

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tyingq
That's currently a gap for small boards. The ALIX boards have been the x86/32
bit answer for a while:
[https://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm](https://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm)

I haven't seen a 64 bit solution that stayed relevant yet. Intel's Edison was
the big contender, but has since died[1].

Gutting an ASUS Chromebox is a decent and cheap interim solution. They are
well built, reliable, available, and cheap. Basically a subsidized Intel NUC.

[1][https://hackaday.com/2017/06/19/intel-discontinues-joule-
gal...](https://hackaday.com/2017/06/19/intel-discontinues-joule-galileo-and-
edison-product-lines/)

~~~
derefr
Something I've wondered: is there a way to buy a barebones PC (or even just a
motherboard) with an Intel Core M processor installed? Presumed experience
level: I'm willing to write an ACPI DSDT from scratch for it. :)

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voltagex_
I wonder if buying a laptop with a broken screen would work for this.

Out of interest, why would you need to write a DSDT?

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yjftsjthsd-h
Laptop was my first thought as well; most of mine easily run under 20W even
with a screen, and they're almost all x64.

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staunch
> _The module supports up to 32 GB of DDR4 memory with optional ECC support._

One huge benefit of AMD vs Intel. While Intel is busy milking their customers,
AMD is innovating to offer more for less.

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aerovistae
Anyone care to explain what this is and why it's significant? Don't know much
about hardware.

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kbart
It's a very powerful "embedded" platform, I was waiting for something like
this for my home media/file server, so I don't have to keep PC turned on all
the time. Also, another important point for me is passive cooling, as buzzing
of cooling fan drives me crazy during night.

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barronlroth
For build-your-own servers or NUCs?

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walrus01
these are cool and all, but the very low quantities that embedded boards are
made in frequently make them much more expensive than going with something of
a standard size/spec (170x170mm mini-itx, of which there are a ton of good
Z370 chipset motherboards), and a discrete GPU like a $115 geforce1050 2GB.
Unless you really need four video outputs off one board.

There's a really wide selection of sizes and shapes of mini-itx chassis
available whether you need passive cooling, low profile height (no video
card), low-profile height-only video cards, full height video cards, etc.

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goldenkey
Some of these packages look absolutely beautiful. Being a hardware noob that
has only worked with Arduino and Raspberry Pi, I'm used to having to buy all
these overpriced accessories to fit into their boards. These mini mobos with
integrated cooling fans and all the bells and whistles, look really awesome.
Does anyone know how big the mini mobos actually are?

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loeg
The first one is a standard, with a maximum size of 170mm x 170mm (6.7" x
6.7"): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-
ITX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-ITX)

The rest appear even smaller.

~~~
goldenkey
Wow, had no idea VIA made these boards. The pico and the mobile are awesome.
[1]

Are they considered "embedded" due to not being able to add memory or change
very much by adding/removing components?

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile-
ITX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile-ITX)

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sofaofthedamned
VIA are still going? I have horrible memories of dealing with their kit 20
years ago when I did digital signage, as well as Geode chips which were even
worse...

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kbenson
Depending on need and use, the Mini-ITX systems from Via are simple and
reliable. I haven't used them much in the last 6-7 years, but at a previous
business we used them with a flash card to ship OpenBSD firewalls to client
offices for VPN connectivity. Problems were rare (and on-board AES
acceleration a decade ago was pretty cool).

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sofaofthedamned
Interesting. I remember the VIA stuff had serious graphics problems (granted
it was years ago) but the Geode stuff was worse to be fair, the hardware
watchdog basically prevented any GPU events at all. How times have changed.

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kbenson
Well, we didn't run GUI desktops on them, they were headless firewalls, so I
can't really comment as to how well graphics works, much less 3D acceleration.
We weren't running Geodes either, as IIRC that was the super low power and low
performance variation and didn't match our needs.

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NegativeLatency
I'm amazed at how many adds this page has. (Had to turn off my adblocker to
get the page to load)

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jhasse
Loaded perfectly with Firefox and uBlock Origin for me.

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NegativeLatency
I use Safari and uBlock (not origin)

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lorenzhs
Yeah uBlock non-origin is abandoned (there have been 4 commits in the last 2.5
years). It's also no longer available in the Safari Extension Gallery. There
is a fork of uBlock origin for Safari: [https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-
Safari](https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari) \- I use Linux so I can't vouch
for it, but gorhill (author of uBlock origin) links to it in the readme so
it's semi-official.

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Const-me
Maybe it’s time for a next generation of game consoles?

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winslow
Xbox one X and PS4 Pro were both recently released. What do you have in mind
for next the gen console(s)?

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Const-me
Both Xbox and PS are already using AMD-designed chips. Despite new versions
are recently released, they both are still based on the previous generation
AMD microarchitectures, i.e. Polaris GPU + Jaguar CPU.

This new AMD chips combine new generation GPU (Vega) and new generation CPU
(Ryzen). Both are much better than what’s in the current generation consoles.

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MBCook
And can they hit a $300 price point after factoring in the price of the case,
the hard drive, the optical drive, the power supply, and everything else? At
the same physical size? And the same noise level?

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Const-me
Looks like these embedded chips are either equivalent or very close to the
recently released Raven Ridge PC APUs, Ryzen 3 2200G and Ryzen 5 2400G. They
are offered for $100 and $170, respectively. Not that expensive.

