

BeagleBoard is nice, but the PandaBoard is better (dual Cortex-A9 at 1GHz) - pietrofmaggi
http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/10/4/pandaboard-arm-dev-kit-launches/

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thingie
Well, I wonder if it would be suitable as some kind of low-power all-in-one
home server (file sharing, irc in screen, not much more), network router and
jukebox and movie player. In theory, specs are ok for that purpose, but from
the remark "if you need more than 1GB, you're probably doing it wrong", it
seems that, hm, I'd be doing it wrong, because 1GB isn't exactly a lot of
memory and it'd be wise to put there more.

(And of course, USB might not be the ideal bus to connect a lot of disk
space.)

~~~
joshu
Don't bother.

I got a Lenovo q150 for $200 and replaced the disk with the consumer intel
40gb sad for another $100. It is tiny, quiet, and consumes 17 watts.

~~~
8ren
The Q150 looks amazing (though $350-$399 from their website:
<http://shop.lenovo.com/us/landing_pages/ideacentre/2010/q150> \- you can even
mount on the VESA bracket)

Any idea how to get it in Australia? Lenovo's au site doesn't list it; and I
guess there'd be power-supply (and maybe IP?) issues.

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joshu
I got the one without HDMI (who cares, for a server?) which is a lot cheaper.
Not sure what else it is missing. It was $210.

I got it from Amazon. Can you order from Amazon? This is what I got:
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003SCI59K>

EDIT: The one I have isn't an nvidia ION-based machine.

~~~
8ren
thanks! unfortunately it says as I feared: _Lenovo IdeaCentre Q150 Desktop PC
- Black (40813AU) cannot be shipped to the selected address._ (BTW: most
things are OK for us with Amazon.)

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Das_Bruce
I have a few boring projects I'd like to try with something like this, any
idea what it is likely to retail for?

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8ren
A boring project would be to regut an old eeePC with it - x2 the CPU and x2
the RAM. Seems like about the only way I'm gonna get an ARM netbook. :-(

The board is 4"x4.5", but I couldn't find thickness, weight or power
consumption. Some specs at bottom of:
[http://www.omappedia.org/wiki/PandaBoard_Early_Adopter_Progr...](http://www.omappedia.org/wiki/PandaBoard_Early_Adopter_Program)

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sunkencity
Awesome. Looking forward to change on-the-road development platform from
macbook to iPad + headless linux computer using a board like that.

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jbarham
It's hard to figure out what problems a board like this solves. If you want a
cheap file server just buy an Atom board w/ a passive heat-sink. If you want
to play around w/ "physical computing" and drive sensors, the Arduino
ecosystem is much more open and vibrant.

And IIRC although the BeagleBoard had a nice GPU, it wasn't programmable
without signing an NDA.

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sireat
This is all very nice, unfortunately, I couldn't find any information, when a
real human with a boring project will be able to buy one.

Only thing I got was that early adopters will get some at the end of October.

Usually, one gravitates toward something inferior shipping(BeagleBoard XM in
this case) to something superior, which is unavailable.

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JoachimSchipper
Very nice, but quite powerful for "embedded"..

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pmjordan
That looks like a very impressive piece of kit. I was planning to get a
Hawkboard Lite for a project, but might wait for this to become available
instead, if the price is decent. 8 times the RAM!

~~~
pietrofmaggi
The different amount of RAM is the last think to notice here. The OMAP L138 on
the hawkboard is an ARM9 (+ C674xDSP) at 375/456MHz, the OMAP4 of the
pandaboard is a dual core Cortex-A9 at 1GHz.

They are completely in two different class. I too hope for the price.

~~~
pmjordan
_The different amount of RAM is the last think to notice here._

That depends mainly on the use you have in mind. For my purposes, the
Hawkboard's CPU would probably be fine. But yeah, the Pandaboard is quite a
beast - twice the computing power of an iPad, if I'm not mistaken. (not
counting the DSP)

~~~
codedivine
More than twice I would say. iPad's A4 is a tweaked Cortex A8. Cortex A9 is
out-of-order compared to in-order A8 and will likely be faster per clock.

~~~
mansr
The A9 is readily 25% faster per clock than the A8 for scalar integer
operations. Scalar floating-point is 5-10x faster depending on the exact
operations. Vector instructions are mostly the same or slower than A8 due to
lack of the limited dual-issue present in A8. I have yet to run a proper
benchmark to compare the difference in vector performance in realistic
situations.

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aberkowitz
How can they give out free ones without coming up with a price? You cannot
develop a commercial product without knowing how much it will cost.

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zokier
I believe the purpose of dev kits is prototyping, where cost isn't that much
of an issue.

~~~
aberkowitz
They're asking you to invest your valuable ttime into developing a product
when they cannot tell you how much it will cost.

What happens if you develop a product and then you find out that the hardware
cost pushes it out of the price point for your target demograpic?

~~~
zokier
What I meant was that I don't think PandaBoard itself is meant to ship for
your customers, but to allow you to prototype your ideas, and evaluate the
hardware needs of your product, so that you can then build your own hardware
which you ship to your customers.

And that's why I said that dev kit price is not that much of an issue, as it
does not directly affect the price of the hardware you are going to ship.

edit: from their FAQ:

Is PandaBoard a end product or can I utilize it in my end product?

PandaBoard is a development platform! It is not an end product nor do we
recommend directly using it in an end product. We encourage you to leverage
open & low cost PandaBoard to explore, prototype your software & hardware
design and venture into creating your own OMAP4430 based product.

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1tw
And they'll give you one for free if your planned project is 'cool', enough.

~~~
pietrofmaggi
PandaBoard Request Program:

[https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG5mcVNXSFF...](https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG5mcVNXSFFleVZjVFNtMVVqXzVYY1E6MQ)

