HardKernels new 35 dollar quad core SBC.....computer. Rasberry pi competitor

[cast-fish]

Hello,

I see Hardkernel are now selling a 35 dollar single computer board. Credit card size with quad core CPU.

This seems a very good buy for several reasons.

The chip is an AMLOGIC chip which is pretty fast at 4 cores running at 1.5 ghz each (which is 8 times more horse power than a Rasberry pi).

It also has the same graphics performance as a current IPAD with a dual core Mail 450 GPU.It has 1 gig of ram.

Also the company provide the entire customized Ununtu OS for free, with proper graphics drivers and OPENGLS working correct. SO it is excellent for graphics and 3D work and photoshop. Games etc.

Also the company has a forum where a memeber made an entire customized Ubuntu OS for professional music work. WHile this was made for the samsung chipped boards, i feel he will port it to the AMLOGIC board. It may not be that difficult for him. He is Silicon Valley based guy.

you simply need to buy an eMMC flash card for it which are about 20 bucks shoping around. 16 gigs. Or you can use a cheap slower micro SD card for your
Linux and Android Kit Kat OS's.

Kit Kat comes with if for free. Completely custom installed and working. XBMC and many many apps work flawlessly on this computer.

This computer is in another ball park to a rasberry pi, yet not that much more cost. AMLOGIC chips have very good support for OPENGLS  drivers.

$35 plus the stuff mentioned above.

in addition , a compute rlike this has many benefits including almost no power usage...portability....and can be replaced.....

http://hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2ZRW-AagSQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvJSCzIGr1E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8yGS2SHqpA




V

[hiro]

for high-demanding tasks like photoshop or for a daw an amd64 would be better suited.
ubuntu has always been free.

i thought the mali has bad support from nvidia, i.e. is there a properly working video decoder for linux nowadays? else how can xbmc run flawlessly, i can't believe it will decode all common video and audio formats without problems?

what do you think about the cubox-i? I think because of fully supported video decoding it is attacking rpi much more, and it also has way more power (more expensive than what you posted though).
http://www.solid-run.com/blog/openelec-says-farewell-apple-hello-cubox/

[cast-fish]

Hi Hiro,

Right.

Never looked at that cubi you mentioned yet.

The Daw thing runs well on the C1...that is why the guy developed the OS because
the board has the power to run if effectively. You are not getting amd64 chip computers
at anywhere near 35 dollars right?

The C1 can also run gimp and such like, no problem as the demo videos show the graphics
power of this computer.


ye.

V

[cast-fish]

uh hiro.

just took a look at cubi-i. Presumable even the single core cpu model is 59 dollars.
This is not near the cpu power of the Odroid C1, yet double the price.

However, the cubi-i does come boxed...and with power brick...but

I don't see the competition really.

The odroid is pretty customed up by
the devs and opened out for graphics.
Tailored. Kit Kat too.

But like you say, to be real sure you would
have to try different codecs in XBMC and other free media players from the play
store or Linux.

But as regards computing power, i don't think they are even close.

You can see the gaming performance of the odroid. I am not sure what relevance nvidia
has. THe play store has thousands of world class 3D games free.

[hiro]

It's not just about being able to start the application, but to actually use it: with an arm you run into performance limits pretty fast, whether you do many realtime-effects in a daw, lots of I/O because of recording many high-quality sources at once, encoding/decoding, or high-quality cpu-demanding image calculations with photoshop.

I'm using a 6-core AMD64 for a DAW and it's trivial to get it to it's limits whereas photoshop is *always* too slow, on any system I've tried

For only moving and resizing an image every now and then and other office-like tasks I agree ARM quadcores are nearly usable, but definitely not for anything more demanding.

I get amd64 computers for free these days. You can also buy them used on ebay, they are dirt-cheap. Thinkpad T61 is <150 Euros nowadays and it comes with case, screen, mouse and keyboard included

35 Dollars + case + keyboard + mouse + screen I think is approaching the price of a proper Thinkpad T61, and it still doesn't give you the same mobility. Oh, and the thinkpad has a UPS included (the battery)

The reason I brought up the cubi is because you called your alternative a rpi competitor. As rpi by no means excels with performance or stability, but if at all then with usable video decoding under linux I wanted to present you the only usable ARM competitor in that domain that I know of. There are also some nice MIPS systems out there btw, if I had a bit more time I would tinker with those, too.

[cast-fish]

Right...well whatever you say.

i supposse DAW stuff is far more demanding and not linked to the gpu specs....where'as the 3D games demo's there are really impressive.

Still, why would forum members make very custom DAW os's for these little computers?...

I don't know about amd64 and getting hold of laptops containing them....but that seems a good
idea but are they 6 core for that price? how do you get them free?....if so then yes, your comments make more than sense.

i just think the hardkernel C1 is way cool at that price. IT's a usable computer as demo'd and
brilliant for 3d gaming...(when you think about somehting like an xbox....it has similar performance)

[hiro]

Still, why would forum members make very custom DAW os's for these little computers?...

DAW is a big word. He might mean recording one layer of audio via usb sound card and recording that to the hard disk, this can be done by a DAW, but is not the only thing a proffessional will expect from it.

The thinkpad T61 has a core 2 duo I think. It has way more CPU performance than any ARM I've seen so far.

When I help neighbours and friends with their windows computer or network installations sometimes they don't need an old (sometimes partly broken) laptop and give it to me

I got a playstation 2 as a present the other week, so I won't be using ARM for gaming any time soon. MIPS yay.

[cast-fish]

indeed hiro, Daw's can do a lot. But it's a full OS custom done for pro audio work
and i don't think a dev would do that on a computer that would not perform for it.
(well i am sure)...it's quite a lot of work. It is really comprehesive with real time
kernel and many apps installed and a pro daw.  Ardour.


In summary i think what i am trying to put forward is that there will
be very few computers close to the value of the odroid for a new computer.

i think the gaming performance is amazing. Still,  i have seen dual core ARM's
doing the same quality of 3D gaming at 30 dollars. m880k...

i don't see competition to it, at that price as a computer.

You see Hiro, what tends to happen is devs release very very custome android
kernels for these odroids...often with great tweaks and great improvements.

ye

V

[LichenSymbiont]

I'm gathering parts on ebay for building a DIY VR HMD (Head-Mounted Display), and this seems to be a perfect dev board for mobile VR!
And open source hardware VR!
So instead of having a separate STM32 board for the accelerometer (to make the USB accelerometer), you have it connected to the boards pins.
But I wonder if you can then use it to immitate the Oculus Rift's USB accelerometer (as Rift compatibility is nice).

Hmm... and it would also be able to provide inside-out position-tracking, without taxing the computer (VR is heavy enough as it is).
Yes, VR would really benefit from coupling with a cheap but performant ARM board!

Edit:
Here is someone who used Raspberry Pi with Oculus Rift: http://bitoniau.blogspot.fr/2014/04/oculus-rift-on-raspberry-pi.html
And it works... But the demo is pretty boring, at least he should have placed the view *inside* of a cube, to get some presence.