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Rock Pi X Intel Cherry Trail Board to Sell for as low as $39
Most low cost (sub $100) single board computers are based on Arm processors because Intel processors are normally more expensive, but there are some exceptions with AAEON Up Board and Atomic Pi both powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 processor and selling for $99 and $35 respectively.
The former follows Raspberry Pi form factor and is easy to use, but the latter requires some more work to wire power supply unless you buy an extra baseboard. There should however soon be a third option for low-cost Intel SBCs with Radxa Rock Pi X board powered by an Intel Atom x5-Z8300 Cherry Trail processor and is expected to sell for as little as $39.
Rock Pi X just showed up in Hackerboards database, and there will be two models, namely Rock Pi X model A and Rock Pi X model B with the following specifications:
- SoC – Intel Atom x5-Z8300 “Cherry Trail” quad-core processor @ 1.44 GHz / 1.84 GHz (Turbo) with Intel Gen8 HD graphics @ 500 MHz
- System Memory – 1 GB, 2 GB. or 4GB LPDDR3-1866
- Storage – MicroSD card socket, eMMC flash socket
- Video Output / Display I/F – HDMI 1.4 port up to 4K @ 30 Hz, eDP and MIPI DSI connectors
- Audio I/O – Via HDMI, 3.5mm audio jack
- Connectivity
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Model B only – 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth 4.2 Classic + LE
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 3x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x USB OTG Type-C port
- Camera I/F – MIPI CSI connector
- Expansion – 40-pin Raspberry Pi compatible header with GPIOs, 2x ADC, 2x PWM, 2x I2C
- Misc – RTC
- Power Supply
- 5V-20V up to 3A/1A Via USB-C port with QC and PD fast charging support;
- AXP288C PMIC
- Model B only – optional PoE support via additional HAT
- Dimensions – 85 x 52 mm
[...] Apart from the Intel processor and the lack of an M.2 slot, the specifications are very similar to the company’s Arm-based Rock Pi 4 SBC with the differences between model A and model B being the addition of a wireless module and support for PoE for the latter. If you’re worried about cooling, a variant of Rock Pi 4 heatsink ($7.99) will certainly be made.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @07:46AM (7 children)
Not trolling, I'm genuinly interested.
Is this simply information for builders of phone/tablets?
Is it a serious proposition that I use this for my desktop?
Up to now I was under the impression these cheap minicomputers were useful for tiny robots or standalone machines supposed to handle relatively simple tasks.
But now I see a solution for 4K display... are they trying to replace appleTV/roku similar?
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Friday September 13 2019, @09:05AM (1 child)
The latest RPi's and similar can support a desktop if you only use it for web browsing, email and an office suite of applications. However, they are not really up to compiling large programs or managing a business in my opinion. Some will say otherwise, but it depends very much how much grunt power you actually need for your normal usage. Looking at pictures or watching a streamed video is perfectly possible, video editing I would say is not or rather I imagine that it would be slow and tedious - although I have never actually bothered to try it. I'm guessing, but I would say it would match most smart phones in power for usual desktop tasks, but with the benefit that you can have a full size keyboard and display if that is what you want.
I know that some RPi's have been used as point-of-sale terminals however, I have not seen any reporting on how happy the users have been with them. The limit is really your imagination but the majority are used, not as stand-alone desktops, but to do those tasks for which a full-size computer would be overkill in terms of power and cost e.g. as as a local server, or extending the range of a wifi router, etc [computerworld.com]. I have one that is permanently logged on to SN (and simultaneously doing other tasks) and triggering a warning if stories are not being published, or if the site is unavailable. I could use it for the editing role, but as I already have multiple screens running from a multi-core desktop that is my preferred choice when work needs to be done.
Only you can decide if the RPi would meet your needs in a desktop computer. A RPi cannot compete with a modern multi-core processor, 16Gb+ of memory, and a dedicated graphics card but could easily hold it's own against Windows XP or similar - and there are thousands of computers doing just that around the globe. The advantage of having Linux as the OS is that it is vary easy to install only those programs that you want and thus you are not trying to run a full equivalent of Windows 10 with all of the additional apps that you get with such an install. If you choose a sensible browser the web experience can be perfectly acceptable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @10:10AM
Thank you.
I'm surprised that streaming videos can work, but I guess it's the hardware acceleration that's doing it.
In principle these are more powerful than typical desktops 20 years ago, and if they are as resilient then I would personally see them as desktop computers in many settings.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday September 13 2019, @11:53AM
I used a Raspberry Pi 2 as a "set-top box" running Kodi (& acting as a front end to TVHeadEnd PVR running in a server in another room) for a while, and it was very effective (not 4k, but this was a couple of years ago now) - switched to a FireTV mainly to get Netflix/Amazon Prime./Spotify without endless hacking (legal or otherwise). Not unexpected, since the Pi is basically built around an off-the-shelf set-top-box system-on-a-chip that supports hardware H264 etc.
One of the stated aims of Raspberry Pi has always been to get more people interested in coding - part of that is via robotics etc. but another aspect is just having a really cheap computer that you, or the kids, can screw up without losing too much sleep - for software catastrophes, just re-flash the SD card and start again.
Not sure why you'd use a RasPi or other Pi-alike as a desktop replacement when a Chromebook or surplus/used laptop would be a much neater solution, but I'm not sure that's the plan - its not like they jacked up the price to get the extra power, that's just what $40 worth of hardware using off-the-shelf chippery does in 2019... For my money, the attractive feature of the Pi4 is that they seem to have improved the i/o bottleneck of the Pi1/2/3 whereby all of the networking and USB was done by a single, slightly flakey OTG USB 2 port.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @12:32PM
https://libreelec.tv/ [libreelec.tv]
https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-raspberry-pi-has-revolutionized-emulation/ [codinghorror.com]
https://retropie.org.uk/ [retropie.org.uk]
The Raspberry Pi 4 and this thing absolutely are viable desktops. But the GPU and media decode capabilities allow them to trade blows with Apple TV, Roku, Amazon Fire TV, etc. streaming devices. A torrent client or Kodi fully loaded with addons [troypoint.com] provides plenty of free entertainment. Game console emulation is possible and newer ones are becoming more viable with each generation.
It could also be used for laptops/tablets [pi-top.com] and maybe phones, but is probably not the best option.
Raspberry Pi's Compute Modules [raspberrypi.org] are aimed at industrial uses.
(Score: 3, Informative) by richtopia on Friday September 13 2019, @02:24PM (1 child)
SBCs have evolved into many applications. As you point out, TV/Roku is one of the most popular, along with emulators and retro gaming on the television. With the CPU being derived from mobile phones most of the features are relatively free: the SOC has onboard graphics capable of outputting 4k to remain competitive in the mobile segment, so the SBC also gets that capability.
The board described here is x86 but I would consider Intel's Atom chips an SOC too. Regarding the migration to x86 from ARM, use-cases exist. Lots of these SBCs are used as low power servers, and x86 makes life a lot easier. For example, I migrated from a SBC to an old laptop for my home server because most Docker images are built for x86-64.
If you would like to read on another board that made a similar transition, check out the ODROID-H2 https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2/ [hardkernel.com] ODROID was in development of the successor to the XU4, but had a hard time securing the ARM chip. Apparently, they talked with Intel and quickly rolled out a board based on the J4105. The power draw has gotten comparable to ARM processors, and perhaps the biggest issue with the H2 board is availability of the Intel processor and the board themselves.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday September 14 2019, @03:57AM
I am in the low power camp.
For now. Arduino and Propellers as I/O.
Personally, I am quite interested in how to repurpose Android phone hardware. Especially if I can get multiple I2C ports.
I do not trust proprietary binary blobs. If I can't trust it, what's the purpose if reinventing the wheel? The whole reason to me to mess with this is to build something I can trust.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 13 2019, @06:12PM
It's for Gnu+Linux nerds (and delusional and masochist windows users) who like to try and make stuff with it...but yes, a tv box is one obvious use case.