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Space Cube – the World's Smallest Linux PC
Barence writes "Meet the Space Cube — the world's smallest fully functional PC. Primarily designed for use in space, it somehow manages to cram a working PC with USB ports, card readers, audio outputs and proprietary interfaces into a tiny cube chassis measuring just two inches square. It runs a basic Linux front-end, which the blogger takes a look at, and there are some great photos of the device being loomed over by everyday objects like coffee mugs and cellphones. It has connections for controlling various electronics used by ESA, NASA and JAXA, but it will also apparently be for sale to the public soon, for use by amateur engineers and robotics clubs."
In terms of volume it looks bigger than a beagle board + CF card. The Beagle board is 3" square, but it can be a lot less tall than this. It also has a much faster CPU and (to me, most importantly, since it means I can actually connect it to a modern monitor) DVI output.
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The second line of the article states that it is one of the smallest computers in the world, not the smallest.
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Then again, presumably you still have to launch a mouse and keyboard and VDU for this thing, so it's not quite as great a saving as it sounds...
Depends on its job. It could be a headless device for logging/collating/forwarding sensor data, controlling a robot, whatever.
Not necessarily. You could (for example) have them control all kinds of things with no peripherals attached for most of the time (that is, except in the case when a problem needs to be diagnosed).
In case of a problem if there's need for diagnostics, you can then plug some small screen+keyboard and you're set to go.
They're running linux so they should be ideal for monitoring sensors and reporting, transmitting ping/heartbeat signals for any kinds of devices, for controlling hardware, basically for anything that can run autonomously.
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
Quite simply, it's one of the smallest PCs in the world, with each side measuring around 2 square inches.
*Emphasis mine
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
On http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2008/07/03/introducing-the-space-cube/ (which is linked from the linked article) they mention that the thing is about 2x2x2 inches, so each side is about 4 square inches.
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