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."

Comments

Dimensions, anybody?

[meringuoid]

a tiny cube chassis measuring just two inches square

A cube is measured in square units. Brillant.

So how large is it really? Two inches on a side, for eight cubic inches? Or each face is two square inches, for 2*sqrt(2) cubic inches? Or the cube as a whole has two cubic inches in volume?

Re:Dimensions, anybody?

[meringuoid]

Clicking through from TFA, things get worse: Remarkably, it's an entire PC inside a chassis that's 2 x 2 x 2in square.

That's ambiguous in so many ways. Taken pedantically and literally, that's a 2D plane surface of 8 square inches, since the first two 2's are dimensionless. Assuming from that they represent inches, then that's a 4D hypercube of 16 inches^4 because the last 2 is square.

Looking at the picture, I think what they actually mean is that each edge is 2 inches long, for a footprint of 4 square inches and a volume of 8 cubic inches. But seriously, can we get at least some care in how we handle units? This is primary-school stuff. And why is a British writeup of a Japanese device measuring in inches in the first place? Wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's actually 5cm on a side...

Re:Smallest?

[ColdWetDog]

Troll?

Who in hell are you giving mod points to these days, Taco?