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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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Would they let you pass with that in an airport?
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
does it run... oh... it does? Awsome.
I mentioned tinker-toys once in a post - now I'm modded down for life.
...measure two inches square?
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
Too bad it's not available to the general public at the moment :(
Tie two birds together: although they have four wings, they cannot fly. (The blind man)
What's the dealeo with all these ridiculously tiny "fully functional" Linux boxes coming out? Does anyone have a use for them, other than attempting to cram a distributed computing network into a backpack? A machine that needs an external keyboard, screen and power adaptor has no need to be any smaller than a midget-ITX.
This thing is obviously aimed at special applications.
For these kind of things there are much better solutions than x86 chips. They are smaller, faster, cheaper and more economic than classic HW.
Take a look at TI's daVinci program, for example, or maybe some small Coldfire from Freescale or maybe some cool Arm from NXP etcetc.
It's interesting how this articles follows the one about the NASA space virus (http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/27/1231224)
I didn't found something funny to put here.
I appreciate that it's not meant for handling critical systems, but nevertheless, I wonder if its components are radiation hardened. In particular, what CPU has that thing got? Some sort of ARM?
And the RAM... is it SECDED?
So.. it's a blast from the past?
At 200MHz, it might struggle a bit. And with only analogue VGA it would be hard to connect to a modern monitor. More interesting is the Beagle Board with a 600MHz Cortex A8, a PowerVR GPU and a nice DSP. It takes SD cards, which are now cheap in 16GB sizes, and in terms of volume it's smaller than the Space Cube. Oh, and they're actually shipping to consumers now.
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Behold Picotux!
Or, less dramatically, gumstix.
The spacecube is cute, I admit, I'd be amused to have one; but the notion of it being the smallest is silly.
The second line of the article states that it is one of the smallest computers in the world, not the smallest.
yp.
Dumbass, its a "Space Cube". It should be measured in the fourth dimension as 2 square inches/sec.
Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in trouble again.
the Gammima.AG worm? I hear that's popular in space nowadays
This is Not a PC.
From the Manufacturer's web site, it runs a fairly standard MIPS SoC from NEC... a Vr5701. There is not x86 compatible CPU in there. Since it's MIPS, don't expect to just use RPM and install anything, and clearly it doesn't use RedHat. The OS might be derived from RedHat, but I suspect it's just bad journalism (everything Linux is RedHat, right?).
I'm not saying it's not cool, but it isn't a PC. And I think if you want a Space capable device, you'll have to deal with the radiation hardness yourself. www.gaisler.com has some perhaps more suitable chips that are rad hard (SPARC based).
Ahh, so Locutus has a mini-me and this is his home. How cute!
Plus I hear it can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs!
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these puppies! You might actually be able to run a GUI.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The biggest problem is that they're selling it for US$300+ in Japan, but the University wants to sell it for $1500+
Another good idea dying on the vine caused by greed.
Buy a bunch of them, pack them into a suitcase with some laptop batteries, Portable Cluster.
"All those, moments will be lost, in time, like tears, in rain. Time to die." Roy Batty
Who'd a thunk that the Borg would have such humble beginnings?
I have to say, it does explain their relative ease of Assimilation...
Too bad GPS is useless in SPACE. And on the other hand a mobile phone is probably not the most reliable solution to grab sensor outputs and have them relayed to earth. The price of text messages alone would be outrageous ...
If this thing is meant to be going into space doesn't it need to be using radiation hardened components?
TFA states the cost is likely to be around GBP1500, that along with the size and specs of it makes me wonder if they're using commercial grade components in there. Aren't radiation hardened componentes generally around 10 years behind standard PC's? In other words is this thing actually going to be of any use in space or is is just some wierd marketing gimmick?
I have a new record minium time required for going from "not knowing something is available" to "wanting something badly."
Dumbass, its a "Space Cube". It should be measured in the fourth dimension as 2 square inches/sec.
No, that would make it a "Time Cube", and that would be a Bad Thing.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
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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Each edge is 55mm long, or 2.16". So each side is 4.67 square inches. All together it is 10.1 cubic inches, which would be the appropriate measurement for a cube.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Note the copyright of 2005-2006. I saw these ages ago. Not really news, but still a neat gadget. Having a PC this small means you can put it in places where you might not normally have one, providing it has the power for the application. I'm sure it could be good in a car for audio and assorted data logging.
You can get something more powerful for less money, but sometimes size and power consumption will be the main factors.
Yeah but the gumstix are much slower than the TI's OMAP35x processors in the Beagleboard. Gumstix does seem to be coming out with some OMAP products in Q4, but currently their only advantage is that they are neatly packaged with a small case and they have a model with ethernet built in. Otherwise the Beagleboard has much more going for it.
Those two things would be nice to be able to get preconfigured for a beagleboard, and nothing I saw on their site hinted at it. Of course you can do it yoursself with an expansion board and soldering iron or usb ethernet, but that's bulkier. I'd buy a beagleboard now if I could get it with ethernet and a nice small case for cheap, but I can't find that anywhere so far. I'm sure someone will offer it soon enough.