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VIA Unveils $79 Rock and $99 Paper ARM PCs

Posted by timothy on from the what-no-scissors? dept.

Don't yet have one of those million Raspberry Pis, but you're in the market for a tiny, cheap ARM computer? An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from geek.com: "VIA has decided it's time to update the APC (ARM PC) board with new components and the choice of two configurations. The new systems are called APC Rock and APC Paper. The hardware spec for both boards is exactly the same except for the fact the Rock ships with a VGA port whereas the Paper doesn't. The Rock also costs $20 less at $79, whereas the Paper is $99. The reason for the price difference is the fact that the Paper ships with a rather novel case whereas the Rock is a bare board. The Paper's case is made from recycled cardboard attached to an aluminum chassis to help with strength, meaning it will keep the dust off the components and make it easier to carry while keeping weight to a minimum."

20 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. What about by Dishwasha · · Score: 5, Funny

    scissors?

    1. Re:What about by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      The APC Scissors will have superior specs and and be priced above the APC Paper's cost of $99, although it will also be inferior to and priced below Rock's cost of $79.

    2. Re:What about by Billy+the+Mountain · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...yeah an' an' don't forget about Spock and lizard!

      --
      That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
    3. Re:What about by KiloByte · · Score: 5, Informative

      RasPi has very close specs, this one adds just a tiny 4GB flash card, which is obviously not worth the $44 price difference.

      You'd want this one instead: more than 10x the performance, 2GB memory, $89 w/o disk.

      --
      The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
    4. Re:What about by NoNonAlphaCharsHere · · Score: 3, Funny

      The problem is, you can't run with Scissors.

    5. Re:What about by Above · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The biggest problem with the Pi is the packaging. It was clearly designed to be cheap and thus use the smallest board area possible, but that makes it strange to put into cases and use in practical ways.

      Part of what VIA brings to the table here is packaging experience. Yes, the board is a bit bigger, but it was designed to go in a proper case. Depending on the application that may be important and worth the extra bucks.

    6. Re:What about by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 4, Funny

      The APC Scissors will have superior specs and and be priced above the APC Paper's cost of $99, although it will also be inferior to and priced below Rock's cost of $79.

      How is this possible? The answer is that they'll push it out at $119 dollars and then have to cut the price to $49 due to the Rock crushing it in sales.

      I think that about wraps it up.

    7. Re:What about by Cryacin · · Score: 3, Funny

      How about Lizard and Spock?

      --
      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
    8. Re:What about by Cryacin · · Score: 5, Funny

      Double whoosh

      --
      Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
    9. Re:What about by petermgreen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To me the biggest question is the software support, andriod is ok for phones/tablets but for desktop and embedded uses I want decent support for regular linux and I want complete kernel source so that there is a chance of support in the long term.

      The Pi has that, last I checked the APC did not.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    10. Re:What about by wmac1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why not Buy one of those Chinese A9 tablets for less than $60? They come with LCD, battery, USB and SD card extension. You can remove the case if you like.

    11. Re:What about by camperdave · · Score: 4, Funny

      I don't care about the price, as long as it is cutting edge.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
  2. Have they fixed the memory controller yet? by tlambert · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Have they fixed the memory controller yet?

    The biggest performance bottleneck for graphics on ARM systems has not been the GPU; I've used Mali-400 systems (like this one is supposed to be), and I've used the nVidia system. Graphics performance sucked on both.

    Part of this has to do with the fact that the graphics architecture in standard Linux penalizes you for not GPL'ing your drivers, but the Android graphics stack gets around this by duplicating some kernel interfaces with slightly non-GPL'ed versions - yet the performance is still terrible.

    The blame rests squarely on the memory copy speeds, which comes down to the memory controller. Apple has completely addressed this in their ARM chips (but are not sharing), and Samsung has partially addressed this in their ARM chips (and are also not sharing). Has VIA addressed the memory controller bandwidth issues in the WonderMedia, or does "WonderMedia" actually mean "I wonder when they will get media support in their ARM chips"?

    1. Re:Have they fixed the memory controller yet? by Microlith · · Score: 3, Informative

      He's referring to a point made recently to some kernel-internal DMA interfaces that are marked as GPL only and Nvidia wanted them to be something else so they could use them with their proprietary module.

      Alan Cox resisted, and as a result a small performance boost can't be had by proprietary graphics drivers.

      http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA0ODE

  3. Re:Remember Netbooks? by am+2k · · Score: 4, Funny

    Wow, I haven't read so much focused hate in a single post in a while on Slashdot. Did a netbook run over your kitten or something?

  4. Why is this good? by countach · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I keep seeing on eBay these days you can get an Android tablet for about $40. And it has a screen, a touch screen at that. Presumably internally it is some kind of ARM PC with storage and everything. So why is a bare bones ARM PC, especially at these prices good? And what can you realistically do with the damned thing anyway?

    1. Re:Why is this good? by dido · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Interfaces. Flexibility. You can plug it into a 1080p TV and get video output that way. If you need more storage, a multi-terabyte USB hard drive is easy to plug in. Software is also your responsibility, and that means you can make it run just about anything with more or less effort depending on that. You'd be lucky if the $40 Android tablet even has an HDMI port, much less a USB port, and good luck getting it to run anything but the version of Android it came with. I managed to build a working HTPC with a Raspberry Pi within a few hours of it getting to me in the mail, and the only reason why I haven't yet turned it into a file server/torrent box as well is that I'm reorganising the several external drives I have, so I can repurpose one of them.

      --
      Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
  5. What about RFI? by steveha · · Score: 4, Interesting

    These boards don't seem to be worried about emitting radio frequency interference (RFI). That "paper" system case is slick but I don't think it effectively shields RFI.

    Is RFI somehow not a problem with these? Is it because they are very low-power, or is it because they are somehow not regulated by the FCC for RFI, or what?

    Would operating one of these make the amateur radio enthusiasts down the block from you curse you?

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
    1. Re:What about RFI? by petermgreen · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Some of those that are purely development boards may not worry about it but anything that is going to be sold as an end user product and where the company cares about the possibilty of lawsuits in the west* will need to pass FCC and CE RFI requirements (note: the requirements have two levels, one for "domestic" and one for "commercial", afaict manufacturers only have to comply with the "commercial" requirements provided they put a couple of lines of warnings about possible interference in a domestic environment in the manual).

      AIUI the RFI is kept down through a combination of careful PCB design, slew rate/drive strength control and avoiding having too much high speed stuff on the board at all. Still it can be a close shave sometimes, the rpf were put in a tight spot after their distributors decided that given the volume and demographics of the preorders it was too risky to try and claim it was not an end user product. Fortunately they got the board to pass with only minor firmware tweaks.

      * Some chinese vendors simply don't give a fuck :(

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
  6. Re:Overpriced by polyp2000 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    why do none of these RPi alternatives have Sata? -- sure there are some high end - expensive ones - but is there something about SATA that add significantly to the price to make uneconomical ?

    --
    Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp