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BeagleBone Black Released With 1GHz Cortex-A8 For Only $45
DeviceGuru tipped us to the release of the latest single board computer from Beagle Board. It's been two years since the previous BeagleBone was released, and today they've released the BeagleBone Black (including full hardware schematics) at a price competitive with the Raspberry Pi ($10 more, but it comes with a power brick). Powered by a Cortex-A8, it has 512M of DDR3 RAM, 2G of onboard eMMC, two blocks of 46 I/O pins, a pair of 32-bit DSPs, the usual USB host/client ports, Ethernet, and micro-HDMI (a much requested feature). Support is provided for Ångstrom GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, and Android out of the box. Linux Gizmos reports where some of the cost savings came from: "According to BeagleBoard.org cofounder Jason Kridner, interviewed in a Linux.com report today, cost savings also came from removing the default serial port as well as USB-to-serial and USB-to-JTAG interfaces, and including a cheaper single-purpose USB cable. (Three serial interfaces are available via the expansion headers.) In addition, the power expansion header for battery and backlight has been removed."
Slashdot is an aggregation/discussion site. Of course it's going to have stories after site X, because that's the very nature of a site that aggregates news.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
Coming from South Africa, I am disappointed that the Rasberry Pi is so expensive. Hopefully these boards will be better priced here ..
I had a ticket in the "queue" to order an RPi. When my turn came - would cost R 650-00 (Dollar was around 8.42 at the time so close to $ 80 USD) - I passed.
It appears to have a PowerVR GPU, (SGX530) this means close source GPU driver goodness.
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/sprs717f/sprs717f.pdf
But Slashdot is mainly an aggregation-driven community site.
It is only every so often that there is product reviews, event reviews, interviews and the like.
And when there is, many people begin shouting viral or slashvertising. (not that either are bad when most times the product in question is actually pretty good and completely in line with what we love here)
The inclusion of SATA and GigaE would presumably drive the price up to a point they don't think would let them compete with the Raspberry Pi. That will change though, and I'm very looking forward to that time. As soon as SATA and GigaE can be included at around the same price point, these devices suddenly become a viable basis for a whole wealth of serious storage and network devices. The only reason I don't use the Raspberry Pi for anything more serious than a media server on my network is because of the limitations of its USB throughput for both storage and networking.
Still no SATA and no GigaE.
OK I get the SATA but do you really need GigaE for a 1GHz cortex? I think it would be hard to find a real-life case where network throughput was a bottleneck.
The specs sheet says 1.7GHz that can be overclocked to 2.0, but one I got was already at 2.0 the first time I plugged it in.
There's only one big shameful downside: the graphics card supports only vertical resolutions of 720 and 1080, thus requiring a monitor of utterly useless proportions. My rasPi has seen around half an hour of monitor time total, so I guess this is not a big loss.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Yes it will ... it has 65x GPIO, you add the required level converters and use a bit-banging driver.
Or you can get a cheap USB-Parallel adapter if you just want to print.
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
FTFS: "Three serial interfaces are available via the expansion headers." So it's a connector and a few minutes of soldering.
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
+1 Wow, High UID & excellent comment? Impressive
In what way is 1056246 a high UID? It's up to over 2.5 million now. He's probably been hear for 6 or 7 years by now.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And the physical dimensions of your second hand Core Duo machine is............?
Apples and oranges.
That may be so but it does not stop it from being a very valid point, especially for a lot of slashdot users. I like my Raspberry Pi and I really like the look of this new Beagle device. If it had SATA and GigaE for around the same price, I'd love it even more.
Oh get off my lawn you young whipper snappers. :P
Don't blame me for redundant posts. I can't type very fast. Hence the user ID.
What's the "pair of 32-bit DSPs" in the summary? The NEON unit is nice, but it's not exactly a separate processor (as I understand the architecture) and there is only one. There are 2 PRU-ICSS units, but they're I/O processors, not DSP's.
No, the signals on the headers are TTL level, not 12V needed for RS-232. You need a TTL to Serial adapter or one of the FTDI CDC USB-to-TTL adapter such as this: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9873
losing
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
It's probably 3. Same as the Beagle and Pi. :)
My organization is looking at boards like this as system controllers for a variety of products. The form factor and specs are really attractive and the prices are cheap. Beaglebone is a pretty good fit to what we need, and the addition of on-board DSPs makes it better. The biggest barrier we run into on these kinds of devices is lack of industrial-rated parts and designs. Our products run in a variety of environments, many of them that can get hot (e.g. inside a chassis with other heat-producing stuff) or cold. I understand why they don't use industrial parts on stuff for hobbyists, but there's a market out there for tiny controller boards with the same kinds of interfaces and industrial ratings.
5, according to my user page, although I lurked for a number of years before I made an account. Regardless of that, the idea that a certain UID (or age) is necessary to have insight into this industry is ridiculous. I know a number of brilliant programmers and IT folks who are younger than me. Experience is great, but it's not the only factor that goes into making someone competent.
"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." - Oscar Wilde
The CPU the used has two 10/100/1000 ports built in. Consider that the BCM4716 running at 480mhz shifts over 100mbs acting as the firewall at my house. 100bt does not cut it these days.
No sir I dont like it.
aggrandize ... enhance the reputation of (someone) beyond what is justified by the facts...
aggregate ... pieces of broken or crushed stone or gravel...
Seems either is appropriate.
Things like this and Raspberry Pi will continue to grow. Microsoft can't force their " Tax " on everyone produced as they have been able to with x86 PC's. I'm sure the greedy bunch at M$ are trying to figure out how to Patent Troll every new computer manufacturer that pops up, but there will just be too many. Finally, after 30 years of oppression in the computer industry, the vile and evil Microsoft is losing their fetted rotting grip.
Makes me happy.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
It's not a valid point. If you need those buy a micro iTX board..
What's next, you guys going to complain that Arduino doesnt have SATA, USB3.0 and GigaE? If you think that these boards need that, then you have no clue as to what you are doing.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you use this for AV automation, you are already on the fail train. Buy a low end real controller designed for AV integration and call it done instead of cobbling things together.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Here we go. Awaiting the 4 to 3 to 2 to 1 digit responses...
Thank god we don't have a postcount on this site.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
Still no SATA and no GigaE.
Why not complain that it has no 802.11n wifi OR bluetooth... I mean it's like they want you to just sit in a corner by YOURSELF all day with the damn thing.
The CPU the used has two 10/100/1000 ports built in. Consider that the BCM4716 running at 480mhz shifts over 100mbs acting as the firewall at my house. 100bt does not cut it these days.
Not a troll, seriously, but do you really push 100mbit through the firewall, at your house? It might have 100mbit ports on either side but how often do you (or can you even) draw down 100mbit from the public side?
Kids today... what ever happened to dip switches with your chips?
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
You're misunderstanding what I said. I like the Raspberry Pi and this new Beagle device. Really, they're great, and I can see a gazzillion uses for them where they are just perfect, some of which I plan to use them for myself.
All I am saying with regard to SATA and GigaE is that when the time comes they can be included at that price point, the scope for these devices being used as more serious network / storage devices expands greatly. Yes, I know their intended use does not necessarily include some of the things I'm thinking of and that's just fine, they do what they do very well. I'm simply looking forward to when the natural evolution of these devices includes those extra features at a sub $50 price. That will most likely happen in the next 12 to 18 months.
On my time you would get a ping of dead just for that comment!! damn kids! ;)
Higuita
Always happy to oblige the young ones.
I think you'll find that's _my_ lawn ;)
no taxation without representation!
Speak up sonny, its hard to hear you these days....
Sendmail is like emacs: A nice operating system, but missing an editor and a MTA.
One day I'll get my chance to post that... and you'll all be sorry.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
That's cute. :)
Everywhere this is being discussed, there's an astroturfer popping up with the same GigaE complaint. They're working from a script.
The other guys were given scripts!? I was freelancing the whole time... where can I join this "astroturfer" group you speak of?
Kids today... what ever happened to dip switches with your chips?
We'll have none of that smut here, thank you very much.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
When the RPi came out, I was disappointed that it didn't have on-board flash. Since using them in a bunch of projects, however, my opinion has flip-flopped.
Does this new Beagle-board have the option to boot from the external flash card, or must it boot from the on-board flash? TFA says "The flash frees the microSD slot for storage or loading alternate OSes ..." but does load mean boot or just that you can mount the flash drive and copy files over?
I _like_ the fact that the identity and configuration of my RPi's are fully contained on the external flash - I can back up everything about a particular system by yanking out the flash card and copying it. I can even swap hardware with zero configuration - the boards are identical and interchangeable (plus or minus the Ethernet address).
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
It's not a valid point. If you need those buy a micro iTX board..
What's next, you guys going to complain that Arduino doesnt have SATA, USB3.0 and GigaE? If you think that these boards need that, then you have no clue as to what you are doing.
I have a DNS-323 NAS device. It's an ARM based low power server with SATA and GigE. It's worked for years, but it is getting out dated. Even though it has GigE and a reasonable HDD I can only push 13MiB/s. Plus, it doesn't properly support 4k IO. I would really like to see an open source and open hardware version of this. I've searched around for SATA and GigE on ARM a couple years ago and you could find one or the other but not both.
The commercial alternatives are $200-800 without drives so there is room to bump the price.
By the way, if you'll never need more than 640k of memory why does this thing have 512MB?!!! Seems a little over kill already... so why not go one step further :)
The Beaglebone has (had) this weird procedure where you plug it into USB, then "eject" it to activate a different mode. The first time I installed Beaglebone drivers is the only time it went smoothly. Later on different machines, all sorts of odd devices came up. In the end it was just easier to interact with it over SSH, so I can understand the decision to remove the USB-serial interface.
I had jello today.
;-) Highest 3-digit possible without duplicate digits :-)
John_Chalisque
p.s. it took me a while to spot that nicety about my UID.
John_Chalisque
The Pi has set a new benchmark for how cheap this sort of device "should" be. Other than the slight processor upgrade and the addition of the emmc nearly every change had cost-cutting as at least part of the reason behind it to bring the device down from "twice the cost of a Pi" to "slightly more expensive than the Pi but in the same ballpark".
I suspect the extra cost of a gigabit phy and magjack over a 10/100 phy and magjack fitted neither the budget nor the goals of the device.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Well it's gigabit for starters. I have a 105mbs inbound plan that bursts to 210 for a short while. I run nightly backups from some remote servers and can hit 104 for hours. During the day it's just the odd spike to 200 ish. Sure I'm an outlying user but current gen cable plants can easily exceed 100mbs to a given end user, Google and others are pushing full gigabit.
My rarely used cable card tuner needs more than 100mbs (potentially not with the way they compress the hell out of it) to talk to my DVR. Granted that a8 is not going to decompress 1080i/p without some help but it could shift the bits about to do so.
All in all there is no real cost of gigabit in new hardware. At best 100mbs is barely adequate today this is a new CPU there is little to no nominal cost to gigabit (potentially a savings as 100bt mii and similar interfaces getting more expensive than there gig counterparts due to volume). Servers are starting to ship with 10ge standard, gigabit is the new desktop speed, and 100bt is relegated to legacy devices getting aged out of production.
No sir I dont like it.
To be fair most people that need that serial port either are interfacing with 3.3V logic or have a pile of 3.3V->USB serial converters in their junk box. At least the BeagleBone follows the FTDI convention so that many of the off-the-shelf converters will Just Work, unlike the competition.
I pay $38/month and have pulled down in excess of 52Mbs according to my logs. Now that's not 100... but if I'm looking to buy some hardware for my next firewall, I'm going to be thinking 5 or 10years down the road and exceeding 100Mbs seems likely. My current setup can do gigabyte transfers, why would I downgrade? I don't think me hitting Gig speeds is in the near future but going over 100 definitely is.
Possibly, yes. I can see how the Beagleboard and the Pandaboard split up use cases, the Beagleboard for the lower end, the Pandaboard for the higher end.
BTW, the CuBox platform has Serial ATA and Gigabit Ethernet, and comes with a case. It does cost considerably more, though (about $120).
This sig does not contain any SCO code.
And like the Sirens beware what looks enticing from afar - the specs are great however the biggest problem with the Samsung Exynos processors appear to be that the largest consumer for Samsung ARM SoCs is Samsung and as such their external support, particularly for opensource projects is dire.
I don't have time to provide links but go and have a trawl through the Cyanogenmod and XDA developer forums in particular the comments from the developer Codeworkx.
http://www.google.com/search?q=codeworkx+cyanogenmod+Exynos
Support for Exynos based devices is far behind that of Qualcomm and TI OMAP that are reputed to be much more friendly to (opensource) developers.
"Things that you own end up owning you" - Tyler Durden (via Diogenes of Sinope).
Just out of curiosity, how many of those "Android single-board computers" have functional 3D and H.264 acceleration in the drivers? This is what drive me away from Raspberry Pi: You just bought a computer that doesn't have functional accelerated drivers for any OS (Android, Debian), which is critical for ARM. There is a difference between "some geekery may be required to set it up" and "drivers are missing". IMO, until the driver situation clears, you 'll be better of with an Ouya or Gamestick. Just sayin'
So look, I will give you that eSata would be nice, but you couldn't do it for the same BOM. The connector and controller will drive the price up. So let us give up this fiction/pipedream that you could produce it for the same price. In the future, maybe, but right now? no.
But as for Gigabit Ethernet, just how much data do you think you can pump though a single core 1GHz ARM? What are you doing that 100Mbit isn't enough? Or is this just some kind of megapixel war thinking that bigger is better? I think you would have a hard time proving that GigaE has enough demand to make a difference for the fast majority of [BeagleBone] users.
What do you know I wrote a novel
So look, I will give you that eSata would be nice, but you couldn't do it for the same BOM. The connector and controller will drive the price up. So let us give up this fiction/pipedream that you could produce it for the same price. In the future, maybe, but right now? no.
If you read what I said, you'll notice I said I look forward to the time (as in, the future) when SATA and GigaE can be included at that price point. Not now, but in 12 to 18 months when it should be feasible.
But as for Gigabit Ethernet, just how much data do you think you can pump though a single core 1GHz ARM? What are you doing that 100Mbit isn't enough? Or is this just some kind of megapixel war thinking that bigger is better?
There are other devices with similar ARM processors that can handle gigabit. I don't know if the CPU in this Beagle device could do so, but again, in a year or so, a similar priced CPU would hopefully be able to. As for uses, there are many, but if you agree that SATA woud be useful then I'm sure you could understand why people may want faster than 100Mb/s network connectivity to go with it.
I think you would have a hard time proving that GigaE has enough demand to make a difference for the fast majority of [BeagleBone] users.
Yeah, I agree with this and that's why the Beagle / Pi is what it is for now. I've no complaints with that either, but future SoCs with GigaE and SATA will get down to the same price point eventually and no doubt we'll see these devices sporting that functionality in a year or so.
Depends on where you live, I guess. In these parts (northern Europe) it's pretty normal to have reasonably-priced >100mbps broadband connections that really do perform at >100mbps.
I get full speed when downloading things distributed via top-tier CDNs, like Apple/Microsoft/Firefox/Chrome updates and so on. Also the link is easily saturated by bittorrent.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Can a Pi even utilize a GigaE anywhere close to its limits? I'd think that even 100M would be idle a good percentage of the time.
I can mend the break of day, heal a broken heart, and provide temporary relief to nymphomaniacs.
The thing is, a RaspPi would be much more useful with a SATA interface. It's widely reported to be problematic to run a bittorrent on the RaspPi because the I/O load will bring it to it's knees, or in many cases, just crash the thing outright. While using a USB stick eliminates most of the problems, having proper SATA port would make IO much faster, assuming it's proper SATA with DMA, the processor could be freed up for more important things.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Considering the Raspberry Pi's 'Ethernet' port is connected to the CPU via USB as part of the onboard USB hub, no, GigE would be wasted.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
What? Speak up!
You've got access to several interfaces. Build it.
Beer busts, beer blasts, keggers, stein hoists, AA meetings, beer night. It's wonderful, Marge. I've never felt so accepted in all my life. These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
Mmmmm, beeeer....
I hear the next generation of the Cubieboard (not released yet) should have both SATA and gigabit Ethernet.
So buy an FTDI. They're what, 30 cents? Or a few pullup resistors for practically nothing. The vast majority of people don't need or want RS-232, the connector is big and clunky, and the high voltage, which isn't needed by almost everyone, makes things more complicated.
If you really do lots of RS-232 work and you were smart you'd do a little run of converter boards to turn RS-232 into something useful. Slap one of those onto whatever projector or other device you're working with and never worry about it again.
12v is a bit dinosaur, don't you think?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Well you certainly have had plenty of time to notice the fact :)
> Experience is great, but it's not the only factor that goes into making someone competent.
True however those of us that have been here a while remember the 20-year cycle where everything is new again as everything cycles from big iron down to wimpy desktops and back again. For every "new" technology in the 90's and 2000's somebody was already doing it ~ 20 years ago. The kids these days don't remember the "silver bullets" that are always over-hyped, how Microsoft invents some 3-letter acronym for their new proprietary technology every 5 years, etc.
i.e. Infocom games -- byte code, virtual memory, etc.
Probably not as long as it took me to spot that mine is semi-prime... (but I had twice as many digits to deal with :-)
Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
Slashdot has only been like that for 17 years. Maybe he didn't notice before.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
About the only thing I can say about mine is that I squeezed in just in time to join the 500 club.
I read the internet for the articles.
Not as cute as finding out one of the 4-digit ID's is On Lawn? ;)
Have a look at the Cubieboard - US$49 with SATA, 1GB RAM and 4GB Flash - both twice that of this board. It also has an IR sensor, and 96 pins of I/O
I think you're looking for this board:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/435742530/udoo-android-linux-arduino-in-a-tiny-single-board
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Ask and you shall receive.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/435742530/udoo-android-linux-arduino-in-a-tiny-single-board
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Heh :)
Just FYI some of the USB-Parallel adapters (e.g. those using the PL2305 chipset) have a separate mode they can be switched to which allows you access to all the control pins like a classic PC parallel port does.
I care a little bit, but not much. What I care about a lot is video performance, and I note that nobody says anything anywhere praising it, which I presume means it sucks.
If I'm wrong, I want to know, because the price is fantastic.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"