Slashdot Mirror
Intel Rolls Out Raspberry Pi Competitor
Rambo Tribble writes "As detailed by Ars Technica, Intel has introduced the Minnowboard, an SBC touted as more powerful and more open than the Raspberry Pi. At $199, it is also more expensive. Using an Atom processor, the new SBC boasts more capacity and x86-compatibility. 'It's notable that the MinnowBoard is an open hardware platform, a distinction that Arduino and BeagleBone can claim but Raspberry Pi cannot. Users could create their own MinnowBoards by buying the items on the bill of materials—all the design information is published, and CircuitCo chose components that can be purchased individually rather than in the bulk quantities hardware manufacturers are accustomed to, Anders said. Users can also buy a pre-made MinnowBoard and make customizations or create their own accessory boards to expand its capability. And being an open hardware platform means that the source code of (almost) all the software required to run the platform is open.'" Update: 09/20 22:31 GMT by T : Look soon for a video introduction to the MinnowBoard, and — hopefully not too long from now — a visit to their Dallas-area production facility.
TFA mentioned next gen will use Bay Trail core (Atom Z3770), which is available with AES-NI. Now that is suddenly very useful for servers, because the encryption is fast (but still passes through the processor).
The one thing that might prove interesting is that it is allegedly fullly open (aside from the PowerVR GPU drivers) which (assuming Intel isn't lying or using "'Open' as in a block of magic numbers" definitions, this board, although based on UEFI, might actually be the first Intel product in quite a while to be well documented enough to be a Coreboot/LinuxBIOS target. Even better, it might provide insight into some other products using the same chipsets.
Intel should really be putting something back into the community. While they are mucking around the engineers of the future are learning to use their greatest competitor's hardware.
What they should of done is make a $50 board, give away a cut down version of vxworks(which they own). However they are so scared of undercutting the bottom line they will not do this.
Seriously they deserve everything that is going to happen to them
Choose your allies carefully, it is highly unlikely you will be held accountable for the actions of your enemies
and they are doing it using same method M$ used coming up with WinRT and losing $1 billion in the process
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.