'My Name is C.H.I.P. and I'll Be Your $9 Computer Today' (Video)

Think of C.H.I.P as a tablet computer that runs Linux instead of Android, "without the tablet bits," says interviewee Dave, who gave a talk -- which was mostly live demos -- at OSCON 2015. 50,000 C.H.I.P.s have already sold for $9 through their successful Kickstarter campaign, and Next Thing Co. plans to stick with the $9 price for the foreseeable future -- plus add-on boards (that they call "shields") they hope to sell you, but that won't flatten any but the skinniest wallets; given the projected price scale, you'll have trouble spending as much as $50 for a fully-accessorized C.H.I.P. unit.

"But," you may ask, "is C.H.I.P. Open Source?" You bet! No hedging here, just flat-out Open Source, from the bottom to the top, with all software (and hardware specs) freely available via GitHub. And lastly, the "I'll Be Your $9 Computer Today' statement in the headline above is allegorical, not factual. We've seen projected shipping dates for C.H.I.P ranging from "by the end of 2015" to a simple "2016." Either way, we're waiting with bated breath.

Comments

What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that even mean, a "tablet computer without the tablet bits"?

Re:What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a Linux CD?

Re:What does that mean?

[cdrudge]

It's akin to a Raspberry Pi. It has a processor, memory, and storage. It also has composite out and USB on board the main board. If you want VGA or HDMI output, you have to spring extra for the extra shield(s).

What they should have said was it's a low end tablet without the touch screen/display.

Re:What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting as AC because Slashdot isn't giving me another option.

After poking around without being able to watch the video, here's what I've found out:

• 1Ghz and with 512MB of DDR3 RAM
• runs mainline Linux

It plugs into their Pocket CHIP mobile device, which has:

• 3,000 mAH battery
• 4.3" 470px x 272px screen w/ resistive touch
• Full Super-Clicky QWERTY keyboard
• Rugged Injection Molded Shell
• Fully open source
• GPIO breakouts
• C.H.I.P. is removable via hatch

And here's a pic.

Re:What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Kickstarter site, it appears that C.H.I.P. is just a small circuit board with a few CPU, storage, and/or networking chips on it. It includes no screen, no keyboard, no pointing device - not even a battery or a case! For $9, you allegedly will get one C.H.I.P. circuit board, plus a "composite" [video] cable.

Re: What does that mean?

[BarbaraHudson]

It's something they're " waiting for with bated breath "

Gross. Spit those worms out now.

Re: What does that mean?

[ceoyoyo]

If you're going to make fun of someone's writing you should probably check a dictionary first. Bated means "in great suspense; very anxiously or excitedly" and is used correctly in the summary. You're thinking of "baited."

Re: What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's something they're " waiting for with bated breath "

Gross. Spit those worms out now.

Maybe you are confusing "bated" with "baited".

Re:What does that mean?

[MacTO]

The video make it clear. They said that they are using components designed for tablets in order to take advantage of the economies of scale.

Re:What does that mean?

[kuzb]

It's just a low-end ARM-based computer that happens to run Linux instead of Android. The tablet comment is just marketing drool.

Re: What does that mean?

[jfengel]

Well, "with bated breath" means that. "Bated" means "held" or "restrained", though it's practically never used any more except in that expression. It's cognate to "abate".

Optional pedantry: Shakespeare used "bate" in the "restrained" sense, including this from Much Ado: "she will die, if he woo her, rather than she will bate one breath of her accustomed crossness" (Meaning: If he makes a pass at her, she would rather die than cut back even a little bit on her usual insults.)

Re:What does that mean?

[ChromaticDragon]

Indeed.

This is yet another product entering an ever-crowding field. This does not at all seem "new".

And it may not even be "better" or "cheaper" than the alternatives already available for purchase today.

Having said that, I'm more than happy to see this field growing. I find it hilarious we're getting to the point where shipping itself is possibly greater than product price for a "computer".

I'm having all sorts of fun with my Single-Board-Computers. I grabbed a couple (BananaPro) initially to act as simple TFTP servers with a bit of capacity for backup. I am still in an experimental phase to some degree but have started a soaking phase where part of the home network is dependent upon them. I've far surpassed my initial plans. At the moment I have this pair of SBCs working together as a High Availability cluster serving LTSP to clients. I'm typing from one of stations "soaking".

Re: What does that mean?

[ceoyoyo]

Historically, yes. Since it's never used any other way now, the Oxford dictionary has apparently determined your definition is obsolete and the one I gave is correct:

http://www.oxforddictionaries....

Re: What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Go away. Batin'.

Re:What does that mean?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

1 GHz of what, though? Too many ARM cores on the market now, and some of them are antiquated crap. Your info is virtually useless.

Re:What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

What they should have said was it's a low end tablet without the touch screen/display.

It's like a banana, but with an added raspberry and the banana removed.

What they should have said is that it is a cheap beagleboard.

Re: What does that mean?

[BarbaraHudson]

I'll award you the WHOOSH OF THE DAY award. Playing on words has a long and legitimate history.

Don't be a homonymophobe, you insensitive clod. :-)

Re: What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's allegorically useless.

Re:What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

It appear that is a Allwinner R8, basically a single core Cortex-A8 + Mali 400.

Re:What does that mean?

[aaronb1138]

It's not exactly cheap either. The useful shields and accessories make it astronomically expensive very quickly.

Re:What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not exactly cheap either. The useful shields and accessories make it astronomically expensive very quickly.

Astronomically expensive. Absurd comment.

Hear this though: Windows is death knell. It is a Linux world now. Sounds like the following link is biased, but I didn't read the whole page. I simply looked for a rounded ballpark price for shield/accessories.

http://www.element14.com/community/community/designcenter/single-board-computers/blog/2015/06/05/nine-bucks-can-net-you-a-chip-from-next-level-co-that-can-fit-in-your-pocket
^ "Not bad for a PC that costs a mere $9, however the add-on shields will set you back an additional $10 to $15 depending on the board and the Pocket CHIP will set you back an additional $40- yep more than the PC itself."

But this kickstarter page shows over $2 MIL USD into it already.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds-first-9-computer

Maybe they are underpricing for advertising... but astronomically expensive is not correct.

This is all fun stuff for anybody who is into computing. I'm all for this type of thing. Sell them in bulk to third wold countries, do whatever. This is good.

Microsoft sucks.. mmhmm. Is this uncomfortable truth too much to bear though...

have a nice day :)

Re: What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

use these computers to free yourself from the google and facebook shackles. run your own web server and chat server.

freedom is earned, not given away for free.

Re:What does that mean?

[unixisc]

So one can't get SteamOS running on this?

Re:What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is indeed an old Allwinner design. It's a new spin of a crappy core.

Think of a US$ 45 tablet of 4 years ago. Strip screen, battery, case and you basically have Chip.

Cheap crap but still crap.

Re: What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's "baited" breath you're groping for, like the cat that ate the cheese to wait by the cartoon mouse hole, jaws agape.

Re:What does that mean?

[Half-pint HAL]

Cheap crap but still crap.

I prefer to think of it as a modern alternative to a traditional microcontroller for hobbyists, because that's what it seems to be. Look at the number of people already using the Pi as a microcontroller substitute due to the ease of programming (ubiquitous operating environment and standard programming tools) and ready availability. This is not only cheaper than the Pi, but it comes with battery management built in, making it a heck of a lot more convenient to "makers".

The other big advantage this has is in prototyping embedded systems. People use the Pi in prototype systems, but it means that there's a lot of reworking to do to bring the code to production readiness, as you may well be changing architecture -- the Broadcom SoC in the Pi is only available in massive bulk, whereas Allwinner parts can be bought off the various direct export sites in fairly low numbers, meaning that code prototypes developed on CHIP can be moved to production on the same SoC without the CHIP board with little or no reworking.

And that's what I think drew Allwinner to be so cooperative here -- they can see the potential in the market for all the low-order gadgets coming through Kickstarter, and they want to get that cash.

Re: What does that mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

Water? Like out of the toilet?

Re:What does that mean?

[petermgreen]

While the beagleboard line are familiar to many of us linux geeks they don't have anything like the general recognition that tablets or even raspberry pi's do and they have been somewhat uncompetitive for a while (especially since the pi2 and odroid c1 showed up). So they aren't an especially good target for drawing marketing comparisions with.

How many shipped?

[Anonymous Coward]

"50,000 C.H.I.P.s have already sold for $9"

And not a single unit shipped! Remarkable, its all profit when you don't actually sell anything.

Tablit bits

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

Re:Tablit bits

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

Imagine a beowulf cluster of retarded slashdot memes and the names of the morons who keep modding them up so they can finally feel like part of the group, scrawled on driftwood and scrap lumber and jammed up your ass hole. Splinters!

Re:Tablit bits

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, welcome our new C.H.I.P. overlords.

Re:Tablit bits

[Anonymous Coward]

obl. xkcd: https://xkcd.com/722/

(well, I guess that includes the tablet bits.)

Re:Tablit bits

[Anonymous Coward]

In soviet russia C.H.I.P err ... $9's you ...

err

I'll get my coat

Re:Tablit bits

[Anonymous Coward]

First C.H.I.P.!

Re:Tablit bits

[Larryish]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of sharks with laser beams on their foreheads!

Re:Tablit bits

[Half-pint HAL]

Well I read satire into the GP's post. After all, the specs on the computer are kind of 2005 vintage, and about as out-of-date as the "Beowulf cluster" running gag...

Just what I need

[Anonymous Coward]

Another bit of junk that will end up in a box in the basement in six months.

Re:Just what I need

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like the raspberry pi.

Re:Just what I need

[bondsbw]

Not bad for something that costs the same as an appetizer at an average restaurant.

Re:Just what I need

[bistromath007]

I just read the Kickstarter page, and if they actually deliver on what they're saying this thing is, it's actually way more useful and interesting to most people than the raspi. "The world's first $9 computer" sounds idiotic at first, because you know better, but it actually is the world's first $9 "what most people think of when you say 'computer' that is actually end-luser functional out of the box." Describing it as a tablet without the tablet stuff is weird; it's more like a desktop from several years ago, only it goes in your pocket instead of being comparatively stupid huge and ungainly netbook. It's got a bunch of different ways to connect to various input and output, so you pretty much just throw it on a desk wherever you happen to be and just go to town.

Of course, this is massively unlikely to have the impact it deserves. Everyone's already got smartphones, which we already spent way more on and are prettier, even though you have to do all kinds of dumb shit to them to give them functionality as flexible as this thing does. It's mostly interesting if you imagine it as something they pulled out of an alternate history. Like, if things had been just a little more like cyberpunk than they already are, maybe your mom would've given you one of these when you were ten and people on your decker forum would make fun of you for using it.

Re:Just what I need

[Anonymous Coward]

Right next to the 3D printer and your ticket to Musk Mars Condo One...

Re:Just what I need

[Anonymous Coward]

My Raspberry Pi is not in a box in the basement yet. Though, I am hopeful that I'll be able to get around to working on the project I intend to use it in, and then it will be in a box (an old NES) in the basement (hooked up to my TV).

My to-do list:
1) Mount Raspberry Pi in NES case
2) Build and install cables to power and video ports from RPi to original port locations on case
3) Mount Arduino (Uno R3 because it's cheap) in case and plug it into RPi as a USB device
4) Configure Arduino to be a USB HID for the controller ports
5) Build small PMU and distributor (maybe with a second Arduino) to handle clicky power button and power LED properly (bonus feature, get the "flashing screen of death" working based on a random value, with chances increasing the longer it has been since the system last booted successfully)
6) Finish loading RetroPie or similar controller-friendly front-end

My NES may not be a beowulf cluster, but it'll sure be some kind of cluster.

Re:Just what I need

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and it's CRUNCHY too!

Re: Just what I need

[Anonymous Coward]

Be sure to put that ToDo list in the box with the raspi when you put it in the basement.

Re:Just what I need

[mcrbids]

I see this as being something more like a stick computer. I have one playing a movie right now, an "MK809" that I bought on Amazon for $35.

I see that there's a potentially *huge* market for small, fix-function, programmable, embedded devices that run on a watt or two of power. (My TV stick is powered by the USB port on the side of the TV)

I am thinking about stuff like household A/C controllers that monitor outside weather, inside temperature, and time of day to optimize internal climate control to save money.

Control the traffic lights to minimize the amount of delay as traffic flows through town?

Monitor humidity levels, time of day, weather forecasts, infrared sensor data, and other variables to manage irrigation to keep plants healthy with a minimum of water usage. (California could *really* use tech like this about now) ... and so on ...

Re:Just what I need

[nnull]

Definitely not in the basement. I use the Raspberry pi in an industrial setting all over. Mainly I've been using it for industrial displays and touch screens. It works wonderful and it's far more slick than any Panel View with crappy icons. Cheaper too of course and very easy to replace. It has made R&D fun again in the manufacturing world and try out new ideas and it has allowed a far range of competitors to the big guys with far more features without all the clumsy backdoors.

Re:Just what I need

[Imbrondir]

Its important to note that it was really a 29$ computer with shipping included. I remember during the campaign even if you wanted 100 pieces, you would still pay 29$ x 100. And with that price I can already buy a tablet with the tablet stuff for a similar price with shipping included (currently listed as 31$).

Let's be real

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux is based on Android. Android is far more advanced but Linux is still "Android".

Re:Let's be real

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Android is far more advanced but Linux is still "Android".

Mr. Mooooooooo, is that you?

Re:Let's be real

[Anonymous Coward]

You've got that backwards.

Android runs on the Linux kernel. Linux is not Android, but Android is Linux.

Re:Let's be real

[Anonymous Coward]

Zip it, you cow.

Re:Let's be real

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

L != A
A == L

Does not compute! Error! Error!

Re:Let's be real

[Hognoxious]

English "is" doesn't correspond exactly to mathematical "=", so commutativity isn't to be expected.

E.g. A pig is a mammal.

Re:Let's be real

[John Allsup]

'is' in this context (and usually) works more like the 'is a member of' operator. I will denote it by e here.

When we say 'x == 2', in a sense, we are saying that 'x e { 2 }', that is, 'x is a member of the set, the only member of which is the number 2'.
When we say 'Android is Linux', we mean that 'all Android devices are members of the set of devices running Linux'.
When we say 'Linux is not Android', we mean that 'there exist devices running Linux which do not run Android' (or that there could exist devices running Linux which do not run Android).
Thus 'x runs Android' implies 'x runs Linux', but 'x runs Linux' does not imply 'x runs Android'.

(You will note that, in the foundations are nearly all modern mathematics, the fundamental relationship upon which everything else is built is set membership.)

Re: Let's be real

[Anonymous Coward]

Commutativity works like this...
A pig is a mammal.
A cow is a mammal.
A slashdot user is cow.

But can it run Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Raspberry Pi 2 can run Windows 10, so I can play all of my favorite games including Halo and Call of Duty.

CHIPS can't run Windows, only bad and evil command-line Linux.

Re:But can it run Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have about zero idea what you are talking about...

Re:But can it run Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I assumed it was a joke. Whoosh?

Re:But can it run Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen so many "tech enthusiasts" actually believing that, that it is not even funny.

Re:But can it run Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yeah, no....

http://hackaday.com/2015/08/13/raspberry-pi-and-windows-10-iot-core-a-huge-letdown/

Re:But can it run Windows?

[wierd_w]

Yes and no.

I cant see if the CPU in this thing supports THUMB, NEON, and real floating point or not-- If it does, then it could conceivably run Exagear dekstop on it.

http://eltechs.com/product/exa...

It's assembly optimized for arm CPUs with those features, and is fast enough to run x86 emulation at useful speeds. (they claim more than 10x faster than QEMU.) It can be used to run WINE on an ARM platform, meaning that if CHIP supports those CPU features, then CHIP could possibly run commodity desktop software.

use cases

[Anonymous Coward]

Aha, so now we finally have something small and cheap to carry around with us that can encrypt/decrypt messages and generate private and public keys.

Needs a much lighter OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, the Pi 2 is so slow I want to kill it, I can only imagine if this was your "computer".

Maybe with a non GUI and tremendously lighter OS it could be useful, I've been a computer user since the days of apple 2 clones, and not a single "contemporary machine" has felt as slow as the Pi 2, and it packs quite the punch compared to most systems I had before 1997

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[jandrese]

What are you trying to do on the Pi? I have an original Raspberry Pi (the 512MB model) and while it's not winning any speed contests it is certainly not unusably slow. I even run Chromium on it, most pages take a few seconds to load but work alright after that. I don't try to open lots of tabs though, the Pi is too memory constrained. Mathematica (which comes bundled with later versions of Raspbian) takes forever to start up, but once it is going it does alright.

I'm even making it drive a 1080p display. I did go and use the raspi-config script to overclock it. It's not totally necessary, but it makes a surprisingly large difference. Upping the memory clock is a huge win in particular. At the "Max OC" setting I was able to keep Quake 3's framerate up in the mid-30s or so.

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

You think the Pi2 feels slow? What distro are you using, what's your display resolution, etc. Or are you just used to 12-core Xeon beasts with 64GB of RAM and 2TB of PCIe SSD?

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an original Raspberry Pi set up at the cottage for videos... Runs XBMC fine with no visible slowness.

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I've tried listening to music - mp3's actually play, but only on local USB storage, I couldn't get anything to play over wifi.

I've tried watching videos - none of the media files I had was watchable, playback was just terrible.

I've tried browsing - scrolling feels like a slideshow.

The damned thing loads at 50% just opening the "task manager" - it barely keeps up with the drawing of the CPU load charts.

I tried raspbian and ubuntu mate. And that's the Pi 2, allegedly 6 times faster than the original. It is just too slow for a GUI OS, in terminal mode it is bearable, but not all that useful.

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I have OpenElec/Kodi on my Pi2 and use it as a media server for mp4 files. It plays everything with no problems whatsoever. It has a Netflix-esque GUI. Incredibly smooth.

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[jandrese]

Are you using USB Wifi? USB is notoriously CPU hungry and Wifi USB is the worst.

As for the videos, the playback depends. If they are encoded in a format that you can offload to the GPU, then the Pi will be great. I've played plenty of 1080p video on the Pi over the network using the built-in ethernet using omxplayer. The one big caveat is that it only supports a few codecs, and if you try to play a video encoded differently it will go to the CPU and be unwatchable (less than 1 frame per second). It does support the most popular codecs at least (DivX and H.264).

I'm not sure why you're having so much trouble with X. Once it is started I usually get along just fine, although you do have to be careful not to blow the memory budget. If you start to swap the thing will become horrible. You have to use the machine with the same mindset you would have used with a 15 year old Pentium III machine. Don't ask it to do too much at once and be mindful of your memory use. Keeping to the commandline is also a big help.

Seriously though, look at the built-in overclocking options. They make a huge difference, and they don't even void the warranty unless you go whole hog and start editing the boot.conf file by hand and set crazy voltages. It's just like the old Pentium days where overclocking could dramatically improve a machine instead of being some incremental dick measuring contest like it is today.

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Overclocking, really? So that would make it what? 10% "faster" and about half a percent less unbearable.

I found application for it - acquire data from several sensors and send it over the network to my PC. That it can do, but that's about it. I would hate to have that thing as a primary system, much less - that CHIP thing. In this regard I cannot possibly justify calling it "your computer" - it is a embedded system for tinkerers at best.

I'd much rather use my note 3 as a computer, if it comes to it - it is fast, responsive, plays just about all kinds of content, even has integrated display... oh, and it i s also a phone...

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[jandrese]

Empirically, the "Turbo OC" setting in raspi-config roughly doubles the effective speed of the device. It only bumps the CPU clock from 700Mhz to 1Ghz, but it also increases the memory and GPU clock which has a dramatic improvement on performance. If your Pi becomes crashy in that setting, try scaling back the GPU (Core) clock speed first. The CPU and Memory seem to overclock better than the GPU.

Like I said, the Pi behaves a lot like a late 90s desktop, back when overclocking was worth the effort.

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[Anonymous Coward]

Post a link to a benchmark, because what you say sounds extremely implausible. The best performance improvement I see is about 20%, it most of the cases below 10%, nowhere near "roughly doubles the effective speed of the device", which would be roughly 100% improvement...

"late 90s desktop, back when overclocking was worth the effort" - as opposed to now, when it is worth it and effortless?

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[John Allsup]

For this reason I reencode virtually all my video content to Mp4 h264. The Pi2 plays it wonderfully, and Kodi is great, to the extent that the I only use my PS3 for playing games and accessing things like Amazon Prime video (though for that my Fire TV stick both works better, without updating every fsck'ing week, and also runs Kodi, albeit accessed through the app settings menu). For re-encoding, I tend to use a bigger machine (e.g. 2nd hand Z800 with 12 cores.)

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[jandrese]

Nowadays you don't see nearly as much gain from overclocking. You still get 200Mhz, but that's only 10% more performance instead of 50%.

Benchmarks. Note the memory score as well as the Integer and Floating point scores. Half of the speedup comes from the cpu crunching, and the other half comes from the memory and GPU.

But you don't have to take my word for it. If you has Raspbian installed you can try it yourself in like 60 seconds. Just run raspi-config and go into the overclocking menu. You do have to reboot afterward, but that's pretty quick. You will probably be surprised at how noticeable the difference is, especially when working with memory hungry applications like Chromium.

Re:Needs a much lighter OS

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nowadays you don't see nearly as much gain from overclocking. You still get 200Mhz"

Really, because I got 1200 out of my 3770k. Also overclock in the 90s never got you anywhere near 50% performance increase. The 50% overclockers came mid to late 00s. You sound complete clueless.

Those benchmarks you link to DO NOT don't come near the synthetic, much less translate into "double the effective speed of the device", that remains a ridiculous, preposterous fanboyish or plain out ignorant statement.

I "has" raspbpian, and I has tried overclocking the pi, and it still sucked. Like I said, computationally it is not all that bad, but it really needs a much more optimized and lightweight OS to not suck completely. I've tried standalone GUI application and it runs OK, but GUI Linux cripples it, it is just not optimized enough, whereas my test application was 100% hardware accelerated when it comes to GUI. As I said, it struggles drawing the plot for the CPU load in the task manager app, much less have the power to run something computationally intensive. As it seems, it doesn't even have the power to run a wifi dongle optimally.

*sigh*

[Anonymous Coward]

http://hackaday.com/2015/06/11/does-the-worlds-first-9-computer-cost-9/

And I fail to see the SoC documentation in that github repo.
That 29 page document doesn't count. That's just a teaser for the buying department.

$9 tablet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would anyone want a $9 tablet? No one wants sub-$100 junk tablets now. Linux on el cheapo junk hardware makes it seem like it's an inferior thing that people use only when they can't afford Apple.

Someone should create a box

[future assassin]

that all you have to do is plug in CHIP and you have a media players ready to go with all connections say HDMI and USB.

Re:Someone should create a box

[Anonymous Coward]

It already exists; it's called a Raspberry Pi 2, and it's cheaper/smaller than a CHIP with the shields necessary to be a competent media player.

Re:Someone should create a box

[future assassin]

I want a straight plug in box that where I can maybe plug in newer versions of CHIP or why hell even a universal box where you can plug in a CHIP or Pi or WHY.

Re:Someone should create a box

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. They'll call it M.O.T.H.E.R.B.O.A.R.D.

(ignore this bunch of lowercase letters being used to bypass the caps filter)

Re:Someone should create a box

[Half-pint HAL]

It already exists; it's called a Raspberry Pi 2, and it's cheaper/smaller than a CHIP with the shields necessary to be a competent media player.

The flip-side of that coin is that if you want to attach a touch-screen, the lack of need for an adaptor makes the CHIP cheaper and smaller that a Pi. The same goes for batteries.

One question

[93 Escort Wagon]

Where's Eric Estrada?

Re:One question

[Chris Mattern]

Erik Estrada. And why no love for Larry Wilcox?

Re:One question

[93 Escort Wagon]

Erik Estrada. And why no love for Larry Wilcox?

I was blinded by the flash of Estrada's teeth - I forgot he had a partner.

WANT

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the coolest thing I've seen all year. I've sworn off tablets wanting something more akin to a PocketPC for the modern age rather than a limited, fashy touchscreen toy. This looks like it'll deliver, and cheaply. It seems versatile and fun.

What's with the stupid headline?

[wonkey_monkey]

'My Name is C.H.I.P. and I'll Be Your $9 Computer Today'

Was there any point to this headline, or did someone just think it was cute (for some reason)?

Android is Linux

[the_humeister]

From my phone:

[@MSM8974:/]$ uname -a
Linux localhost 3.4.0-g635b2f7 #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Aug 13 11:22:15 PDT 2015 armv7l GNU/Linux

It's Cortex A8

[the_humeister]

For my cheap computing needs, I'd rather get the Raspberry Pi, which is Cortex A9. But what I'm really waiting for is something that implements ARMv8. Probably won't get something in this price range for a while.

Re:It's Cortex A8

[Anonymous Coward]

I still find my eeePC pretty useful, though it's not as cheap as a raspberry pi.

Re:It's Cortex A8

[petermgreen]

For my cheap computing needs, I'd rather get the Raspberry Pi, which is Cortex A9

Umm no, the raspberry pi 2 is Cortex A7. Original raspberry pi was some arm11 variant.

Re:It's Cortex A8

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct... the original pi was a very old and very deprecated arm11 variant. Virtually every pi competitor makes it a point to mention how dated the pi's chip really is.

Re: It's Cortex A8

[Anonymous Coward]

allwinner a53 for $5 now in mass production

I have a $6 car to sell you...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just without all the car bits, oh, and we wont ship you the car without car bits until sometime in the future, maybe next year.

Send me money. Now. I'm also a Nigerian prince, and the car comes with bluetooth and USB ports. Oh it also runs from natural sun power even in cloudy weather.

people are considering ARM data centers

[peter303]

Because they may have lower Total Cost of Operation per peta-op than more conventional CPUs, despite slower speeds. Electric power and cooling are lower.

Another "open" device that isn't

[Anonymous Coward]

They shouldn't have included the wifi. I'm pretty sure the RTL8723BS chipset is dependent on proprietary firmware.

https://github.com/hadess/rtl8723bs/blob/master/hal/HalHWImg8723B_FW.c contains:

u1Byte Array_MP_8723B_FW_AP_WoWLAN[] = {
0x01, 0x53, 0x20, 0x00, 0x12, 0x00, 0x02, 0x00, 0x12, 0x02, 0x11, 0x28, 0x4A, 0x3C, 0x00, 0x00,
0x9E, 0x0D, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x02, 0x45, 0x8D, 0x02, 0x53, 0x49, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x02, 0x53, 0xD2, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x02, 0x58, 0x6B, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x.......

Dear Slashdot

[TheDarkener]

Why are you *still* using Adobe Flash for your videos? Even YouTube knows how to do HTML5 video.

Sincerely,
A Flash Hater

Re:Dear Slashdot

[CanadianMacFan]

Maybe they are taking after the BBC which for some reason if you go on the mobile site doesn't use Flash but on the regular site does.

Re:Dear Slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Very simple reason, Dice needs to monetize Slashdot and there's no better way than super cookies and tracking.

technology news

[Anonymous Coward]

for latest tech news visit
tech1world.com

What's with the hat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Was it cold in that room, or is it some kind of idiotic fashion statement?

Stop calling it "Open Source"

[Anonymous Coward]

For crying out loud, STOP calling things like these "Open Source", they're so much NOT!! You only get black boxes for which you're barely allowed to know what the pins do... no register level specs no nothing. By comparison, "VGA" was "Open Source"...

You fucking knew what he meant!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you're a bunch of fucking nerds. I'm a geek and I still think you're a fucking nerd!

cool

[sir_hawell]

that's cool but does it have systemd on it?

Dumbass Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

Celeron 300As were overclocked to 500 out the door, people were doing 700 within a year and 1GHZ was possible within 2 years. This dropped off on later models not due to CPU limitations, but due to the clockspeed of available SRAM for the L2 cache (300As came without any.)

So your assumption that overclocking didn't hit 50% under the mid-late '00s is bullshit.

Futhermore Core 2 era hardware could hit a 100 percent overclock (of course that was because intel gimped them to lower the tdp envelope) E4xxx/E6xxx hardware could usually overclock to P4 rates assuming you have a high enough multiplier and a lower enough default frontside bus speed. That is why E4xxx/E5xxx chips overclocked the most compared to non-'performance' models.

is it me

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it me or does this gut look like I found Waldo?

Re:is it me

[Anonymous Coward]

guy not gut