Atom-Based JaguarBoard To Take On Raspberry Pi (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: The tiny single-board PC movement that's leading the Internet of Things (IoT) market is largely dominated by ARM-based processors, and for good reason — they're cheap, low power and capable. However, what if you prefer to work with the x86 architecture? JaguarBoard looks strikingly similar to Raspberry Pi, which is arguably the most popular single-board mini PC. But unlike Raspberry Pi, JaguarBoard allows users to develop for x86, courtesy of its Intel Atom Z3735G (Bay Trail) foundation. The chip is a quad-core part clocked at 1.33GHz to 1.83GHz with 2MB of L2 cache, offering a fair amount of horsepower for IoT applications. In addition to an Atom processor, JaguarBoard also boasts 1GB of DDR3L memory, 16GB of eMMC storage, three USB 2.0 ports, 10/100M LAN port, HDMI 1.4 output, SDIO 3.0 socket, two COM ports, four GPIO pins, and audio ports. It's an interesting device that you could use strictly as a mini PC for general purpose computing, as an embedded system, a learning or research tool, or for whatever DIY projects you can conjure up. It's not the only hobbyist-appropriate x86 board, but those specs are pretty good for $45.

Comments

Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[goombah99]

4 gpio ports? this is not competing against a raspberry pi. And if I'm looking for something that is a computing device not a hacker board then I can take my $45 and get a Amazon tablet with USB IO for that whihc includes batteries, and a powersource. then I've got usb I/O or wifi I/o to a CHIP, Arduino or Raspberry pi $5. So it hits the sour spot between being under ported as a hacker board and over priced as a cheap computer.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

And do any of those solutions you bring up involve x86? That is the main point for this...

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[LarryRiedel]

I don't know of a $45 Amazon tablet that can be a standalone off the shelf x86 Ubuntu system with performance comparable to a netbook which can host VMs running Ubuntu Snappy Core for IoT applications. Since the JaguarBoard also has I2C, COM and GPIO ports, it can in some cases be a replacement for an RPi, depending on the number of units to be deployed in production, and the profit margin and TCO of the target solution.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[TheRealMindChild]

Why would anyone care for x86 unless they are trying to run windows?

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[__aaclcg7560]

4 gpio ports?

Binary Coded Decimal (BCD) only need four lines to represent 0000 (zero) to 10001 (nine), or a single line into a serial-to-parallel shift register to get eight lines, with the old school logic chips (i.e., 4000- and 7000-series). This board allows you to do more with less.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[__aaclcg7560]

*cough* Linux *cough*

Re: Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ding ding ding. Tell him what he won Bob.

You won an all expenses paid trip to Gitmo. This lavish destination boast over 2000 cells err I mean rooms. You and your family will enjoy the fresh smell of baked and grilled meat everyday as the butcher takes daily requests.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux runs better on x86/x86_64 arch...

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean? Linux is already available on ARM, Windows isn't. If you just want Linux, you would be better off with one of the more common ARM boards.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[Gaygirlie]

4 gpio ports? this is not competing against a raspberry pi.

That's pretty much what I came in to say: this shit ain't an RPi - alternative, it's just a low-power PC. One of the major selling-points of RPi is the 40-pin GPIO-row, all useable natively, but with this shit you'd have to use I2C or USB GPIO-expanders and jump through extra hoops every single time you wanted to read or set a GPIO-pin state. Things get even worse if you wanted to use SPI.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[__aaclcg7560]

Windows does run on the ARM processor. Just Microsoft haven't figured out a way to do that successfully well. With a board like this, I could run a minimalist version of Linux, program in Python (my preferred programming language), and still have plenty of resources left over.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[SuricouRaven]

If four GPIO pins are not enough, may I introduce you to the 4006? Or whatever its 3.3V counterpart is.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[Gaygirlie]

You'd lose out on interrupts on pin-state-changes when used as inputs and you'd have to implement PWM in software if you needed that.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[rbgaynor]

You can already do all of that on a Raspberry Pi running Linux - and run Wolfram's Mathematica.

Re: Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

For that price - it is useless. I would much rather get a kangaroo for $99 and have storage, os and not to mention - battery

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[brad3378]

I would pay extra for x86 just for the ability to run Teamviewer, which is currently incompatible with ARM devices.

Yes, I know there are alternatives, but I like Teamviewer.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[ChunderDownunder]

Not if you're intentionally crippling a 64bit processor with 1 gig of RAM.

As a hobbyist machine an Atom seems like complete overkill but as a SFF PC it's immediately hobbled. A RAM socket to address up to 8 Gig would make sense for a build server for things such as Androidx86 that require a 64bit OS for certain tasks.

Anything that needs x86 compatibility, you're talking about a project like ReactOS as a reference device - buy everyone on the development team one and get Windows XP/2003 compatibility working *perfectly* on it...

Re: Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[arglebargle_xiv]

For that price - it is useless. I would much rather get a kangaroo for $99

Oh sure, yeah, a 'roo is cute when it's young, but have you ever stopped to think about what happens when it gets older? There are countless millions of loving, adoptable single-board computers put to death every year, simply because people keep making more of them to try to make money, and other people reward them for this by paying them for these SBCs when they could instead save an innocent older SBC from death by adopting.

Many people who buy 'roos later decide it's an inconvenience and get rid of them, adding yet more innocent SBCs to the huge numbers already sent to China and Africa for ecotoxic reprocessing.

If nobody bought, and everyone adopted older SBCs, nobody would manufacture new ones, and eventually, no innocent, adoptable SBCs would die. Nobody wants to admit responsibility and wants to pass the blame, but everyone who abandons, buys or builds new SBCs while they are being burned for the gold in their connectors has blood on their hands.

Remember, a 'roo isn't just for Christmas.

Re:Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[KGIII]

Mind if I ask what's so special about it that you prefer it? I've never used it so I'm curious as to what the benefit might be. I do make heavy use of VNC, say VINO and TurboVNC Viewer (my current setup), I don't really make video calls or join meetings with a VNC client, I have, as of late, used qtox for that sort of thing. I'm not doubting or challenging - I'm genuinely curious as to why you prefer it, what you do with it that is so specific, and what its "killer" features are - for you. I read about it, I saw that it was free for personal use. That's a nice benefit - it's also good for them to get people who really like it, for personal use, and then bring it into the business with them which costs money. I'm certainly not opposed to spending money - I'm just making note of the nifty business plan and how it's likely a good benefit to the company and to the user.

Re: Not a Raspberry pi competitor.

[Anonymous Coward]

Believe it or not, there is closed source Linux software, and believe it or not, some of said closed sourced software will not be ported to ARM.

The RPi's "secret weapon"

[petes_PoV]

Is its following, community and wide range of available software.

Without something comparable, all the SBCs in the world amount to very little. For example, consider the Orange Pi. It's based on a different architecture, it uses a different boot-up process. Sure, it runs Linux, it's probably hardware compatible up to a point, it's cheaper: $15 compared to what? $30 for a RPi (I'm not up to date on US dollar prices). Has it taken the world by storm? No. Can you buy it without sending your money to China and waiting 1 - 2 months? Definitely not.

What it, and all the other SBCs, lack is the ease of use. The wide range of almost-working software. The examples to create your own almost-working software. The documentation about what almost works and the "experts" (those people who can make TWO LEDs flash) who can and will answer questions - preferable with correct answers.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

I lol'd. I have two of them, but this was funny.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[goombah99]

Yep. I wasted $20 on an Orange Pi PC. Official distro would not boot, eventually found an unofficial on that would boot linux. Only ran on one of it's CPUs it looks like. And not much support for GPIO modes like SPI. it would not work with any of the bog standard monitors I owned. Did get it to work on an HDMI TV but only in certain modes. Problems with KEy boards. Would not recognize some SIM cards despite their meeting specs.

Sure I could make it work, but would I develop for it? no because if I came back a year later I'd probably fiund anything I created would not work on their unsupported releases and there would be a newer board out. With Rpi I can be productive imediately and know I have path forward for anything I make.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[Walter White]

Is its following, community and wide range of available software.

Really good point. To draw an Arduino analogy, there are other platforms that offer better bang for the buck (e.g. various STM Discovery boards, some of the Cypress boards) But the community and resulting accessibility make the Arduino much more popular.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[CajunArson]

It doesn't need "community support" when the "community" is the default version of practically every Linux distro in existence without even requiring the existence of a specialized "community" distro just to support one board. That's what makes it really compelling over a Raspberry Pi (and I was in the very first wave of people who ordered it too).

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[mpthompson]

The problem with the Orange Pi and many other inexpensive systems is that they lack mainline Linux support. AllWinner just doesn't seem to be interested in investing the time, effort and money to make it happen.

With these types of systems you may be able to find and boot a relatively new kernel (ie. 3.8 or later), but even if you manage that you find yourself stuck in time as the rest of the Linux community and API's continue to progress. I have clients that have chosen to use hardware only supported by a hacked 2.6.35 Linux kernel and they fail to realize the enormous effort it takes to get newer applications and protocols working in such an environment -- if it is possible at all. Not to mention the security issues of not being able to track the latest software versions.

It's a shame because the hardware is perfectly fine, but with the systems I own and manage, I want to deal with manufacturers that have at least a 5 year horizon for software support with regards to the hardware they produce rather than 5 months which seems typical of the cheap systems out of China.

I'm intrigued by these Intel based systems if they can indeed run generic mainline Linux kernels. If so, it will be well worth the $30 or more price premium.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[amiga3D]

It looks nice. I notice that the $45 price was for early kickstarter pledges and later it went up to $65. I also notice shipment is delayed until middle February now. I don't see it as a competitor for the Pi though, more like a different niche. The Pi is a throwaway computer. I've purchased a dozen now and have them doing different things. Some A+ models hanging outside with camera mods attached for surveillance, a Pi2 running a media center and one for a file server. They run off a cell phone charger with no problems. The community support makes it almost trivial to set up anything as every time I look there are more projects posted. It's a hobby board, not a peecee competitor. I will say I might pick up a jaguarboard later on to play with if they actually start delivering them. It looks cool.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[Walter White]

That depends on how easy it is to install the standard distros on this board.

Then there's the GPIO and SDIO support. Is that going to require custom drivers or will it be included in the standard kernel? What about eMMC?

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[DCFusor]

Yup - rather than mod up an already +5, thought I'd chime in myself. It's the community, and the existing popularity - the network effect, that makes the pi a win. I tasked myself with designing a "LAN of things" for my off-grid homestead, intended to last, well, forever - as long as I'll live. LAN because security, and my life depends on Neuman's little helpers. Will I be able to get a replacement for an also-ran that will go off market the instant it's not a huge success, as has happened many times from this source already? I'm not going to count on it.
Tell me again what advantage there is in X86 if I'm not going to use assembler? Anything running a modern opsys - any of them - will have "issues" doing real time hard-deadline stuff, because the opsys will preempt your code now and then to do its thing - which is why I hang an Arduino Uno or a Teensy off most of the Pi's in my setup - the hardware support for little fiddly bit-bang stuff stinks on all these class of boards, but linux (well, it's all there is, but I'd have chosen it anyway) - and its apps - from NGINX to MySQL, to...you name it, absolutely rocks on a pi.
It's a total no-brainer if I might want to have a hot spare available well down the road. If not new - so many have been sold I'd bet there's even a thriving used market by the time I'd need one.
I don't sell anything, I give what I develop away - GPL or just copyleft, I have no reason to care. Interested people might want to check out my forums under software to see some of what I've managed so far along the LAN of things lines. I like to say that surviving off-grid is actually the oldest profession - you have to be alive to do that other one that claims to be the oldest, after all ;~).
I have nothing against Intel - all my regular PC's are intel, and I like them - including the NUCs (I'm posting from a Haswell one with 2tb of spinner and 500gig of SSD right now). It's not the point, the point is - will they abandon this if it doesn't make money fast? Track record speaks for itself.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[Gaygirlie]

I ordered an Orange Pi PC on eBay just recently and... boy-howdy do I regret it. It was only after ordering it that I found out that e.g. the CSI-connector isn't actually a CSI-connector and you need some expansion board to make use of it, and the expansion board isn't even supplied with the device itself -- and of course, none of this is mentioned either on the official website or their store! The forums are at the brink of self-immolation, no verification e-mails are ever received by people who try to register accounts there, the official website has a bunch of broken or outdated links, the Steven - guy behind the project has been missing for at least a week now and so on.

The hardware is real nice and personally I find their newly-announced OPi-Lite an exceedingly attractive device, but fuck if they're ever going to attract more than a few stragglers who end up horribly disappointed in the end when things are run like this. I wish I could get an OPi-Lite, but with RPi-level support.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[Dracos]

I've made 1024 LEDs flash with an rPi. To do that I had to buy a 32x32 LED matrix, power brick, and a proto hat; solder the necessary connections on the hat, then write a C++ application using a very nifty library I found. It showed the date and time, scrolled text, and displayed images.

So what's my level of expertise?

It seems your expectations for Ease of use are too high.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

unofficial on -> unofficial one
it's -> its

And many, many more.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[MacTO]

Every platform starts with a small community and with a small base of software, including the Raspberry Pi.

The foundation had several secret weapons to deal with that. The first is that they developed something different. Keep in mind that the hobby platform of the time was the Arduino. They managed to undercut the Arduino in both price as well as performance, and by a quite significant factor for the latter. By addressing the education market, they also fostered goodwill. On top of that, they are active in building and supporting a community.

Other boards may do all of the above, but their attempts aren't compelling. Doubling the speed may attract some people, but it is not compelling when other factors are considered (especially if the price is on-par or higher). Attempts to address the needs of the education market feel hollow, like businesses trying to defend their turf, which does little to generate goodwill. As for community, that is a heck of a lot more than posting videos to a corporate website.

On top of that, the Raspberry Pi gained support from third parties, particularly with relation to education. It has also been particularly strong at presenting their product at conferences (e.g. PyCon's Education Summit). Wolfram shouldn't be discounted either. Given Mathematica's marginal ability to run on the Pi, it was a token gesture. Yet it was also demonstrating support for the Pi as an education platform.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

And many, many more.

sentence fragment, no verb.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have "nothing against intel" then you're not using that mushy thing in your skull. Either that or you have no morals.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

H3/Orange pi support is supposed to land into Linux 4.5, which is due in a couple of days.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[jandersen]

Is its following, community and wide range of available software.

Possibly; another important factor is that there seems to be a huge market for exactly what RaspberryPi is: a general purpose computer with low power consumption and sufficient capacity to make it useful as a small server. I'm just waiting for when it comes with 8 GB of RAM, so I can run an Java application server and MySQL.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[computererds]

I had a lot of problems with the Orange Pi PC board using the 5v 2a power supply that it called for. I started using a 5.3v 2a samsung charger as my power supply and now it has no problems with any image.

Just mentioning in case it helps someone.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[KGIII]

As I keep getting and poking at various SBCs, I will have to get at least a couple of this one as well. So far, I've not had the best of luck getting as motivated and as functional as I'd like - this being x86 will, likely, make me at least slightly more likely to actually get a completed project. Actually, I have been poking at another pair - working on my own little pet project. But, if I can move to x86 that'll likely make it much easier for me to get things rolling. (Literally - I'm gonna build a robot with a couple of 'em. Probably two robots and I'm thinking that I'll go with playing with some "AI" at this juncture and have 'em compete against each other.) My other project, again a robot but a remote robot, is starting to take shape. It's moving but not quite as well as it should - namely, not in the actual direction it should be moving. But, at least it's moving and it's better than I'd managed to accomplish with all the RPis that I ordered that sit collecting dust back in Maine. I didn't even bother with ordering any of the RPi2 models.

I'm thinking using a camera, tape on the floor, and making them compete (various algorithms - should be a good process for me) in completing a maze the quickest, with the fewest mistakes, or things of that nature. I'll have to see what I come up with for ideas. I might just make them smash into each other until one dies. I'm not really sadistic or anything, I'm just easily amused and I have the coding skills of a drunken barbarian. *sighs* I kind of miss hiring professionals. I guess I could hire someone to smash my computers for me but that kind of defeats the point.

Re:The RPi's "secret weapon"

[KGIII]

Well, when the RPi came out, I bought six of them. I had a plan! Err... One box was opened, the rest still sit in the package, presumably catching dust, back in Maine. So, if there's ever a crunch and the world runs out of the RPi, I've got you covered. *sighs* And probably a half dozen "also ran" SBCs too. Well, except I'm actually working on my current project - it's actually, sort of, doing stuff. It's not doing the right stuff but it's getting closer to doing the right stuff. I turns out, having it come when called, is more difficult than I imagined. It does, now, move when I say its name. (It's called Rex.) It has a sister, named T but she doesn't move and she's not supposed to. T's supposed to play media. T doesn't actually do anything yet - she'll be easy. Rex, on the other hand, he's supposed to bring me the remote when I call him. He's a lazy, semi-retarded, bastard who does, technically, indicate that he's moving (or actually moves) when called. He just doesn't do that whole direction thing very well because he's retarded. Someone has to have a library in C for this but fucked if I can find it. So, I have a retarded remote carrying robot with a stillborn sister. But, it's closer than what I had a week ago.

Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[tepples]

But is it 64-bit like the Atari Jaguar video game console and the AMD Jaguar processor (used in PlayStation 4 and Xbox One video game consoles)?

The article repeatedly says "x86", not "x86-64", "x64", "AMD64", or "EM64T", yet it mentions "Intel Atom Z3735G (Bay Trail)" which Intel says is 64-bit. But does its firmware support 64-bit mode?

Re:Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[unixisc]

Given the memory they spec'ed - 1GB RAM, 16GB storage, I doubt it. For Windows 10, definitely no, not sure about whether it's adequate for a 64-bit Linux. Best OS for this board seems to be Minix, since their Beagleboard port seems nowhere near ready.

Re:Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[QuietLagoon]

Is it 64-bit?...

The processor is 64-bit, I don't know about the rest of it. http://ark.intel.com/products/...

Re:Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[ogdenk]

The Jaguar was not really a 64-bit machine. Main CPU was a 68000.

Re: Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[Billly Gates]

Windows 10 runs well on my Mom's Nokia lumina phone with 1 gig of ram. Yes it runs the same kernel as server 2016 prerelease and the desktop 10.

In fact it is very competitive to Linux. It is the other desktop services that eat the ram

Re:Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[amiga3D]

The 68000 was used as a "manager" but most of the work was done by two custom 32bit RISC processors.

Re: Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[unixisc]

It may be the same kernel, but Windows 10 Mobile is a very different beast from Windows 10. Unless one is planning to run only Power Shell

Re: Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[Billly Gates]

I have not run IOT (I really really hate that silly acronym where I swear it was invented just a few months ago) but assume it is basically Windows 10 kernel and some mobile features with alot less stuff. Yes powershell would be the UI.

I want to buy a Pi but have not found a reason yet. i assume the xorg would not be great on it and I would be using ssh to log into it anyway to run code. I find this cool if I can find a niche use for it :-)

Re:Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[tepples]

Atari Jaguar had three CPUs: a Motorola MC68000 used as an I/O processor, a proprietary 32-bit RISC CPU called "Tom" on the GPU die, and a proprietary 32-bit RISC CPU called "Jerry" designed for audio signal processing. Some games ran game logic on Tom, others on the 68000, but graphics rendering was all Tom. The 64-bit part of the Jaguar was the data bus to the GPU.

Re:Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.jaguarboard.org:8090/display/ED/JaguarBoard+Support+OS+table

Yes it is 64bit.

Re: Is it 64-bit? Do the math

[Anonymous Coward]

An IOT is a Inductive Output Tube, the thing that makes UHF TV work. Consumes thousands of watts of power.
An IoT is someone being lazy while conjuring up yet another three-letter acronym.

Missing Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Missing:

-No commercially available case
-No SPI port - [besides sdio, not accessible]
-No secondary i2c port
-All of "4" gpios - not nearly enough

this is a great XBMC box, but good for little else.

Re:Missing Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

No commercially available case

I thought that is what 3D printers were for

Re:Missing Stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone has a 3D printer on their desk. On boy, are those cartridges expensive.

x86 is so bloody expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

You can buy a quad core arm tablet with 16GB storage and 2GB of ram, including the touch screen and LCD for the same price.

I get why you might want x86, but the 1GB of memory is a bigger limitation on a lot of applications than the faster CPU is. And the CPU is pretty crap, it's about the same processing power as an Intel Core 2 Duo P8800, which is ancient and only a little higher clocked.

The galaxy note 4 is almost twice as fast as this board.

And the raspberry pi is grossly underpowered for the price, the Odroid C-1 is cheaper and about 4 times as powerful. http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G143703355573

NanoPi2 does more for less

[Okian Warrior]

I just got a couple of NanoPi 2's, they're 1.4 GHz, and have embedded wireless on the board.

For $32, you don't need an octopus of wires to power your wifi USB dongle through a USB hub, both of which you need for the Raspberry PI. A NanoPi2, a $6 USB power supply, a 16GB memory card, and you're ready to go.

Of course, feel free to develop for the X86, because it's *such* an elegant architecture...

The client wanted a system to log (plastic injection molding) machine cycles, so I wrote a script to read the GPIO and make entries to a remote MySQL database. Everything except the glue script was off the shelf and open source. He can use any open source DB viewer and make whatever data views he needs.

You can make an IoT device in an afternoon with one of these.

Re: NanoPi2 does more for less

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry for asking this detail, but do you know if MySQL 5.7 is available on that platform?

Re:NanoPi2 does more for less

[Anonymous Coward]

NanoPi seems like overkill as well.
https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/u... are $8, pull only 200ma, runs linux, comes with wifi, Ethernet and 6 GPIOs.

Re:NanoPi2 does more for less

[Okian Warrior]

Thanks - I'll look into that.

Re:NanoPi2 does more for less

[jonsmirl]

An ESP8266 based ESP-12 is cheaper still. And it has real FCC approval too. $1.84 shipped.

Lot's of info at www.esp8266.com

Re: NanoPi2 does more for less

[Bert64]

If it can run linux then it can almost certainly run mysql too, i've run mysql on all kinds of exotic architectures (although sometimes had to compile it myself).

Re:NanoPi2 does more for less

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks capable and the price is good (depending upon what happened to it after the introductory offer expired at the beginning of the year -- strike one: website is not current), but how well does it meet the criteria described by petes_POV near the top of the comments? The website mentions only Android. For a lot of IoT type applications, a more common true Linux distribution may be preferred. That's one of the many strengths of RPi.

> For $32, you don't need an octopus of wires to power your wifi USB dongle through a USB hub, both of which you need for the Raspberry PI.

This has not been true since the original Model B. Or if it is, I've got a bunch of Model B+ and RPi 2 Model B+ systems defying the laws of physics.

Video

[Anonymous Coward]

anybody else notice the Xeon logo about 45 seconds into the video?

The x86 SBC's "secret weapon"

[chihowa]

The advantage of an x86 based SBC is the ability to take advantage of the maturity and relative uniformity of the x86 platform. The arcane uboot process and the need for specific support for not only different ARM SoCs, but the specific machines built on them, leaves dozens of abandoned ARM based systems stuck on ancient custom-tweaked kernels (and Linux only). Almost all of the problems you list are inherent in any ARM-based system until the equivalent of a uniform and predictable BIOS-type system is implemented for ARM.

Re:The x86 SBC's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want that, it's very important to make sure the Atom-based system is actually a PC architecture system with a normal PC or EFI BIOS. Some of these Atom systems-on-chip have all the same drawbacks as ARM systems-on-chip, namely obscure bootloaders and binary drivers that were hacked into one version of the Linux kernel by some chip vendor. They will never be able to receive a normal Linux distribution to replace the firmware.

In a moment of carelessness I bought an Atom Z2480-based smartphone thinking the x86 chip was going to make tinkering easier in the future. I have no complaints about the performance of the device as a black-box appliance. However, it is so niche that there is no community really hacking firmware for it, and I don't have enough spare time to do all of that myself.

Re:The x86 SBC's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

Another benefit is the compilation. Many distros make it unnecessarily complicated to set up a cross compiler for a different architecture. If all your machines are running x86 or x86_64, it is much easier to compile and optimize your software on a beefy desktop machine, rather than try to cross compile or use the less powerful SBC.

Re:The x86 SBC's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD chochet supported boards
        Alix
        BananaPi
        BeagleBone
        Chromebook Snow
        Cubieboard
        PandaBoard
        RaspberryPi and RaspberryPi 2
        Soekris
        generic x86 systems.
        Wandboard
        Versatile PB
        VMWare
        ZedBoard

Re:The x86 SBC's "secret weapon"

[chihowa]

From FreeBSD's site:

ARM is officially a Tier 2 architecture, as the FreeBSD project does not provide official releases or pre-built packages for this platform due to it primarily targeting the embedded arena.

And once you get it installed, you get the joy of cross-compiling ports or waiting days/weeks/months for them to compile on the system itself (if you have the space or set up an NFS host to use). And you still get the treat of using uboot.

Re:The x86 SBC's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to be a standard PC EFI

Re:The x86 SBC's "secret weapon"

[Anonymous Coward]

It helps to realize that the PC BIOS (and UEFI, but to a less degree) are equally arcane processes. However, the elephant in the room is the evolutionary pressure on them. If that PC BIOS doesn't boot Windows, its value is effectively zero. Hence, the PC BIOS serves as a workable abstraction for many different x86 designs, and it's not just Windows which benefits from that abstraction.

The problem with ARM SBC's is that anyone can fork Linux. The board vendors don't need to abstract their designs, they too can create a fork. 3 months later, that is yet another abandoned platform. Not that the GPL is to blame for this, the BSD's would have the same problem if Linux wouldn't have been there. The freedom to tinker includes the freedom to abandon failed forks.

Not if you want to connect stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

GPIO on arm is pretty well set up. GPIO on x86, in my (limited)
experience, not so much so.

MySQL 5.7

[Okian Warrior]

According to the MySQL website, 5.6 is the latest available production release.

I don't know the answer to your question, it sounds like you should ask the makers for their release schedule.

Power?

[stabiesoft]

No mention of power consumption. And as a guy who just dd a pool controller than used 7 GPIO + 4 analog ins, it would not fit the bill. And as a guy about to do an irrigation controller that needs 8 GPIO, again, no dice. I've been settling on beagleboard greens for my projects lately. Low power (2.5W) lots of GPIO, and analog in that is good enough. Raspberry would have worked for irrigation, but price is close, and had an extra beaglebone from initial order in case I blew one up when building the pool controller.

Re:Power?

[QuietLagoon]

CPU is 2.2 watts. (See the Intel Ark page I cited earlier)

Re:Power?

[drinkypoo]

For a pool irrigation controller, you could use a $3 nano. Plus another $2 for a ESP to add WiFi if you like, only because it has few GPIO and only one ADC so it wouldn't suit your projects alone. If you only need ~6 GPIO and 1 ADC, though, it's adequate by itself (ESP-07 has a ceramic antenna plus an IPX jack...)

$65 now, how's TDP?

[4wdloop]

The $45 and later $50 was an early kickstarter deal. It's $65 now (or $500 for 10).
1GB ram and 16GB flash makes it a non-windows worthy at the moment (don't even bring up the Win10 IoT gimmick).

The 4 core Atom is a good CPU with a decent GPU (for a small SoC).
But how does this board's TDP compare to Pi or BBB?

Re:$65 now, how's TDP?

[DCFusor]

A killer-important question for my apps. I use a decent (currently around 5) number of pi's on my off-grid solar powered homestead, and they need to be on 24/7/365 to do things like control my power and water systems, collect weather data (internal and external) from buildings on my campus, do security, handle anticipatory HVAC controls, and in general make my life easier more quickly than I get weaker from old age. TDP is huge when there are times like right now - solar panels covered with snow and main batteries getting low.
Being able to segment and prioritize power use when it's a limit - yet utilize all that nature happens to be providing at the moment (be that water, heat, power) is critical to my life. Can't do that if the thing doing it is itself a big load, or too expensive to partition into lots of separate functional units that CAN be shut down selectively when power is low - though it's better to never have to shut data collection down.

.
While mips per watt is really important - plain old watts are too. A setup that can handle a decent peak computational loading had better be good at idle too. Just like solar power - the need for computation is a famine or flood situation. Sometimes you need a lot - sometimes not. With solar, assuming a decently sized system - a system that can handle Feburary in "conserve" mode is dumping so much power on you the rest of the year you might as well be using for an electic car (which I do). A good systems design handles things like this that we can't really change, gracefully.

Re:$65 now, how's TDP?

[SuricouRaven]

If I had solar like that, I'd partner up with a bitcoin miner: They'd supply cast-off hardware that's no longer economical due to power cost, I'd supply the power on the condition their miner can only run when I have excess watts to burn and may be shut down at any time, and we'd split the profits between us.

Re:$65 now, how's TDP?

[DCFusor]

Interesting thought, but no need to partner if I wanted to get into that. I've been an EE/comp-sci for all my rather long life (starting before PCs). I'm not a big fan of bitcoin, personally..I prefer shiny stuff you can drop on your toe and say "ouch", tools, skills, infrastructure. More lasting value and can't be removed via internet kill switch.

Re:$65 now, how's TDP?

[SuricouRaven]

There's a good reason to partner: Hardware, zero cost. You can buy it second-hand on eBay, but even there the price would be high enough that the payback period wouldn't be reasonable. But if you know someone who runs mining at some scale, even as a hobby, they will have a box somewhere full of worthless cast-offs - old hardware which now costs more in power than it makes in coins.

I used to hobby-mine. Not at any scale, I peaked at about 30GH/s, I was just interested in the technology and that was a way to learn. I didn't even make enough to cover the hardware costs before said hardware became worthless, as I purchased it second-hand when it was already well behind the cutting edge.

Re:$65 now, how's TDP?

[ET3D]

I hate it when publications use Kickstarter price as a device price, especially early bird price as in this case. Who knows what the final price will be.

As for Windows 10, you can run full Windows 10 on 16GB flash with 1GB RAM. Even Windows 8.1 could be installed on 16GB and 10 uses less space. It's sub-optimal, but given that Windows 10 can have both software and apps installed to an SD card, it could work.

How much does the Atom Z3735G cost?

[jonsmirl]

I've been tempted to design the Atom Z3735G into some products but I can't figure out how to acquire it at a low enough price. I've seen it around for $15 but that is not very competitive with $5 ARM chips. I suspect these guys are paying less than $15 but I don't know how to achieve that.

Size of the heatsink and no SATA sez it all

[Anonymous Coward]

Size of the heatsink and no SATA sez it all.
Need something good to attract IoT makers and big heatsinks are a *fscking* no no.
Also a SATA option is needed. USB to SATA bridges are slow
and easily defeated by a $5 Allwinner A20 dual core chip with built in SATA.

To take on the RPi you need ease of use, not specs

[rhabyt]

The RPi and Arduino are popular because they are easy to get started with and well supported. 95% of users want to just make a project without the hassle of compiling and flashing, trying to read badly translated Chinese, or getting stuck with no official help or community to draw on. The RPi community (online tutorials, instructables, youtube videos, forums, books) are vastly more important than the specifications. Arduino is the same. You can easily find cheaper boards with more power, but they always come with more frustration and time suck. There are only two ways to break into this market, either 1) Throw lots of money at creating a community, which is what Intel is doing with the Galileo, Edison, and Curie; or 2) Make it so much cheaper that it attracts its own community (which might be happening with the $9 CHIP computer). Otherwise, a product like this is fighting with several hundred other boards (just look at the linuxgizmos site) for a few percent of the market going to hard core hardware hackers.

So close and yet.....

[Lumpy]

Honestly this is not even competition for a RasPi. 4 io ports... that's a fail.
what they should have done is put 2 separate Ethernet ports on this and they would have utterly OWNED the home brew networking device market.

Re:So close and yet.....

[drinkypoo]

what they should have done is put 2 separate Ethernet ports on this and they would have utterly OWNED the home brew networking device market.

It would also need 1xGigE to do that. The other port can still be 100.

Re:So close and yet.....

[Anonymous Coward]

YES! An affordable low power dual ethernet system capable of running pfSense would have been awesome.

Re:So close and yet.....

[erapert]

Agreed

No WiFi and only 10/100 ethernet... It's like they TRIED to make the device suck. If they're not going to provide either WiFi or 1Gb ethernet then this is just speaks volumes of the competence of the team behind Jaguar

USB 2.0... It's 2016 and this is an x86 device. USB 3.0 really should be standard especially if you're not going to provide SATA or 1Gb ethernet or WiFi. Come on, put something nice on the board.

4 IO ports... Holy moley! They completely missed the point of the IoT movement and SBCs in general.

No SATA... sure, these are hard to find on SBCs, but wouldn't it make sense on an x86 machine?

HDMI port... great job, Jaguar team, you managed to hit one of the the bare minimum requirements.

$65 -- You gotta be kidding me. There's cheaper boards out there with more support, more features, and more performance.

Here, for only ten dollars more you can have a machine that curb-stomps the Jaguar: It's called an ODROID XU4. You're welcome.

Bus speed?

[Anonymous Coward]

RPi has the problem of using the USB as the BUS, this means we cannot use PCI-E or M.2 modules on the bus. Same for the UP Soc board.

WE NEED A FASTER BUS PLEASE!

Then we can build our own routers with PCI-E modules. AT FULL SPEED.

The price isn't bad, it's just not great

[drinkypoo]

In addition to an Atom processor, JaguarBoard also boasts 1GB of DDR3L memory, 16GB of eMMC storage, three USB 2.0 ports, 10/100M LAN port, HDMI 1.4 output, SDIO 3.0 socket, two COM ports, four GPIO pins, and audio ports. [...]those specs are pretty good for $45.

Well, they aren't horrible. The onboard eMMC is a boon if it's fast, but it probably isn't. If the CPU is faster and you need that, OK. But two com ports don't make up for only having four GPIO pins, and PineA64+ is not only cheaper (starts at $15 + shipping with 512MB, it's $26 shipped with 1GB the 2GB model is $36 with shipping) but it's got a R-Pi 2 connector and another expansion connector, and GigE, plus some other nice connectors besides. If what you want is the computer, then yeah, that's a cool price. If what you want is something like a R-Pi, then you don't want this.

Re:The price isn't bad, it's just not great

[Anonymous Coward]

While you are correct I will say that 95% of RPis have probably never had anything attached to their GPIOs to begin with. While there certainly is a community out there for which that's a vital statistic the fact of the matter is that most SBCs aren't used in the capacity in which they were conceived. Playing devil's advocate, most people who own a Pi and actually use it for more than a week would still be better served with a cheap used laptop or PC from Goodwill.

Re:The price isn't bad, it's just not great

[drinkypoo]

While you are correct I will say that 95% of RPis have probably never had anything attached to their GPIOs to begin with.

Sure, and never will. But otherwise, what's the point of mentioning R-Pi? What's special about it is the community of people who think it's special. Everyone in this thread is complaining about Allwinner's shoddy Linux support but Broadcom is severely hit-and-miss across their line. The best-supported stuff by far is what the Pi foundation is using; everything else tends to be fraught with complications. Just read the notes for various router platforms with broadcom hardware in them if you don't believe me...

Make one with expandable memory

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I will be interested. 1GB is NOTHING for an x86 device, unless you're running some stupidly limited Linux distribution.

But does it run...

[wjcofkc]

Cybermorph?

Re:But does it run...

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw Cybermorph, I want Aliens vs Predator 1994!

Re:But does it run...

[Anonymous Coward]

Tempest 2000 was the only worthwhile game for that system. AVP was just OK. Too bad the framerate was ass.

They raised $40,000 in Kickstarter

[Anonymous Coward]

They managed to raise a whooping $40,002 in Kickstarter. At exactly the same time the PINE A64 raised $1,731,465 for a similar ARM-based device [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pine64/pine-a64-first-15-64-bit-single-board-super-comput]. The choice of which architecture the community prefers seems pretty clear, or am I mistaken?

x86 isn't a big deal

[Improv]

Unless by chance you're looking to build something that's not Unix-based, there's no strong reason to prefer an x86 board for things the Pi is good at. Once the system is booted and your software is compiled, there's little functional difference between one architecture and another.

Why do these boards never have radios...

[Anonymous Coward]

For fucks sake, it's 2016 and wifi/bluetooth/IR is incredibly cheap and would turn these things into powerhouses. But every god damn time, you hear "that would add an additional $7 to the cost"... yeah, so what! There isn't a swinging dick in the world who wouldn't pay an additional $7 for that functionality and yet nearly every manufacturer makes the same decision. "But that makes the board 20% more expensive"... and that'd be a valid point if they 2 grand, but at $35 it's a no brainer. And fuck you if your first thought is "well build your own".

10/100 still? no, thanks!

[dltaylor]

Although my switches can handle the low-speed devices, I just don't see the point. GbE is has been in SoCs for at least a decade, and the only device in my house not GbE is a rarely-used Wii with a 10/100 USB dongle (if I used it often, it would have the same 10/100/1000 dongle as the Wii U that gets most current use).

I live in a higher-density building and don't run any wireless, except odd, and temporary, occasions for the 'phone, and wish that IT could run USB networking as a simple device, rather than only as a bridge for tethered devices, because my Linux box(es) could easily "tether" it to the home network over USB.

Who really wants this?

[Zobeid]

quote: "However, what if you prefer to work with the x86 architecture?"

However, what if you prefer to whip yourself with a wet rope?

Re:Who really wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeDOS! Imagine playing the original Id Software games!

Re:Who really wants this?

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeDOS! Imagine playing the original Id Software games!

No way dude, those have source ports. FreeDOS is for stuff like Blood, Dark Forces, and System Shock.

AMD

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Jaguar was an AMD architecture... Now, a low power AMD board could be good if you could get GPU acceleration.

Re:AMD

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

And I thought this was a joint Intel/Atari venture.

At $45 they have missed the point

[EmperorOfCanada]

I use a Pi in many projects where I need disposable. In projects where I need more power than a Pi I do one of two things. First is to just wire up (or wireless) an umbilical to the project so that a "real" computer can do its job. Or I don't do the project.

Yes, I can think of many projects where I would love far more power than a Pi can put out but let's say for a moment that I am working on a commercial project. What project is it that can have at is core such a costly unit? A roomba competitor, a security system, or what? Pretty much any system that is really valuable will deserve a far better computer than this, and an project that isn't valuable, "cat chasing robot" will not. These sort of mid-powered computers will find a small niche but I am willing to bet that they are going to have to give a zillion of these away before people find a valid use-case. Basically it will be "We were going to use a Pi but a bunch of these showed up for free so we were happy to use them."

The $5 Pi shows that the Raspberry people know where this whole IoT is going. The atom shows that Intel is hoping to recreate the heady days of Wintel.

$45 sounds about right

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd buy one to run a home DNS server on it.

Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Raspberry Pi consumes 5W at full-bore. Why no mention of the power requirements of Intel's offering? Show me a Chinese board running Intel CPUs with power figures like that.

Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Slightly better CPU than my old laptop.

And the Kickstarter page says it can run Linux, Android or Windows.

I might buy one and install XP on it.

I spotted the hardware support for Windows.

[bob_jordan]

In one corner, there are 3 microswitches. I presume to support Windows, those are CTRL-ALT-DEL.

Bob.

But most importantly

[Z80a]

Can you play tempest 2000 on it?

Yeah, but it's a Kickstarter

[Anonymous Coward]

And of course, "we're sorry, but things are being delayed!"

Because, most people who do Kickstarters have no project experience, have never worked in manufacturing, and have no idea what it takes to actually manufacture something - and they think $40,000 is enough to build a board like this in volume.

Same stupid mistake as the first Raspberry Pi

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

Look at the image of that board viewed from the top. None of the ports are aligned the same distance from the edge of the board.

When it's in Microcenter for ~ $35

[mlwmohawk]

Until which time it is just like Microsoft Pen Computing for Windows.

Re: Why would anyone care for x86 unless they are

[morgauxo]

- Closed Source Software: Most closed source software requires x86. Sure there isn't much of that for Linux but there is some, especially for niche applications. Also... Wine. Don't tell me Wine isn't usable.. I've used it.

- Flash: Thankfully the days when most of the content on the web required Flash are finally over. Good Fckng ridden! But.. there is still some crap out there that requires it. You can certainly live without that but if you really want to say you have access to the whole internet... nothing beats an x86.

- One Platform: Your desktop and/or laptop are almost 100% likely to be an x86. There's something to be said for using the same platform everywhere. Want to play around with bare metal programming on an SBC? Learn that on this thing and now you know low-level programming for 99% of desktops. Learn it on a Pi and you know low-level programming for... a Pi.

- Choice: Discounting Windows since that's what this post is about, still probably more than 99% of other OS/distributions available are for x86. The Pi can run... a strange version of Debian and a strange version of Gentoo.

- Long Term Support: Arm platforms aren't standardized the way x86 ones are. What will you do with your IoT project after Rasbian has moved to some future, incompatible Pi version and your board is no longer supported? IoT projects are appliances. They should just work. Once they do just work they should continue to do so. It's not like your desktop, after building your 'smarthouse' full of IoT devices based on Raspi do you relly want to have to replace all those Raspis? Or.. with them all connected to your network do you really want to keep running old, no longer secure software? Do you want to support updating them yourself?

It's hard to imagine the day when you can't get an easy update for x86 Linux free off the internet.

Re: Why would anyone care for x86 unless they are

[KGIII]

Err... Doesn't Flash run on non-x86 devices too? I know that there's at least Flash for Android and most Androids are not x86 based AFAIK. Am I missing something obvious?

Re: Why would anyone care for x86 unless they are

[morgauxo]

There is Flash for Android although it is no longer supported and hasn't been updated in a few years. I'm not sure if it can even be installed in current Android versions or not. I don't think that it can. I know it wouldn't install on my 'latest' phone which is actually from 2013!

I'm pretty sure that outdated, discontinued Android apk is the only commonly available Flash support for ARM. As closed source software it's not like you are going to port it over to Rasbian or any other distro/OS either.

There may be some single purpose ARM devices out there like internet TVs or something. Those will be specifically built for that device and hidden away inside of a ROM chip. It's not like you are going to copy it out and run it on your Raspi.

Re: Why would anyone care for x86 unless they are

[KGIII]

Thanks for explaining. I'm actually kind of surprised that there hasn't been an open-source implementation - at least an "interpreter" (as a player) as the mechanisms should be, by now, fairly well understood. I'd actually not be surprised to see Flash opened as it is abandoned. I'm not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

Oh, I think you mean "riddance" in your original post. As in, "Good riddance!" I'm not really a grammar Nazi, as I am far from perfect, and I could be mistaken but (I think) that's probably what you meant. Thus, I don't pay much attention to the grammar, so long as I am able to parse it, but that spelling (in particular) stood out. Unlike, I think, most - I'm mentioning it with good intentions and not as a means to ridicule or the likes. My own spelling and grammar are poor enough to the point where I'm simply unqualified to ridicule anyone. ;-) Were it not for spell-check, I'd look like a complete idiot, more so than I currently do.

Re: Why would anyone care for x86 unless they are

[morgauxo]

There is an open source Flash implementation but it is very incomplete. My understanding is that it can be used to view some subset of Flash videos and not much else.

Re: Why would anyone care for x86 unless they are

[KGIII]

Hmm... Thanks again! I'll have to take a look at it. I only know of pepper, regular Flash, and the various ones like you mentioned above such as the one for Android. Though Pepper isn't really open-source or anything. sudo apt-get install pepperflashplugin-nonfree I use it because I use Opera, it works. Like you (I think), I'm none-too-fond of Flash. Oh, I like it as a concept - though I'd prefer it to be open. I just dislike the implementation, security aspects, and that it was used in so many inappropriate areas.

I'll have to look into the open version - if for no other reason than because I'm getting back into coding (I've been retired since 2008 and haven't really even done any of my own coding since around 1998 or so). Sure, I've done some small projects here and there but nothing of any note. I've contributed to a few projects but that was in PHP. I've done some Perl in that time (not in a while). I've done a little JavaScript and even edited/fixed some Java and put it back into its .jar format but nothing major, of value really, or even all that educational.

I don't actually have many/any real projects in mind (except a couple for SBCs, one of which is being worked on as mentioned somewhere in this thread) but I'm getting older and it's time to make sure that I'm keeping my brain active, learning new things, and maintaining my knowledge. I'm 58 now and, as odd as it sounds, I swear it's almost as if I can feel my brain becoming more plasticized. Things fade, I sometimes forget things that I should easily remember, and it gets more difficult to learn new things. I don't like that, I don't like that at all.

So, one of my steps started a couple of years ago. I used to be a Unix user. I've kept Linux installed on a partition for years but seldom booted to it - as I had moved to Windows. I've actually won (multiple times and for multiple subjects) the Microsoft MVP Award and participated in that program for years. But I'd reached the point where I was a passive consumer and felt like there was nothing for me to learn - that I'd make the effort to learn.

At that point, I started to play with various distros and examining which features I liked most and what would suit my needs best. Except, I still didn't boot to Linux. Sure, I'd even go so far as to start it up in a VM but that's nothing. Never being one to shirk a stupid idea, I simply wiped all my hard drives (that's a whole lot of them) and started installing various Linux distros on them - I think I even did a few with Minix and a couple of BSDs. I also used them all in VMs - I do mean all of them. I've tried more Linux distros than most - I did pretty much every single one listed at DistroWatch and a whole bunch that aren't there. I even went so far as to stop showering and grow a graybeard neckbeard! (Only kidding, except for the beard part and I've "always" had that.)

It was like I was a mad scientist, gone even more horribly wrong, and a whole lot of fun. The end result being that I'd completely swapped OSes, had a lot of new stuff to learn, and simply go around my problem of never using the Linux partition by deleting the Windows partition. I now use Linux pretty much exclusively and have for quite a while now. (I do have a Windows phone - I was sick of Android and don't wish to invest myself in the iDevice ecosystem.) It was not some moral crusade or anything - I'm not anti-closed source. I think the world has room for both and that people should be able to choose closed source if they want and I'm not a big fan of forcing anyone to do anything - and that includes forcing folks to open their source.

So, I ended up just using Linux (as I said) and I've been doing so ever since. Now, to keep going, I'm relearning my programming skills and will be learning a couple of new languages - I hope. I'm relearning my C. I'm going to pick up C++ though I've already got some familiarity. The programmers that I'd hired eventually converted my code base to C++ (a long time ago in Internet Years, around that same 1998