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.

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.

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.

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.