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.

[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.

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"

[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"

[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"

[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.

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.

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.

$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?

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.