Re:Intel N100 Radxa X4 First Thoughts
by dark-star on Monday July 29, 2024 @03:54AM
(#41098655)
Well, it's a very standardized platform that is readily available and guaranteed to be available for some time.
This is why some hardware projects reply on it and the intricacies of its GPIO timing.
I agree that if you want a small computer to run your home NAS on, then sure, there might be better alternatives.
But if you want to (say) plug one into your old Amiga (with a PiStorm) so that it emulates the CPU's bus timings and runs as an incredibly fast M68000 CPU, there's no way around the RPi (unless you want to do a lot of hardware development yourself... if that's even possible since on most of these Chinesium clones, the GPIO is hidden behind a ton of bridges, busses and/or MCUs which would kill the latency in those tightly constrained use-cases)
I assume nobody would bother porting the hardware-related code to the "Chinesium Clone of the Week" every few months
This is why some hardware projects reply on it and the intricacies of its GPIO timing.
I agree that if you want a small computer to run your home NAS on, then sure, there might be better alternatives.
But if you want to (say) plug one into your old Amiga (with a PiStorm) so that it emulates the CPU's bus timings and runs as an incredibly fast M68000 CPU, there's no way around the RPi (unless you want to do a lot of hardware development yourself... if that's even possible since on most of these Chinesium clones, the GPIO is hidden behind a ton of bridges, busses and/or MCUs which would kill the latency in those tightly constrained use-cases)
I assume nobody would bother porting the hardware-related code to the "Chinesium Clone of the Week" every few months