Odroid-U3: A quad-core 1.7GHz ARM single-board computer for $59

Re:Odroid-U3: A quad-core 1.7GHz ARM single-board computer f... by joezydeco on Wednesday April 23, 2014 @09:57AM (#7633960)

You'll need a lot of other stuff to make ARM usable...Everyone who's serious about ARM is waiting for 64 bit to become available

Huh? What does the processor core have to do with any of these details? There are plenty of usable ARM SoCs out there in real products doing real work. Running a media center shouldn't be the criteria for a 'usable' system.

I'd be more scared about the amount of developer documentation available for the Exynos, or what Samsung's roadmap is for the chip. If you want to play with one, cool. But would you design a 10-year product with it?

Go with a Freescale iMX board if you want a usable 32-bit ARM Cortex-A8/A9 with decent documentation, available Linux drivers, and people that can help online. You will never get mainline kernel for devices like these, so don't bother asking. But Freescale at least has a git repository available and it's well maintained.

My personal favorites are the SABRE Lite boards from Boundary Devices and the Wandboard:

http://boundarydevices.com/products/sabre-lite-imx6-sbc/

http://www.wandboard.org/

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Re:Odroid-U3: A quad-core 1.7GHz ARM single-board computer f... by eldondev on Wednesday April 23, 2014 @10:33AM (#7634155)

Is designing 10-year products really a thing any more? I can't think of any device that I use practically that is that old. I think the only places that you will want 10-year products anymore are space, implant, and undersea/underground/tracking applications. I'm not saying it is a good thing, as it leads to this "disposable tech" mindset, but it seems like that may be the reality of it. OTOH +1 wandboard and iMX in general. I wish the Novena were a little less expensive, but I can't blame bunnie for wanting to err on the side of making quality hackable goods.

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Re:Odroid-U3: A quad-core 1.7GHz ARM single-board computer f... by pjc50 on Wednesday April 23, 2014 @11:04AM (#7634362)

Everything that isn't consumer electronics has longer lifecycles. B2B customers aren't as flexible: it's not a question of throwing out your smartphone every 2 years and buying a new one, as soon as your action is multiplied across 1000+ devices everything takes much longer. You might spend an entire year doing the national rollout, and once you've done that you don't want to do it again if at all possible.

If there's any kind of qualification, tracking, auditing, or compliance issue everything will take much longer again.

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Re:Odroid-U3: A quad-core 1.7GHz ARM single-board computer f... by eldondev on Thursday April 24, 2014 @02:19PM (#7641934)

I'm not sure this is true. I see plenty of products that have 1k+ rollouts more frequently. Maybe some businesses aren't sophisticated enough to do that, but those are the large, slow businesses of the herd that will get picked off by faster movers. That's why healthcare, defense & education are popular industries to enter right now, because many of the entrenched players can't keep up with the game. There is _no_ intrinsic reason that b2b should be different from b2c. I bet the old guard's lobbyists and capital can only last for so long.

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Re:Odroid-U3: A quad-core 1.7GHz ARM single-board computer f... by fnordfnordfnord on Wednesday April 23, 2014 @11:03AM (#7634354)

Yes. Not everything is a consumer appliance. Even some consumer appliances need to last ten years (lawn sprinkler controller, home automation, factory automation, etc). While those products may not actually be produced for ten years without an update, they will have to be supported in a lot of cases.

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Re:Odroid-U3: A quad-core 1.7GHz ARM single-board computer f... by joezydeco on Wednesday April 23, 2014 @01:54PM (#7635653)

It's better than the opposite, which is designing to some random processor with completely opaque information about it. No datasheets or TRMs, no idea of production schedules, no idea of lifespan.

And I'd classify Samsung Exynos and the Broadcom BCM2835 in Raspberry Pi in that group.

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Re:Odroid-U3: A quad-core 1.7GHz ARM single-board computer f... by eldondev on Thursday April 24, 2014 @02:17PM (#7641917)

Well, I hate the opaque bits of both those, but that doesn't mean an upgradable board can't be designed around the specs they implement, and those chips are just the commodities that populate them. Write your code for ARM, make a good pin-compatible interface that can allow for replacement with other components if necessary.

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Re:Odroid-U3: A quad-core 1.7GHz ARM single-board computer f... by ArkyBeagle on Thursday April 24, 2014 @02:12AM (#7638732)

It is absolutely a thing, but it's a very quiet thing. There's an awful lot out there that could use the boost in CPU, I/O and RAM in this form factor but the fruit-fly lifespan of these things scares people. I'm fighting that battle right now.

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