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Comment by SloopJon | Hacker News Reader

Can't remember whether I've seen this before. A few details after reading through some of the docs:

  * powered by Allwinner R8 (ARM Cortex-A8) with some proprietary bits
  * Debian-based CHIP O/S preinstalled on 4 GB flash
  * one micro USB port for power (supports USB OTG if powered by battery)
  * power connector for battery
  * one USB 2.0 port
  * one TRRS port for audio and composite video
  * built-in WiFi and Bluetooth
  * VGA adapter available for $10
  * HDMI adapter available for $15 (no audio)
  * case available for $2

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Beware of Allwinner.

It's not supporting open source community (does not provide OS api for every part of chips) - so either you use their blobs or don't have access to everything hw is able to.

And AFAIK they're heavy GPL violator: https://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations

Next Thing Co is specifically contracting the best company out there to do Linux upstreaming (Free Electrons) of the SoC and board: http://free-electrons.com/blog/free-electrons-chip-nextthing...

I thought they joined the linux foundation?

That's wild. The computer is cheaper than the adapters.

Freebie marketing, a.k.a. razor and blades business model? [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebie_marketing

No, because clearly the CHIP is usable without adapters, and provides the main functionality.

Yes,

because on every image on main page (row with three possible use scenarios) it's shown as connected to a display.

This IS freebie marketing.

The bare board has a composite video output.

This is surprisingly common. Mechanical parts (HDMI's tiny pins in a high-precision injection moulded body) are expensive, while it's now very cheap to just stick some chips on a board.

> Mechanical parts (HDMI's tiny pins in a high-precision injection moulded body) are expensive

Not at all. Complete brand-name HDMI connector assembly costs 29 cents in 10K quantity. [1]

[1] http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Amphenol-FCI/10029449-11...

Yeah. But I wonder if this includes the 15 cent royalty for HDMI (http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/terms.aspx) or the royalty for HDCP?

No it doesn't

That almost reminds me of Apple.

Anyone know what those proprietary bits are? I remember reading something a while back claiming these were more open than the RaspberryPi, but I can't remember or find the basis for those claims.

In the CHIP's case, I don't know, but AllWinner had a tendency to build drivers into the Linux kernel without providing source and use modified versions of various libraries while claiming to have developed them internally.

The Raspberry Pi machines use a family of Broadcom chips. These include some kind of general-purpose processor built into the GPU (sometimes called the VC4 or VPU). During operation, it runs an RTOS that handles OpenGL ES calls, translating them to QPU instructions. During boot, it's the first thing brought up; it initializes the RAM, loads the next level bootloader, then starts the ARM CPU. There's an open-source video driver that does the OpenGL work (and I think actually supports OpenGL, not just the ES variant). There's work being done on making a bootloader replacement, but it's in the fairly early stages (https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware).

Maybe someone who knows about the CHIP itself will chime in with more detail on how it compares.

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