BeagleBoard is nice, but the PandaBoard is better (dual Cortex-A9 at 1GHz) | Hacker News Reader

BeagleBoard is nice, but the PandaBoard is better (dual Cortex-A9 at 1GHz)

thinq.co.uk

39 pointspietrofmaggi26 comments

Well, I wonder if it would be suitable as some kind of low-power all-in-one home server (file sharing, irc in screen, not much more), network router and jukebox and movie player. In theory, specs are ok for that purpose, but from the remark "if you need more than 1GB, you're probably doing it wrong", it seems that, hm, I'd be doing it wrong, because 1GB isn't exactly a lot of memory and it'd be wise to put there more.

(And of course, USB might not be the ideal bus to connect a lot of disk space.)

1GB is 1GB of RAM. It doesn't seem to have onboard ROM, but SD slot surely will support up to 32GB. And it has 10/100 Ethernet besides USB, though latter is probably suitable enough to "connect a lot of disk space".

I know, but 1GB of RAM isn't that lot if I want at least reasonably fast file sharing (especially if the primary storage would be the harddisks via USB), run some network services and even some desktops apps via networked X11, which is roughly what I want (so I'm asking if this is the 'doing it wrong' case).

I would guess you are overestimating the memory footprint of your applications (unless you are planning on running Eclipse/Firefox/etc.) on the box.

USB2.0 will push 480Mb/sec which is probably sufficient for streaming content.

My wireless router has 64MB of ram and is capable of running as a NAS device if you plug a USB enclosure into it.

Only time you would run into issues is if you were using something like ZFS that keeps an in memory ARC cache. If you want to run X11 apps, just get a linux computer.

Don't bother.

I got a Lenovo q150 for $200 and replaced the disk with the consumer intel 40gb sad for another $100. It is tiny, quiet, and consumes 17 watts.

The Q150 looks amazing (though $350-$399 from their website: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/landing_pages/ideacentre/2010/q150 - you can even mount on the VESA bracket)

Any idea how to get it in Australia? Lenovo's au site doesn't list it; and I guess there'd be power-supply (and maybe IP?) issues.

I got the one without HDMI (who cares, for a server?) which is a lot cheaper. Not sure what else it is missing. It was $210.

I got it from Amazon. Can you order from Amazon? This is what I got: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003SCI59K

EDIT: The one I have isn't an nvidia ION-based machine.

thanks! unfortunately it says as I feared: Lenovo IdeaCentre Q150 Desktop PC - Black (40813AU) cannot be shipped to the selected address. (BTW: most things are OK for us with Amazon.)

I have a few boring projects I'd like to try with something like this, any idea what it is likely to retail for?

A boring project would be to regut an old eeePC with it - x2 the CPU and x2 the RAM. Seems like about the only way I'm gonna get an ARM netbook. :-(

The board is 4"x4.5", but I couldn't find thickness, weight or power consumption. Some specs at bottom of: http://www.omappedia.org/wiki/PandaBoard_Early_Adopter_Progr...

Awesome. Looking forward to change on-the-road development platform from macbook to iPad + headless linux computer using a board like that.

It's hard to figure out what problems a board like this solves. If you want a cheap file server just buy an Atom board w/ a passive heat-sink. If you want to play around w/ "physical computing" and drive sensors, the Arduino ecosystem is much more open and vibrant.

And IIRC although the BeagleBoard had a nice GPU, it wasn't programmable without signing an NDA.

This is all very nice, unfortunately, I couldn't find any information, when a real human with a boring project will be able to buy one.

Only thing I got was that early adopters will get some at the end of October.

Usually, one gravitates toward something inferior shipping(BeagleBoard XM in this case) to something superior, which is unavailable.

Very nice, but quite powerful for "embedded"..

That looks like a very impressive piece of kit. I was planning to get a Hawkboard Lite for a project, but might wait for this to become available instead, if the price is decent. 8 times the RAM!

The different amount of RAM is the last think to notice here. The OMAP L138 on the hawkboard is an ARM9 (+ C674xDSP) at 375/456MHz, the OMAP4 of the pandaboard is a dual core Cortex-A9 at 1GHz.

They are completely in two different class. I too hope for the price.

The different amount of RAM is the last think to notice here.

That depends mainly on the use you have in mind. For my purposes, the Hawkboard's CPU would probably be fine. But yeah, the Pandaboard is quite a beast - twice the computing power of an iPad, if I'm not mistaken. (not counting the DSP)

More than twice I would say. iPad's A4 is a tweaked Cortex A8. Cortex A9 is out-of-order compared to in-order A8 and will likely be faster per clock.

The A9 is readily 25% faster per clock than the A8 for scalar integer operations. Scalar floating-point is 5-10x faster depending on the exact operations. Vector instructions are mostly the same or slower than A8 due to lack of the limited dual-issue present in A8. I have yet to run a proper benchmark to compare the difference in vector performance in realistic situations.

How can they give out free ones without coming up with a price? You cannot develop a commercial product without knowing how much it will cost.

I believe the purpose of dev kits is prototyping, where cost isn't that much of an issue.

They're asking you to invest your valuable ttime into developing a product when they cannot tell you how much it will cost.

What happens if you develop a product and then you find out that the hardware cost pushes it out of the price point for your target demograpic?

What I meant was that I don't think PandaBoard itself is meant to ship for your customers, but to allow you to prototype your ideas, and evaluate the hardware needs of your product, so that you can then build your own hardware which you ship to your customers.

And that's why I said that dev kit price is not that much of an issue, as it does not directly affect the price of the hardware you are going to ship.

edit: from their FAQ:

Is PandaBoard a end product or can I utilize it in my end product?

PandaBoard is a development platform! It is not an end product nor do we recommend directly using it in an end product. We encourage you to leverage open & low cost PandaBoard to explore, prototype your software & hardware design and venture into creating your own OMAP4430 based product.

And they'll give you one for free if your planned project is 'cool', enough.

PandaBoard Request Program:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dG5mcVNXSFF...

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