I really want to wait for the X15 but the price seems so crazy high compared to the upcoming Odroid C2 (http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=135&t=18683)…
The two mentioned platforms are not even remotely comparable. The X15 is a true embedded platform, where the ODROID pretends to be an embedded platform 40 pins + 7 . . . whatever that is supposed to mean.
Yep, I agree with William. It looks like this is a direct competitor to the Raspberry Pi 2, providing similar I/O capabilities. From what I can see, this processor is targeted at the TV set top box. I was surprised to see the performance of the board is just 2x that of the RasPi2. Considering this is a 2GHz Quad 64Bit core, I would have expected the performance to be at least 8x. Another disappointment is the USB2.0 ports and not USB3.0 ports. From what I recall, the CortexA53 is designed for low power, not high performance like the CortexA57.
Anyway, the x15 is way more versatile, given SATA, PCIe, USB3.0, Dual DSP, Dual CortexM4, Quad PRU, etc.
Regards,
John
Yep, I agree with William. It looks like this is a direct competitor to the Raspberry Pi 2, providing similar I/O capabilities. From what I can see, this processor is targeted at the TV set top box. I was surprised to see the performance of the board is just 2x that of the RasPi2. Considering this is a 2GHz Quad 64Bit core, I would have expected the performance to be at least 8x. Another disappointment is the USB2.0 ports and not USB3.0 ports. From what I recall, the CortexA53 is designed for low power, not high performance like the CortexA57.
ODROID’s have been marketed as an ARM replacement for intel systems for at least a couple years now. With the X2 or whatever it was supposedly outperforming intel core i3’s.
Anyway, I’ve no doubt they’re fast, but the ODRIOD is what I’d personally consider as a marketing ploy of sorts. Without any options, the base system is inexpensive. The problem is, in order to do anything with one of these boards, you have to at minimum opt in for two “options” that are actually requirements. #1 a power supply, and #2 an sdcard. Not to mention keyboard, mouse, monitor . . . blah bah bah.
Needless to say, I priced out one of these boards, and adding “options” to a point where I’d consider this as a “PC replacement”. At that time, the cost was more than $300, where you can buy an Intel entry level laptop.
Interesting to read all of your replies. I have heard about BeagleBone for a while but never researched it much, until yesterday as I am looking for an open source hardware platform for ethical reasons. I now think BeagleBone is an awesome project and community.
I now also understand how the BeagleBone pricing is fair. So I guess let me rephrase what I have said: I wish there would be something between the X15 and the Black edition, something akin to the Odroid C2 or XU4 in term of processing power and memory. The X15 is providing way more power and options than I need and the Black edition has too little memory for my needs (it would be to run an Ethereum node on Debian, comfortably).
Cheers,
The X15 is providing way more power and options than I need and the Black edition has too little memory for my needs (it would be to run an Ethereum node on Debian, comfortably).
The Wanderboard may be what you’re after. If I remember right, it has options up to 4 cores, and 2GB RAM. Also if I remember right, is priced on the high end at ~$140. It has SATA, but only 10/100 fast ethernet ( no GbE networking ).
I would also like to point out that every time I look into another platform by anyone other than beagleboard.org. The software community seems to be severely lacking by comparison.