New kid on the block - meet OLinuXino

Thanks, 512MB SDRAM - I gladly trade the advantage of the Broadcom SoC's GPU for that.  The GPIO header looks appealing.

This could be an interesting two-horse race ... which will appear ex-stock at Farnell first, the Raspberry Pi or the Olinuxino?

It needs to be mentioned (just in case someone hasn't spotted it and is raising their expectations too high) that the OLinuXino that everyone is talking about, the one with Ethernet, is not going to be priced at 30 Euro at all, but at 45 Euro.  Olimex's price list is here:  http://www.olimex.com/dev/pricelist.html

Summary:

• iMX233-OLinuXino-Mini  - 29.95 Euro - 1 x USB only
• iMX233-OLinuXino-Maxi - 44.95 Euro -  2 x USB + Ethernet

The corresponding prices in US$ (since Raspberry Pi is quoted in US$) are US$39.31 and US$58.99 at today's exchange rate.  And for us Brits, that's UKP 24.42 and UKP 36.65 .

Wow, brilliant!

And yes, I have noticed the total absence of Allwinner datasheets in any of the languages I speak, which doesn't include Chinese.

Nice, thanks!  That's a very interesting addition to the ranks of ARM development boards.

Whether it's "expensive" or not depends on one's requirements of course.  If the requirement is to have 4 networked cores then the ODROID-X board is cheaper than a cluster of 4 Raspberry Pi Model B, and far more powerful.  Horses for courses, as usual.   Grrr at Ethernet MAC not being on the SoC, but I like everything else about it.

In addition to Pandaboard as mentioned in BarryK's article, there's also the very similar Snowball in that product space, based on ST-Ericsson's equivalent high-end ARM applications processor, the Nova A9500.  Some links:

• Community site for Snowball -- http://www.igloocommunity.org/
• Snowball manufacturer site, brochure -- http://www.calao-systems.com/file/SKY-S9500-ULP-XXX/SKY-S9500-ULP-CXX%20Flyer%20V1.3.pdf
• Developer resources for ST-Ericsson Nova A9500 -- http://www.malideveloper.com/developer-resources/development-boards/st-ericsson-nova-snowball-low-cost-development-board.php
• Farnell product page -- http://uk.farnell.com/st-ericsson/dk9500sno10-sta/sbc-snowball-cortex-a9-mali400/dp/2075724

I'm not sure that Snowball is going anywhere at that price though -- Farnell quote it at £181.93 -- but at least they're available ex-stock!

The very similar Pandaboard will allegedly arrive in Farnell stock in early August, priced at a more reasonable £125.73 -- http://uk.farnell.com/circuitco/pandaboard-es/pandaboard-es-omap4460-arm-cortex/dp/2098930?Ntt=Pandaboard

The ODROID-X could wipe the floor with them both though, if it becomes widely available at US$129.  I'm looking forward to it!

Morgaine.

Ping Element 14 / Farnell purchasing department ... you could put significant markup on ODROID-X's US$129 !!   http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G133999328931

John Beetem wrote:

 

I just read about ODROID-X (apparently sponsored by Samsung) in this RasPi forum thread: Alternative if you want to spend a lot more.  At US$129 plus shipping from South Korea, it's a lot more expensive than RasPi or OLinuXino, but has a Samsung Exynos4412 Cortex-A9 Quad Core 1.4Ghz with 1MB L2 cache, Mali 400 Quad Core GPU, 1 GB LP-DDR2 DRAM, and HDMI.  Here's the ODROID-X web site: http://www.hardkernel.com. ODROID-X has 6 high-speed USB ports, but 10/100 Ethernet is done over USB like RasPi.  With luck, the Exynos4412 has a smarter USB controller.

Geek eye candy!

ODROID HardKernel has some nice photos of automated SMT assembly of the ODROID-X at http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/main.php.  They started shipping 30 July 2012.

Edit: Ubuntu is now running on ODROID-X: http://com.odroid.com/sigong/blog/blog_list.php?bid=131

John Beetem wrote:

 

I just read about ODROID-X (apparently sponsored by Samsung) in this RasPi forum thread: Alternative if you want to spend a lot more.  At US$129 plus shipping from South Korea, it's a lot more expensive than RasPi or OLinuXino, but has a Samsung Exynos4412 Cortex-A9 Quad Core 1.4GHz with 1MB L2 cache, Mali 400 Quad Core GPU, 1 GB LP-DDR2 DRAM, and HDMI.  Here's the ODROID-X web site: http://www.hardkernel.com.

 

OS is Android/Linux, but it's supposed to be open source so someone could port GNU/Linux.  Documentation seems better than RasPi, but the SoC manual (currently for the Exynos4410) mostly documents peripherals, like RasPi's Broadcom BCM2835 document.

 

May the most open system win!

Hardkernel has announced some tiny versions of the ODROID-X called the ODROID-U (US$69) and ODROID-U2 (US$89).  Circuit board is 48x52 mm and comes with a "case" that's really a heat sink.  Both boards use the Samsung Exynos4412 Cortex-A9 Quad Core running at 1.4GHz (-U) or 1.7 GHz (-U2).  Looks like first delivery in Jan-Feb 2013.  SoC user documentation is now posted, but leaves out USB and (of course) Mali-400 GPU.

Horses for courses.  Each device has its own area of application, and unless two devices are identical clones differing only in price, it's not reasonable to say that the higher priced one has no market.  It's likely to have some feature that the cheaper one lacks, and someone will want that feature.

In the case of Raspberry Pi versus Olimex, I've not yet tested an OLinuXino, but I've tested a Pi and one thing is abundantly clear:  the Pi is very badly designed and some parts of it are completely broken, in particular the USB handling of RF mice on a self-powered hub.  I've never come across any kind of Linux board or computer with disastrously broken USB handling before, and it would be quite silly to expect the OLinuXino to be similarly broken or worse.

Is a few pounds more worth paying for a product that works?  In my books that's a totally stupid question, because a non-working product is largely worthless.  I won't be buying any more Pi boards until such tier #1 problems are fixed, but I am certainly in the market for small and cheap Linux boards and therefore Olimex is of interest to me.

On top of that, Olimex are responsive to problem reports and don't have a habit of banning you for insufficient praise.  That's worth a lot.  They are an engineering outfit, not a hype machine.  I like that.

Morgaine.