$15 64-bit ARM board. - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: hamster_nz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2015, 10:56:49 am
content: I just took a punt on this:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pine64/pine-a64-first-15-64-bit-single-board-super-computThe PINE64 CPU is a quad-core ARM A53 64-bit processor that runs at 1.2GHz.The GPU on the PINE A64 is a dual-core MALI-400 MP2 and runs at 500MHz, capable of 1.1 Gpixel/s throughput. This means the graphics capabilities are slightly higher than the original X-Box's level of performance.PINE A64 board is powered by the latest 64-bit quad core ARM A53 CPU and delivers up to 20-30% better performance than other 32 bit open source counterparts.

author: krivx
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: December 10, 2015, 11:38:08 am
content: What's the advantage of the 64 bit? I gather these boards aren't accessing huge amounts of memory.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2015, 03:18:28 am
content: Nice,@krivx This is not a microcontroller, so yeah 64bits will help to run Ubuntu, Android, etc. Plus streaming 4K displays at 30 Hz.Plus the 64 bit cores from ARM are more power efficient than the 32 bit ones.1.2GHz is not ground breaking even with 4 Cores but the price/cycle/power looks pretty awesome!GPU is a bit anemic with just 2 cores, even at 500MHz frequency but at that price it's ok for most 2d apps.The 512KB would be plenty for Ubuntu, but I think the 1GB would be the ideal amount of memory for this device. 2GB is nice but not sure it's needed.No mention on the memory frequency or memory tech (DDR3? DDR4? probably DDR3, actually I just saw it in one of the pictures, it's DDR3).The price is amazing at $19 for the 1GB version with 1Gigabit Ethernet requiring just 3.5 Watts (half Amp at 5 Volts)!Don't need it, have no time to use it, but oh boy am I tempted to throw a $20 note on it.And that didn't take long. $7 shipping so $26 total, March delivery so hopefully I have time for it then.

author: mtdoc
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 11, 2015, 04:02:13 am
content: This does look good. I'm looking for a new platform for my home RE system monitoring setup - low power consumption is a must. For $26 shipped I think I'll give it a spin.

author: FrankenPC
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: December 12, 2015, 04:27:46 am
content: For $19 for the board with 1GB seems like a pretty good price point. That's a hell of a lot of capability for the money.But, when they show all the addons like the touch screen, the battery, WiFi/Bluetooth, etc etc etc, I can't help but think about this:http://www.amazon.com/Fire-Display-Wi-Fi-GB-Special/dp/B00TSUGXKE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1449893395&sr=8-1&keywords=fire+tabletHow can you beat that? That much hardware for $50? I'm sure it can be rooted and upgraded to Ubuntu in the near future. It only has 1GB RAM. And I don't know if the processor is 32 or 64. Can't tell. But look at all the accessories. It's just so damn cheap.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2015, 07:26:04 am
content: when its finished, put it on ebay, i'll probably buy it (if i find a use) even for double or triple the price..

author: andersm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2015, 12:29:50 pm
content: Quote from: krivx on December 10, 2015, 11:38:08 amARM's 64-bit architecture is a full redesign (eg. 31 GPRs, three-operand instructions), and offers more performance per clock than the 32-bit one. That said, the Cortex-A53 is not a speed demon core, and is often used as the low-power companion to the A57 in mobile SoCs.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2015, 08:29:21 pm
content: To put some perspective, I just followed a TI advert that showed up here on the EEVblog banner about their A57 Sitara processor.The eval kit (which has a ton of stuff, granted) is $599http://www.ti.com/tool/tmdxevm5728This is for a dual core ARM, but it does have a quad core PRU, extra cortex-m4 for floating point,DSP, etc, so yeah it's probably worth it. But the chip itself costs $75 in 1K quantities.Secondly, you can also get a Jetson TX1 with eight cores big.LITTLE 4 of them are the ones offered here ( A57) for the high performance, the others are A53 for low power. The eval kit with the platform is about $500 as well, but it does have an Nvidia Maxwell based GPU with 256 cores fully CUDA capable and does the full OpenGL 4.4 (and 4.5 as well) which spanks the Mali 400 dual core.Just the TX1 module without the base platform goes for $299 in 1K purchases (so you can't buy just one).Granted the TX1 offers a ton of other goodies, SATA, PCIE, USB3.0, etc. with the CPUs running at 1.9GHz memory (DDR4) at 1.6GHz and the GPU at least at 1GHz.Anyways, I didn't look too deep into other quad cores A57 based dev kits, but $19? it's a no brainer. True I could get a consumer product that can be hacked, but it will always have some hidden features that are not documented, plus no GPIOs unless you can find them.For example the Nvidia Shield TV (TX1) was on sale for Cyber Monday for $150, but it's not as flexible as the pricier Jetson TX1 and you have to live with the design at hand and power consumptions of 10w , not much but 2.5w -3.5w of this $20 kit makes it more interesting to me.

author: andersm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 12, 2015, 09:10:12 pm
content: On96boardsthere's a number of boards with similar specs to the PINE64, going for about $100. Personally I'm holding out for AMD'sHuskyboard, since it's got proper expansion sockets.

author: Mechatrommer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2015, 02:49:04 am
content: Quote from: andersm on December 12, 2015, 09:10:12 pmthe HiKey Board (CircuitCo) 8 cored 1.2GHz @ 2G memory @ 2" x 3.5" compact dimension looks interesting... but its $160 in ebay cough cough... i wonder if we can just program it in bare metal and how its development environment?...

author: Marco
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2015, 02:51:15 am
content: Cheap ECC boards will be nice for NAS.

author: andersm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2015, 03:38:25 am
content: Quote from: Mechatrommer on December 13, 2015, 02:49:04 amIt's a standard ARM core, and has standard ARM JTAG, so any bare-metal toolchain that supports the A53 should theorethically do. There were somerelated threadson the 96boards forums, I suggest starting there.

author: amyk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2015, 05:17:50 pm
content: For whatever reason they seem to want to make it look like they designed the SoC and everything, when it's probably going to be the standard AllWinner A64 reference design... which others are using too:https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/we-work-on-a64-olinuxino-the-first-open-source-hardware-64-bit-development-board/

author: andersm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2015, 05:34:32 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on December 13, 2015, 05:17:50 pmIt's in the FAQ:Quote

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2015, 06:50:26 pm
content: Quote from: amyk on December 13, 2015, 05:17:50 pmThat article refers to an A53, lower performance but also lower power than the A57 offered in this board.Edit: 2nd correction, it's an A53, for some reason I thought they were A57s, maybe because of the TX1 and got confused.But you are right, they probably based it in an existing SoC. If the A53 is $5 the A57 is probably not a lot more.As for the implementation of the board they could follow the endless schematics out there to bring those signals out, or just the reference design.I have no problem with it as long as it performs. Didn't see a reference to the Olimex board cost in there nor when it will be available. I don't see a Cortex A15 offering on their products.Edit: correction, reading the article it does show the price of 64 Euros, and reading the comments it seems to be delayed.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 13, 2015, 07:12:56 pm
content: And you are right, it's an AllWinner A53:Details on the Pine64 hardware here:http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Main_Page

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 15, 2015, 06:36:06 am
content: So I did found a perfect fit for a project.I have the Seek Thermal SDK for Android this low power board would be ideal for that since I already have the camera.

author: eas
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 11, 2016, 09:11:18 pm
content: Quote from: miguelvp on December 13, 2015, 07:12:56 pmIt's a Allwinner A64 SoC, which includes 4x ARM A53 64-bit cores.In my initial research, it looked like it was based on yet another un-balanced, marketing driven, chip for Android tablets. On further examination, I was right, but it's not as bad as I feared.It actually has on-die gigabit ethernet MAC and solid-state storage interfaces. Its not clear how wide the internal busses are, but at least network and storage IO (probably) isn't through a single USB2 interface.Memory bandwidth takes a hit from a 32-bit wide bus. DDR3-1333 should provide 5.3GB/s, which is less than the ~6GB/s available the first AMD Athlon64x2 dual core x86_64 CPUs over a decade ago.

author: apelly
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: January 11, 2016, 11:58:57 pm
content: Geek central; I just saw this crop on the AuckLUG mailing list.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 16, 2016, 07:28:54 pm
content: They seem to be doing fine so far, latest update shows it running Android 5.1.1 build with Kodi and Video on the 1GB board:Still some bugs here and there but a lot of progress, I'm excitedUpdate link:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pine64/pine-a64-first-15-64-bit-single-board-super-comput/posts/1467346Edit: I wished they added some animation in the boot screen to know it's not stuck.

author: mojoe
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: January 17, 2016, 05:36:50 am
content: I know this reply is late, but there is active development for this tablet on XDA:http://forum.xda-developers.com/amazon-fireI picked up two of these tablets when they were $35 over Thanksgiving weekend. Both have been flashed with CM12. Eventually, I'll use them to interface to some other projects via USB-OTG, Bluetooth or WiFi. If I blow them up, not much will be lost.Quote from: FrankenPC on December 12, 2015, 04:27:46 am

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 24, 2016, 08:57:16 pm
content: Well it got founded36,781 backers pledged $1,731,465Their goal was $31,416And they seem to be on track to do the early bird deliveries:https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pine64/pine-a64-first-15-64-bit-single-board-super-comput/posts/1472578I'm not one of those so I'll have to wait until sometime in March.

author: rickselectricalprojects
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 08:27:05 am
content: Seems good. A little to good for the price IMO.

author: miguelvp
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: January 31, 2016, 08:31:37 am
content: Quote from: rickselectricalprojects on January 31, 2016, 08:27:05 amThe SoC is just $5 probably cheaper on higher quantities. It's an Allwinner A64 SoChttp://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Main_Page