Is there a generic name for this kind of product? I figure I’ll be interested in these at some point in the future, at which point I will have long since forgotten the list but will be able to google them up given the right terminology. Other than “raspberry pi alternative” which would inevitably center the results around how they relate to the rpi rather than the products themselves.
Do those RPi-compatible things by now come with PCIe lanes? Back in the days I decided against each and every one of them on that basis alone and went with a NanoPC-T4, a fast SSD really makes a difference in those types of devices, SD cards just don’t cut it. Can’t achieve full speed at PCIe2.1x4 but hey I’m not going to complain about 2GiB/s when the board cost as much as the SSD.
And there were indeed some madlads who got dedicated GPUs running with the thing. The onboard GPU definitely isn’t too bad (and the driver situation should be sane by now), and the VPU is a beast, decoding 4k@60Hz. (The RK3399 SoC was designed for set-top boxes so that stuff is right up its alley).
Not slots in the big comp sense but the tech is there and it’s just started to get used for storage devices (e.g. NVMe M.2 ports and built in eMMC modules). Also PCIe-backed network ports (2.5Gb)
If you fancy taking a look then three good SBCs I’d support are:
Rock Pi 4 - best tech support with their own Linux builds
Orange Pi 5
Banana Pi M7 - best for community of weirdos
Always worth checking they get good support (wiki, docs, forums) with recent OS builds. For example Orange Pi isn’t great at providing builds for it’s boards. Banana Pi is great for giving users the chance to ship their builds to others so the Wiki is crammed with newish builds. Rock SBCs have official OS builds
Who’s the competition at this point? We need a competitor now.
Is there a generic name for this kind of product? I figure I’ll be interested in these at some point in the future, at which point I will have long since forgotten the list but will be able to google them up given the right terminology. Other than “raspberry pi alternative” which would inevitably center the results around how they relate to the rpi rather than the products themselves.
Single board computer or SBC for short.
Yes, indeed, there is!! It’s called a Single-Board Computer (SBC).
Do those RPi-compatible things by now come with PCIe lanes? Back in the days I decided against each and every one of them on that basis alone and went with a NanoPC-T4, a fast SSD really makes a difference in those types of devices, SD cards just don’t cut it. Can’t achieve full speed at PCIe2.1x4 but hey I’m not going to complain about 2GiB/s when the board cost as much as the SSD.
And there were indeed some madlads who got dedicated GPUs running with the thing. The onboard GPU definitely isn’t too bad (and the driver situation should be sane by now), and the VPU is a beast, decoding 4k@60Hz. (The RK3399 SoC was designed for set-top boxes so that stuff is right up its alley).
Not slots in the big comp sense but the tech is there and it’s just started to get used for storage devices (e.g. NVMe M.2 ports and built in eMMC modules). Also PCIe-backed network ports (2.5Gb)
If you fancy taking a look then three good SBCs I’d support are:
Always worth checking they get good support (wiki, docs, forums) with recent OS builds. For example Orange Pi isn’t great at providing builds for it’s boards. Banana Pi is great for giving users the chance to ship their builds to others so the Wiki is crammed with newish builds. Rock SBCs have official OS builds
I am coming across a company called Libre Computer (Le Potato), or those comparable too?
Yep - add that to the list!
There is PINE64 if you’re looking for a SBC.
Le Potato?
Someone already said Pine64, but Odroid/HardKernel is another one.