Pine 64 - $15 64-bit Single Board Computer

[clamum]

Kickstarter page for the Pine64 single board computer

Pretty incredible stuff. It's a Raspberry Pi-like system (as far as I know; I'm not too familiar with those) and features a quad core 64-bit 1.2GHz CPU, 1+ GB RAM, better than original Xbox graphics, etc.

I think I'm gonna pick up the A64+ for $19. I'm not quite sure what I'll do with it yet, but it's so damn cheap and I'm interested in starting a project with one. If nothing else, I can hook a touchscreen up to it and have a pretty decent little Android system/tablet (I'd build a case or something for it).

 

[Red Squirrel]

wow that's pretty awesome. Great to see availability of stuff of this nature. Sometimes you want a "full blown computer" architecture to run something but don't want the full blown size, power usage and price. This is great for such projects. I still have a PI 2 I need to play with, I want to redesign my home automation system so it's a bit more modular than my current setup, which I did when I was still really new to this stuff.

 

[disappoint]

Quad core? So you have to write multi threaded code to take advantage of that or does the OS and IDE handle that for you?

 

[Red Squirrel]

If you want one program to use all of it then yeah you'd have to write it to be multithreaded, but that goes for anything really. The cores will still be used by the multiple programs/services etc running on the system.

 

[sdifox]

How is this gong to beat rpi2 with win10?

 

[Jimzz]

How is this gong to beat rpi2 with win10?

This should be able to run Windows as well.
Looks like it uses a Allwinner A64 chip which was designed for tablets. A53 based Arm core and Mali GPU. So drivers should already be out there for most platforms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allwinner_Technology#A_and_H-Series

 

[ultimatebob]

How is this gong to beat rpi2 with win10?

The Raspberry Pi 2 can't run the desktop version of Windows 10 since it has an ARM processor. So does this Pine 64 board, for that matter.

There is an embedded version of Windows 10 for the Raspberry Pi, but you need a copy of Visual Studio to interface with it. It's really meant for developing IoT projects.

 

[ultimatebob]

I like this board more than the CHIP, since it has built in HDMI (4K nonetheless!) and Ethernet. This thing would rock for something like digital signage.

 

[mnewsham]

Honestly I would be more interested in something closer to the $75 or $100 mark with A57 cores or even A72 cores and a larger MP6 or MP8 configuration on the GPU and 2GB of RAM.


My phone has 4x A53 @ 1.5GHz and 4x A57 @ 2.1GHz and the Mali T760MP8 with 4GB of RAM, obviously I wouldn't expect something this powerful for under $100. But I wouldn't mind something half as a powerful or a bit less.

 

[Jodell88]

Honestly I would be more interested in something closer to the $75 or $100 mark with A57 cores or even A72 cores and a larger MP6 or MP8 configuration on the GPU and 2GB of RAM.


My phone has 4x A53 @ 1.5GHz and 4x A57 @ 2.1GHz and the Mali T760MP8 with 4GB of RAM, obviously I wouldn't expect something this powerful for under $100. But I wouldn't mind something half as a powerful or a bit less.

There's the intel compute stick.

 

[mnewsham]

There's the intel compute stick.

Its broken in it's current form, the Bluetooth and wifi radio are on the same chip, so if one is running, the other one sucks. It can't handle both at the same time.

So if you have a bluetooth mouse or keyboard, and want to use wifi? Lol nope.

 

[ultimatebob]

Honestly I would be more interested in something closer to the $75 or $100 mark with A57 cores or even A72 cores and a larger MP6 or MP8 configuration on the GPU and 2GB of RAM.


My phone has 4x A53 @ 1.5GHz and 4x A57 @ 2.1GHz and the Mali T760MP8 with 4GB of RAM, obviously I wouldn't expect something this powerful for under $100. But I wouldn't mind something half as a powerful or a bit less.

This other Kickstarter project looks interesting for that price point:

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...-computer-for-everything?ref=category_popular

That one comes with a quad core Atom, 2 or 4 GB of memory, and built in storage for $80.

 

[mnewsham]

This other Kickstarter project looks interesting for that price point:

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...-computer-for-everything?ref=category_popular

That one comes with a quad core Atom, 2 or 4 GB of memory, and built in storage for $80.

Yeah that one looks interesting.

1.5Ghz Intel Atom quad-core, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, Ethernet, wifi/bluetooth, and the intel GPU has x265 decoding for 4k playback. and it comes with windows 10 preinstalled and licensed for $130.

Would make a decent media server.

 

[DaveSimmons]

If you look in the SFF forums, Kaido has bought and reviewed a bunch of the prebuilt SFF atom and celeron Windows mini-PCs, tablets and sticks that you can buy right now:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2447754

A KS for new ones is going to be much higher risk than a pi or prebuilt since even if they have a good design they will be new to working with Chinese manufacturers to produce it in quantity. There are many horror stories of not succeeding at that.

 

[ultimatebob]

I picked up one of the Pine 64+ boards with the additional WiFi module. I hope that it has decent software by the time it ships!

 

[ultimatebob]

Ya know, the mods should really move this post to general hardware.

 

[Crono]

This other Kickstarter project looks interesting for that price point:

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...-computer-for-everything?ref=category_popular

That one comes with a quad core Atom, 2 or 4 GB of memory, and built in storage for $80.

Nice, onboard Arduino. Would make a good carputer.

If you look in the SFF forums, Kaido has bought and reviewed a bunch of the prebuilt SFF atom and celeron Windows mini-PCs, tablets and sticks that you can buy right now:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2447754

A KS for new ones is going to be much higher risk than a pi or prebuilt since even if they have a good design they will be new to working with Chinese manufacturers to produce it in quantity. There are many horror stories of not succeeding at that.

How is Kaido not elite yet

 

[clamum]

I picked up one of the Pine 64+ boards with the additional WiFi module. I hope that it has decent software by the time it ships!

Yeah I filled out the survey they sent out a couple weeks ago to backers. I think mine's coming in March IIRC? Lookin forward to it but I still haven't thought about what I'm gonna do with it yet haha.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Curious if this would be powerful enough to run a plex server off of (transcoding). Might have to look into it.

 

[luv2liv]

is the pine64 compat with the IMG files for raspberry pi?
i got some pi zero from the local microcenter for $5 to do smart mirrors like this for family and friends: http://blog.dylanjpierce.com/raspberrypi/magicmirror/tutorial/2015/12/27/build-a-magic-mirror.html

then there are other rpi throughout the house for multiroom audio. sure saved tons of money instead of buying sonos 2 years ago

 

[ultimatebob]

is the pine64 compat with the IMG files for raspberry pi?
i got some pi zero from the local microcenter for $5 to do smart mirrors like this for family and friends: http://blog.dylanjpierce.com/raspberrypi/magicmirror/tutorial/2015/12/27/build-a-magic-mirror.html

then there are other rpi throughout the house for multiroom audio. sure saved tons of money instead of buying sonos 2 years ago

I don't think the image files are compatible.

You'll probably like the raspberry pi 3 when it comes out for that smart mirror project, since it will have built in WiFi.

 

[BUTCH1]

Might be a dumb question but why not just buy a $60 Chinese quad-core tablet with basically the same type of SOC performance but has a screen, USB and HDMI all ready to use.

 

[Jodell88]

Might be a dumb question but why not just buy a $60 Chinese quad-core tablet with basically the same type of SOC performance but has a screen, USB and HDMI all ready to use.

Limited functionality.

The Rasberry PI has a lot of utility, especially if you pair it up with an Arduino. Then the question becomes "what can't I do?"

 

[ultimatebob]

Might be a dumb question but why not just buy a $60 Chinese quad-core tablet with basically the same type of SOC performance but has a screen, USB and HDMI all ready to use.

That tablet probably doesn't have lot of I/O connections, or a big developer community behind it.

For an example, if you're looking for a step by step tutorial on how to turn your $60 Chinese tablet into a fully functioning web server with database backend, you're probably not going to easily find that.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I am curious how powerful it will be.

The Raspberry Pi 3 is out just now :
It has more calculation power because of 4 A53 cores clocked at 1.2GHz.
It can do 32 bit and 64 bit.
And it has onboard wifi and bluetooth.

http://uk.farnell.com/raspberrypi-boards#mk-pi-3-model-b
http://uk.farnell.com/buy-raspberry-pi

http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/02...b-board-adds-wifi-and-bluetooth-connectivity/


http://www.engadget.com/2016/02/29/raspberry-pi-3/