7 ms·

$15 Pine A64 is trying to be a faster, 64-bit Raspberry Pi

76 points by astaroth360 11y ago

gbl08ma 11y ago
The problem, as always, lies in the fact this is powered by an AllWinner SoC. They are not famous for respecting the licenses of the software they use, namely the Linux kernel, and things like graphic acceleration are usually hard to get working (and I'm not talking about working without blobs, I mean they are hard to get to work at all). IMO this is the major downside to Raspberry Pi alternatives like the Orange Pi and this. The Raspberry Pi is more expensive, but at least there's more documentation available, an effort to merge kernel stuff upstream, and there are even people working in getting proper, blob-free Mesa drivers working: https://wiki.freedesktop.org/dri/VC4/ https://wiki.freedesktop.org/dri/VC4/ With that said, it's nice to see cheap ARM64 development platforms becoming available, even if they aren't as open/supported as they should be.
- soared 11y ago
  I agree. These companies keep trying to compete on price, but thats not the #1 differentiator. Rapsberry Pi is so successful because of the community support and therefore ease of use. I would be more convinced by a new board if they supplied extensive documentation and had a bunch of project guides ready to go.
- makomk 11y ago
  It's hard to get graphics working, but on the other hand you can actually boot upstream Linux in headless mode on the older Allwinner boards right now. Debian Jessie even officially supports the older ones whereas they're unlikely to ever add support for the Raspberry Pi because it requires a binary blob to even boot. Unfortunately, this is using Allwinner's new A64 chip and I don't think the unofficial sunxi community that provides open source support for their hardware has even looked at supporting that chip yet. Also, whether support materializes depends heavily on how much the companies that are selling boards based on it care about open source, and well...
- wycx 11y ago
  It is a little unfair to imply there is no effort to upstream support for Allwinner SoCs: https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort
- StillBored 11y ago
  I think you forget how closed the rPi was when it was initially released. Its only been pried open by the community over the past few years.
- mininodes 11y ago
  "With that said, it's nice to see cheap ARM64 development platforms becoming available, even if they aren't as open/supported as they should be." ^^This is the ultimate take-away, yes. Over the past year, 64-bit ARM development platforms have dropped in price from the $2999 Opteron A1100 to the $79 Dragonboard, and now to the $15 PINE64.
soared 11y ago
Yet another product I would buy from a store in a heartbeat, but instantly dismiss because of kickstarter. Granted, this one looks professional and it appears they've already set up manufacturing, but that really doesn't sway my opinion.
rdancer 11y ago
It's still vaporware now, unlike alternatives. What's the fascination about 64-bit architecture anyway, apart from it being a bigger (=> better) number?
- undersuit 11y ago
  It's an easy benchmark for the common consumer to look at and feel they have selected the right product. They don't have to know about the differences between A35, A53, A57, and A72 much less why those models are better than the A7, A9, A15, A17 processors. They don't need to know that Android isn't 64-bit. They don't need to know that the 1-3GB of memory in their phone isn't going to benefit from 64 bits. They do feel that no one is going to sell junk labeled as 64-bits, and I mean come on, why would the manufacturer display it's got 64-bits unless it was really important?
- theresistor 11y ago
  AArch64 is a dramatically nicer instruction set than AArch32.
  - rdancer 11y ago
    Care to elaborate?
  - ant6n 11y ago
    Is it actually? You loose almost all the conditional execution, lots of the interesting shifted addressing (I think Aarch64 allows shifts up to 3 only). You get more registers. Oh and no 16-bit instruction mode anymore.
  - renox 11y ago
    Nicer that's debatable: it's better suited to 'high performance' implementation but that doesn't necessarily make it nicer for users..
wyldfire 11y ago
> 512MB of RAM Well, ok, but unless I'm going to do some ridiculous amount of paging, I can't really take advantage of the 64-bit much. And in the meantime my 64-bit executables will suffer from larger pointers. The stuff that arm does well (IMO) is stuff that uses Python and other high-level languages. Those tend to port with little to no effort. Yet they use a ton of indirection so the size of those pointers really matters for memory consumption. $15 for an ARM board still seems like decent value, though.
- duaneb 11y ago
  If it has ECC, it might be a viable file server. Could definitely do with a gig of memory, though.
  - inyorgroove 11y ago
    There are three versions 512MB, 1GB and 2GB.
  - mmagin 11y ago
    It is my understanding that very few, if any ARM SOCs support ECC RAM.
- makomk 11y ago
  There's already a $15 Allwinner-based ARM board shipping now with similar specs, the Orange Pi PC. Quad-core (but only 32-bit) processor, 1GB of RAM, pretty much identical hardware video decode and GPU, 10/100 Ethernet, 3 USB ports, various expansion ports, thermal issues if you run at the advertised clock. (Why do I suspect the Pine has thermal issues? Take a look at the Kickstarter FAQ and how they carefully dodge questions on cooling.)
  - deepnet 11y ago
    Scheltema@MAKE suggests the Pine is differentiated by superior graphics: 4K HDMI, hardware H264 & H265 from a 2 core MALI400 GPU. http://makezine.com/2015/12/09/the-15-pine64-just-launched-on-kickstarter-and-its-already-funded/ http://makezine.com/2015/12/09/the-15-pine64-just-launched-o...
rasz_pl 11y ago
This is allwinner, notorious GPL offender. NO drivers for GPU, NO drivers for hardware video acceleration. In case you are wondering how serious are they(pine) about software support here is a hint: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linux-sunxi/Ze_UhiO00t8 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linux-sunxi/Ze_UhiO0... http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/491-need-help-on-pine-a64-15-64bit-quad-core-12ghz-single-board-computer/ http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/491-need-help-on-pi... TLDR: they plan to maybe send TWO boards to developers...
- voltagex_ 11y ago
  Argh. Thanks for that - you've saved me quite a bit of cash. If only I'd read a post like that before backing the Almond and the UDOO. A reasonable amount of my network at home is run by an aging and ailing Dreamplug - ARMv5 and remarkably sturdy. I'm still looking for a viable replacement. I was hoping to jump to a Pogoplug (same SoC, but USB3) but I (soft-)bricked it upgrading uBoot. The now-worthless Australian dollar makes most of these things much more expensive, but it really looks like my choices are expensive industrial boards with nebulous support arrangements or giving up on ARM entirely.
  - dreamcompiler 11y ago
    What's wrong with the Almond? Mine works fine.
    - voltagex_ 11y ago
      Works fine, company doesn't care about FOSS, relationship with the ODM, Cortina Systems is unknown. It was running kernel 2.6 when I got rid of it last year.
  - mangix 11y ago
    since getting a decent router with openwrt, i've failed to see the point in a pogoplug. look up banana pi r1.
    - 11y ago
gozo 11y ago
While I like affordable things and development boards in particular, hardware price isn't that much of an issue anymore. Most people, especially programmers, are going to spend more in terms of labour cost even just getting this up and running. Actually doing something exciting takes from a fair to a huge amount of time, which you most likely won't be able to recuperate. At least not directly. Until someone has a next level value proposition that enables more things, I would suggest sticking to the boards you're already not using.
oxryly1 11y ago
You don't select a Raspberry Pi for it's speed. This is like advertising a bigger Mini.
- mey 11y ago
  Mini did that, they called it a Countryman [1][2], to massive success [3] [1] http://www.miniusa.com/content/miniusa/en/model/countryman.html http://www.miniusa.com/content/miniusa/en/model/countryman.h... [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704615504576172832123217962 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487046155045761728... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Countryman#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Countryman#Reception
Lan 11y ago
Another cheap rPi alternative that doesn't solve any new problems. What I'd like to see is one of these with a few SATA ports and ECC memory. Then you'd have a viable low-cost, low-power server, in a market that is sorely lacking those things considering the closest alternative is one of the newer Intel Atom boards that costs upwards of $250.
StillBored 11y ago
2G of RAM and 1Gbit ethernet, decent display, reasonable CPU's. The missing piece is the lack of SATA. I get it that most of these boards are just phone processors, but having wired ethernet and a decent storage mechanism allow them to be used as speedy little NAS's, video servers, desktop machines, whatever. USB2 storage is pretty much stuck at ~30MB/sec, around the same max that is possible with SD. Its probably faster to run the storage over the gbit ethernet port.

76 points by astaroth360 11y ago

The problem, as always, lies in the fact this is powered by an AllWinner SoC. They are not famous for respecting the licenses of the software they use, namely the Linux kernel, and things like graphic acceleration are usually hard to get working (and I'm not talking about working without blobs, I mean they are hard to get to work at all). IMO this is the major downside to Raspberry Pi alternatives like the Orange Pi and this. The Raspberry Pi is more expensive, but at least there's more documentation available, an effort to merge kernel stuff upstream, and there are even people working in getting proper, blob-free Mesa drivers working: https://wiki.freedesktop.org/dri/VC4/ https://wiki.freedesktop.org/dri/VC4/ With that said, it's nice to see cheap ARM64 development platforms becoming available, even if they aren't as open/supported as they should be.

soared 11y ago
I agree. These companies keep trying to compete on price, but thats not the #1 differentiator. Rapsberry Pi is so successful because of the community support and therefore ease of use. I would be more convinced by a new board if they supplied extensive documentation and had a bunch of project guides ready to go.
makomk 11y ago
It's hard to get graphics working, but on the other hand you can actually boot upstream Linux in headless mode on the older Allwinner boards right now. Debian Jessie even officially supports the older ones whereas they're unlikely to ever add support for the Raspberry Pi because it requires a binary blob to even boot. Unfortunately, this is using Allwinner's new A64 chip and I don't think the unofficial sunxi community that provides open source support for their hardware has even looked at supporting that chip yet. Also, whether support materializes depends heavily on how much the companies that are selling boards based on it care about open source, and well...
wycx 11y ago
It is a little unfair to imply there is no effort to upstream support for Allwinner SoCs: https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort
StillBored 11y ago
I think you forget how closed the rPi was when it was initially released. Its only been pried open by the community over the past few years.
mininodes 11y ago
"With that said, it's nice to see cheap ARM64 development platforms becoming available, even if they aren't as open/supported as they should be." ^^This is the ultimate take-away, yes. Over the past year, 64-bit ARM development platforms have dropped in price from the $2999 Opteron A1100 to the $79 Dragonboard, and now to the $15 PINE64.

soared 11y ago

Yet another product I would buy from a store in a heartbeat, but instantly dismiss because of kickstarter. Granted, this one looks professional and it appears they've already set up manufacturing, but that really doesn't sway my opinion.

rdancer 11y ago

It's still vaporware now, unlike alternatives. What's the fascination about 64-bit architecture anyway, apart from it being a bigger (=> better) number?

undersuit 11y ago
It's an easy benchmark for the common consumer to look at and feel they have selected the right product. They don't have to know about the differences between A35, A53, A57, and A72 much less why those models are better than the A7, A9, A15, A17 processors. They don't need to know that Android isn't 64-bit. They don't need to know that the 1-3GB of memory in their phone isn't going to benefit from 64 bits. They do feel that no one is going to sell junk labeled as 64-bits, and I mean come on, why would the manufacturer display it's got 64-bits unless it was really important?
theresistor 11y ago
AArch64 is a dramatically nicer instruction set than AArch32.
- rdancer 11y ago
  Care to elaborate?
- ant6n 11y ago
  Is it actually? You loose almost all the conditional execution, lots of the interesting shifted addressing (I think Aarch64 allows shifts up to 3 only). You get more registers. Oh and no 16-bit instruction mode anymore.
- renox 11y ago
  Nicer that's debatable: it's better suited to 'high performance' implementation but that doesn't necessarily make it nicer for users..

wyldfire 11y ago

> 512MB of RAM Well, ok, but unless I'm going to do some ridiculous amount of paging, I can't really take advantage of the 64-bit much. And in the meantime my 64-bit executables will suffer from larger pointers. The stuff that arm does well (IMO) is stuff that uses Python and other high-level languages. Those tend to port with little to no effort. Yet they use a ton of indirection so the size of those pointers really matters for memory consumption. $15 for an ARM board still seems like decent value, though.

duaneb 11y ago
If it has ECC, it might be a viable file server. Could definitely do with a gig of memory, though.
- inyorgroove 11y ago
  There are three versions 512MB, 1GB and 2GB.
- mmagin 11y ago
  It is my understanding that very few, if any ARM SOCs support ECC RAM.
makomk 11y ago
There's already a $15 Allwinner-based ARM board shipping now with similar specs, the Orange Pi PC. Quad-core (but only 32-bit) processor, 1GB of RAM, pretty much identical hardware video decode and GPU, 10/100 Ethernet, 3 USB ports, various expansion ports, thermal issues if you run at the advertised clock. (Why do I suspect the Pine has thermal issues? Take a look at the Kickstarter FAQ and how they carefully dodge questions on cooling.)
- deepnet 11y ago
  Scheltema@MAKE suggests the Pine is differentiated by superior graphics: 4K HDMI, hardware H264 & H265 from a 2 core MALI400 GPU. http://makezine.com/2015/12/09/the-15-pine64-just-launched-on-kickstarter-and-its-already-funded/ http://makezine.com/2015/12/09/the-15-pine64-just-launched-o...

rasz_pl 11y ago

This is allwinner, notorious GPL offender. NO drivers for GPU, NO drivers for hardware video acceleration. In case you are wondering how serious are they(pine) about software support here is a hint: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linux-sunxi/Ze_UhiO00t8 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/linux-sunxi/Ze_UhiO0... http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/491-need-help-on-pine-a64-15-64bit-quad-core-12ghz-single-board-computer/ http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/491-need-help-on-pi... TLDR: they plan to maybe send TWO boards to developers...

voltagex_ 11y ago
Argh. Thanks for that - you've saved me quite a bit of cash. If only I'd read a post like that before backing the Almond and the UDOO. A reasonable amount of my network at home is run by an aging and ailing Dreamplug - ARMv5 and remarkably sturdy. I'm still looking for a viable replacement. I was hoping to jump to a Pogoplug (same SoC, but USB3) but I (soft-)bricked it upgrading uBoot. The now-worthless Australian dollar makes most of these things much more expensive, but it really looks like my choices are expensive industrial boards with nebulous support arrangements or giving up on ARM entirely.
- dreamcompiler 11y ago
  What's wrong with the Almond? Mine works fine.
  - voltagex_ 11y ago
    Works fine, company doesn't care about FOSS, relationship with the ODM, Cortina Systems is unknown. It was running kernel 2.6 when I got rid of it last year.
- mangix 11y ago
  since getting a decent router with openwrt, i've failed to see the point in a pogoplug. look up banana pi r1.
  - 11y ago

gozo 11y ago

While I like affordable things and development boards in particular, hardware price isn't that much of an issue anymore. Most people, especially programmers, are going to spend more in terms of labour cost even just getting this up and running. Actually doing something exciting takes from a fair to a huge amount of time, which you most likely won't be able to recuperate. At least not directly. Until someone has a next level value proposition that enables more things, I would suggest sticking to the boards you're already not using.

oxryly1 11y ago

You don't select a Raspberry Pi for it's speed. This is like advertising a bigger Mini.

mey 11y ago
Mini did that, they called it a Countryman [1][2], to massive success [3] [1] http://www.miniusa.com/content/miniusa/en/model/countryman.html http://www.miniusa.com/content/miniusa/en/model/countryman.h... [2] http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704615504576172832123217962 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527487046155045761728... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Countryman#Reception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini_Countryman#Reception

Lan 11y ago

Another cheap rPi alternative that doesn't solve any new problems. What I'd like to see is one of these with a few SATA ports and ECC memory. Then you'd have a viable low-cost, low-power server, in a market that is sorely lacking those things considering the closest alternative is one of the newer Intel Atom boards that costs upwards of $250.

StillBored 11y ago

2G of RAM and 1Gbit ethernet, decent display, reasonable CPU's. The missing piece is the lack of SATA. I get it that most of these boards are just phone processors, but having wired ethernet and a decent storage mechanism allow them to be used as speedy little NAS's, video servers, desktop machines, whatever. USB2 storage is pretty much stuck at ~30MB/sec, around the same max that is possible with SD. Its probably faster to run the storage over the gbit ethernet port.