5 ms·

Can't remember whether I've seen this before. A few details after reading through some of the docs: * powered by Allwinner R8 (ARM Cortex-A8) with some prop

• messel 10y ago
  That's wild. The computer is cheaper than the adapters.
  • gmazza 10y ago
    Freebie marketing, a.k.a. razor and blades business model? [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebie_marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebie_marketing
    • anilgulecha 10y ago
      No, because clearly the CHIP is usable without adapters, and provides the main functionality.
      • rdslw 10y ago
        Yes, because on every image on main page (row with three possible use scenarios) it's shown as connected to a display. This IS freebie marketing.
        • nitrogen 10y ago
          The bare board has a composite video output.
  • heinrichf 10y ago
    That almost reminds me of Apple.
  • pjc50 10y ago
    This is surprisingly common. Mechanical parts (HDMI's tiny pins in a high-precision injection moulded body) are expensive, while it's now very cheap to just stick some chips on a board.
    • gmazza 10y ago
      > Mechanical parts (HDMI's tiny pins in a high-precision injection moulded body) are expensive Not at all. Complete brand-name HDMI connector assembly costs 29 cents in 10K quantity. [1] [1] http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Amphenol-FCI/10029449-111RLF/ http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Amphenol-FCI/10029449-11...
      • DannyBee 10y ago
        Yeah. But I wonder if this includes the 15 cent royalty for HDMI (http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/terms.aspx http://www.hdmi.org/manufacturer/terms.aspx) or the royalty for HDCP?
        • deleted 10y ago
          [deleted]
        • blackguardx 10y ago
          No it doesn't
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• rdslw 10y ago
  Beware of Allwinner. It's not supporting open source community (does not provide OS api for every part of chips) - so either you use their blobs or don't have access to everything hw is able to. And AFAIK they're heavy GPL violator: https://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations https://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations
  • Aissen 10y ago
    Next Thing Co is specifically contracting the best company out there to do Linux upstreaming (Free Electrons) of the SoC and board: http://free-electrons.com/blog/free-electrons-chip-nextthing/ http://free-electrons.com/blog/free-electrons-chip-nextthing...
  • 5ilv3r 10y ago
    I thought they joined the linux foundation?
• peatmoss 10y ago
  Anyone know what those proprietary bits are? I remember reading something a while back claiming these were more open than the RaspberryPi, but I can't remember or find the basis for those claims.
  • khedoros 10y ago
    In the CHIP's case, I don't know, but AllWinner had a tendency to build drivers into the Linux kernel without providing source and use modified versions of various libraries while claiming to have developed them internally. The Raspberry Pi machines use a family of Broadcom chips. These include some kind of general-purpose processor built into the GPU (sometimes called the VC4 or VPU). During operation, it runs an RTOS that handles OpenGL ES calls, translating them to QPU instructions. During boot, it's the first thing brought up; it initializes the RAM, loads the next level bootloader, then starts the ARM CPU. There's an open-source video driver that does the OpenGL work (and I think actually supports OpenGL, not just the ES variant). There's work being done on making a bootloader replacement, but it's in the fairly early stages (https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware). Maybe someone who knows about the CHIP itself will chime in with more detail on how it compares.