8 ms·

$49 seems very expensive for something like this. There are similar packages available in the $5-30. What makes this special?

dmitrygr 9y ago
Marketing & a very pretty website</cynical>
dreamcompiler 9y ago
It's a 64-bit 4-core ARM. So I expect it to cost a little more than a Raspberry Pi.
- stefan_ 9y ago
  This is the identical CPU of a Raspberry Pi 3. 512 MB of RAM with 64 bit is a pain, and that Mali GPU is a proprietary piece of shit. What's the market for a SoM for "makers and hardware startups" that has negligible upstream support. That's before you consider that they chose a SoC with considerable GPU/VPU capabilities that can only do HDMI or composite, the first you would never use in an embedded application where you have a fixed display, the latter you would never use, ever.
  - vardump 9y ago
    > 512 MB of RAM with 64 bit is a pain That's an odd statement. How are those two things related? You can still run 32-bit binaries (including thumb-2) under 64-bit OS in 32-bit execution state -- as long as kernel is configured to use 4kB pages. So your usermode binaries don't need to be bigger. Or you can take advantage of higher performing 64-bit mode. (Unrelated, but my pet peeve, one thing a lot of people get wrong: 32-bit ARM (Aarch32 and most ARMv7) supports 1 TB of physical RAM and 64-bit IIRC 16 TB. Not sure where the idea 32-bit ARM could only support 4 GB comes from.)
  - gh02t 9y ago
    It's not identical to the RPi 3. Raspberry Pi is using a Broadcom chip, this one is an Allwinner H5. They are similar, but at least the H5 has far better support in mainline Linux. Still Mali, though. Which I totally agree is crap. And no drivers for other display types.
    - KSS42 9y ago
      Mali 450 just won't die. Atleast it is not the Mali 400.
    - stefan_ 9y ago
      We were talking about the CPUs, and these are pretty identical. Both use quad ARM Cortex A53, the H5 has 100 MHz more top clock rate and is probably manufactured in a more modern process, but real-world performance isn't going to be much different.
      - gh02t 9y ago
        Performance wise they are very similar, but you mentioned upstream support. That is actually a major point of differentiation between the two.
        stefan_ 9y ago
        Well, yes, the Raspberry Pi has much better upstream support. The biggest obvious issue being the Mali.
        gh02t 9y ago
        I mean upstream support in the Linux kernel. The Allwinner chip is supported by the mainline kernel, the one in the Raspberry Pi is not. To me that's a big plus in its favor. Also in terms of support by the creators, if they're serious about the 10 year commitment then I'd say actually that is better than Raspberry Pi. Mindshare in the maker community isn't that important to someone doing serious embedded hardware development for production as long as the company behind it is solid. Which kinda sucks, I wish there was more incentive for chipmakers like Broadcom to be more open but...
  - bitwize 9y ago
    > 512 MB of RAM with 64 bit is a pain Hence why all extant Raspberry Pi 3s have a full GiB of RAM.
ivereninov 9y ago
It is all about the details. Industrial DDR3 with -25C temperature is quite expensive, but it is a requirement for any company building a product that could be used outdoors. Quad-core GHz A53 in such tiny footprint, but really with everything needed onboard. Very motherboard and embedding friendly and with proper software support. I think I will give some backstory which might be relevant. This product was born out of a need to migrate from Intel Edison in our high precision GPS equipment. We looked long and hard for Edison alternatives but there were none. They were either too big, or too expensive or did not have enough computing power. So we decided to build our own. Disclosure: I am co-founder of Emlid, the company behind Neutis. Happy to answer any questions.
- tcd 9y ago
  "Neutis runs modern Linux kernel based on the mainline version. Unlike other modules that are stuck with old legacy kernels without updates, Neutis will get security fixes and new features on time." You must clarify that. You are on a technical forum and that simply is not acceptable. "Mainline" is 4.16-rc2, there is only one mainline, so you are saying it's shipping with an rc quality kernel that is still in active development? Or do you mean it comes with an LTS? "Yocto and Debian". Debian does not use mainline kernel, in fact, no linux distro does, ever. What version of debian?
  - slededit 9y ago
    In the context of ARM devices its understood that it isn't based off a custom fork maintained only by the SOC manufacturer.
  - ivereninov 9y ago
    Currently our main focus is on Yocto, since this is what most people would use in production. Right now BSP runs on 4.15 and the processor is well supported in mainline. Since our own product is based on Neutis we put a lot of effort in testing of stability of the system and peripherals. There is so much work done by the great linux-sunxi community, you can see the mainlining progress for H5 processor here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort Sorry, it is the middle of the night here and I am not ready to confirm on the exact Debian version, but I believe that it has not been decided yet. You can contact us directly and we will get back to you with more info on this.
walshemj 9y ago
true but its smaller than say a pi3 and has extended temp ranges

dmitrygr 9y ago

Marketing & a very pretty website</cynical>

dreamcompiler 9y ago

It's a 64-bit 4-core ARM. So I expect it to cost a little more than a Raspberry Pi.

stefan_ 9y ago
This is the identical CPU of a Raspberry Pi 3. 512 MB of RAM with 64 bit is a pain, and that Mali GPU is a proprietary piece of shit. What's the market for a SoM for "makers and hardware startups" that has negligible upstream support. That's before you consider that they chose a SoC with considerable GPU/VPU capabilities that can only do HDMI or composite, the first you would never use in an embedded application where you have a fixed display, the latter you would never use, ever.
- vardump 9y ago
  > 512 MB of RAM with 64 bit is a pain That's an odd statement. How are those two things related? You can still run 32-bit binaries (including thumb-2) under 64-bit OS in 32-bit execution state -- as long as kernel is configured to use 4kB pages. So your usermode binaries don't need to be bigger. Or you can take advantage of higher performing 64-bit mode. (Unrelated, but my pet peeve, one thing a lot of people get wrong: 32-bit ARM (Aarch32 and most ARMv7) supports 1 TB of physical RAM and 64-bit IIRC 16 TB. Not sure where the idea 32-bit ARM could only support 4 GB comes from.)
- gh02t 9y ago
  It's not identical to the RPi 3. Raspberry Pi is using a Broadcom chip, this one is an Allwinner H5. They are similar, but at least the H5 has far better support in mainline Linux. Still Mali, though. Which I totally agree is crap. And no drivers for other display types.
  - KSS42 9y ago
    Mali 450 just won't die. Atleast it is not the Mali 400.
  - stefan_ 9y ago
    We were talking about the CPUs, and these are pretty identical. Both use quad ARM Cortex A53, the H5 has 100 MHz more top clock rate and is probably manufactured in a more modern process, but real-world performance isn't going to be much different.
    - gh02t 9y ago
      Performance wise they are very similar, but you mentioned upstream support. That is actually a major point of differentiation between the two.
      - stefan_ 9y ago
        Well, yes, the Raspberry Pi has much better upstream support. The biggest obvious issue being the Mali.
        gh02t 9y ago
        I mean upstream support in the Linux kernel. The Allwinner chip is supported by the mainline kernel, the one in the Raspberry Pi is not. To me that's a big plus in its favor. Also in terms of support by the creators, if they're serious about the 10 year commitment then I'd say actually that is better than Raspberry Pi. Mindshare in the maker community isn't that important to someone doing serious embedded hardware development for production as long as the company behind it is solid. Which kinda sucks, I wish there was more incentive for chipmakers like Broadcom to be more open but...
- bitwize 9y ago
  > 512 MB of RAM with 64 bit is a pain Hence why all extant Raspberry Pi 3s have a full GiB of RAM.

ivereninov 9y ago

It is all about the details. Industrial DDR3 with -25C temperature is quite expensive, but it is a requirement for any company building a product that could be used outdoors. Quad-core GHz A53 in such tiny footprint, but really with everything needed onboard. Very motherboard and embedding friendly and with proper software support. I think I will give some backstory which might be relevant. This product was born out of a need to migrate from Intel Edison in our high precision GPS equipment. We looked long and hard for Edison alternatives but there were none. They were either too big, or too expensive or did not have enough computing power. So we decided to build our own. Disclosure: I am co-founder of Emlid, the company behind Neutis. Happy to answer any questions.

tcd 9y ago
"Neutis runs modern Linux kernel based on the mainline version. Unlike other modules that are stuck with old legacy kernels without updates, Neutis will get security fixes and new features on time." You must clarify that. You are on a technical forum and that simply is not acceptable. "Mainline" is 4.16-rc2, there is only one mainline, so you are saying it's shipping with an rc quality kernel that is still in active development? Or do you mean it comes with an LTS? "Yocto and Debian". Debian does not use mainline kernel, in fact, no linux distro does, ever. What version of debian?
- slededit 9y ago
  In the context of ARM devices its understood that it isn't based off a custom fork maintained only by the SOC manufacturer.
- ivereninov 9y ago
  Currently our main focus is on Yocto, since this is what most people would use in production. Right now BSP runs on 4.15 and the processor is well supported in mainline. Since our own product is based on Neutis we put a lot of effort in testing of stability of the system and peripherals. There is so much work done by the great linux-sunxi community, you can see the mainlining progress for H5 processor here: http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort Sorry, it is the middle of the night here and I am not ready to confirm on the exact Debian version, but I believe that it has not been decided yet. You can contact us directly and we will get back to you with more info on this.

walshemj 9y ago

true but its smaller than say a pi3 and has extended temp ranges