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The Intel Compute Stick (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/compute-stick.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards

The Intel Compute Stick (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/compute-stick.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits...) and its clones (which can still be found easily on eBay) and the Intel Compute Card (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-card/compute-card-brief.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/compute-card/compute...) showed that x86 could match the Raspberry Pi form factor with roughly the same idle power and much better peak performance. However, the parent is correct that Intel couldn't (or wasn't willing to) match the price point.

my123 6y ago
Raspberry Pis are on much older Arm architectures/manufacturing processes, with nowhere near the performance of a smartphone, and with very reduced energy efficiency. Raspberry Pi 3 was a Cortex-A53 back ported to 40nm outright. Raspberry Pi 4 is on 28nm. (for comparison, Apple A8 and Snapdragon 810 were on 20nm already, in 2014-15) It runs with a Cortex-A72 at a low clock (1.5GHz, phones even are at twice that clock nowadays) and quite high power consumption because of the process node. The memory interface is narrow (32-bit bus, phones ship with a 64-bit bus and laptops/desktops with a 128b one) at a low data rate (LPDDR4-3200). In addition to that, the CPU can only use 5GB/sec of it, with the remainder being reserved for the GPU only. Those were some of the sacrifices needed to reach this price point. (and why it isn't representative at all of the performance of higher-end ARMs)
- vardump 6y ago
  Yeah, Raspberry Pi needs a 64-bit memory bus pretty badly. Hopefully it's feasible in the future without compromising cost.
JoshTriplett 6y ago
The Raspberry Pi is also more solder-friendly, with GPIO and similar. The Compute Stick makes sense if you're going to connect to well-defined ports.
Laforet 6y ago
The earlier models of compute stick had serious EMF issues with their USB and 2.4Ghz radio to the point that some configurations were practically unusable. This turned a lot of people away and it never got popular. Not to mention they ran pretty hot even with active cooling. At the same time Intel was heavily subsidizing their x86 mobile SoCs to tablet manufacturers and for a while it was actually quite competitive price wise but it ultimately went bothered.

my123 6y ago

Raspberry Pis are on much older Arm architectures/manufacturing processes, with nowhere near the performance of a smartphone, and with very reduced energy efficiency. Raspberry Pi 3 was a Cortex-A53 back ported to 40nm outright. Raspberry Pi 4 is on 28nm. (for comparison, Apple A8 and Snapdragon 810 were on 20nm already, in 2014-15) It runs with a Cortex-A72 at a low clock (1.5GHz, phones even are at twice that clock nowadays) and quite high power consumption because of the process node. The memory interface is narrow (32-bit bus, phones ship with a 64-bit bus and laptops/desktops with a 128b one) at a low data rate (LPDDR4-3200). In addition to that, the CPU can only use 5GB/sec of it, with the remainder being reserved for the GPU only. Those were some of the sacrifices needed to reach this price point. (and why it isn't representative at all of the performance of higher-end ARMs)

vardump 6y ago
Yeah, Raspberry Pi needs a 64-bit memory bus pretty badly. Hopefully it's feasible in the future without compromising cost.

JoshTriplett 6y ago

The Raspberry Pi is also more solder-friendly, with GPIO and similar. The Compute Stick makes sense if you're going to connect to well-defined ports.

Laforet 6y ago

The earlier models of compute stick had serious EMF issues with their USB and 2.4Ghz radio to the point that some configurations were practically unusable. This turned a lot of people away and it never got popular. Not to mention they ran pretty hot even with active cooling. At the same time Intel was heavily subsidizing their x86 mobile SoCs to tablet manufacturers and for a while it was actually quite competitive price wise but it ultimately went bothered.