5 ms·

What I would like to see is something like a Raspberry pi, but without any of the video/usb outputs or GPU/Soundcard. So just a tiny server running Linux with

by jiggy2011 14y ago

What I would like to see is something like a Raspberry pi, but without any of the video/usb outputs or GPU/Soundcard. So just a tiny server running Linux with an ethernet port. I you can get the pi down to $25 you could probably get such a thing down to $15 or so.

tinco 14y ago
Removing the ethernet port is one of the things they did to get the cost down to 25 dollars. The gfx/video you get for free with the CPU, so I dont think you're right. The ethernet was expensive because it consisted of two components, an ethernet chip and a usb hub. A cool side effect of the hub not being in the A is that you can use it as a USB slave too. This is very handy if you want to use the Pi to make a pheripheral device.
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  I wonder if just providing a wireless chip would be cheaper than just providing ethernet? There must be some cost saving in just removing the video connectors from the board, though I'm not sure if it's any cheaper to get an ARM CPU without an inbuilt GPU.
  - tinco 14y ago
    I think the difference is that you perhaps pay 2cts for a video connector which is directly connected to an output your cpu has and a few euro for a networking chip that requires high quality crystals etc.
  - walshemj 14y ago
    Well wired Ethernet just works in far more cases than faffing around with Wifi - find a spare port and plug it in. You would also have to add connectors for antennas.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
If you don't want to run full up Linux you can do this with the ST Micro STM4F32, its Cortex-M4 chip with ethernet capability. At about the same price (in small quantities) you can use the Atmel SAM9 series, just chip, memory, ethernet MAC, and USB is about $25 in parts (single unit quantity) so if you made a bunch your cost would be closer to $15 but if you sell them you need to make some sort of profit to cover the cost of building them. Close though, and I suspect we'll see SOC's that target this market soon enough. One workaround is a development environment that lets you compile a Linux application into something that can run on the hardware (just the kernel you need, and nothing extra :-) The uC Linux work is interesting in this regard.

tinco 14y ago

Removing the ethernet port is one of the things they did to get the cost down to 25 dollars. The gfx/video you get for free with the CPU, so I dont think you're right. The ethernet was expensive because it consisted of two components, an ethernet chip and a usb hub. A cool side effect of the hub not being in the A is that you can use it as a USB slave too. This is very handy if you want to use the Pi to make a pheripheral device.

jiggy2011 14y ago
I wonder if just providing a wireless chip would be cheaper than just providing ethernet? There must be some cost saving in just removing the video connectors from the board, though I'm not sure if it's any cheaper to get an ARM CPU without an inbuilt GPU.
- tinco 14y ago
  I think the difference is that you perhaps pay 2cts for a video connector which is directly connected to an output your cpu has and a few euro for a networking chip that requires high quality crystals etc.
- walshemj 14y ago
  Well wired Ethernet just works in far more cases than faffing around with Wifi - find a spare port and plug it in. You would also have to add connectors for antennas.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

If you don't want to run full up Linux you can do this with the ST Micro STM4F32, its Cortex-M4 chip with ethernet capability. At about the same price (in small quantities) you can use the Atmel SAM9 series, just chip, memory, ethernet MAC, and USB is about $25 in parts (single unit quantity) so if you made a bunch your cost would be closer to $15 but if you sell them you need to make some sort of profit to cover the cost of building them. Close though, and I suspect we'll see SOC's that target this market soon enough. One workaround is a development environment that lets you compile a Linux application into something that can run on the hardware (just the kernel you need, and nothing extra :-) The uC Linux work is interesting in this regard.