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Sharks Cove – Tablet Development Board

24 points by artimaeis 12y ago

artimaeis 12y ago
More information: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_and_driver_developer_blog/archive/2014/07/26/the-sharks-cove-is-now-available-for-pre-order.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_and_driver_develope...
- Someone1234 12y ago
  Can someone explain why you'd utilise that board in order to develop Windows Drivers rather than just a generic x86-64 PC with a serial connection for kernel debugging? For $300 you can easily buy a fully functional PC. Particularly if you don't care too much about the spec.
2close4comfort 12y ago
Go figure the m$ response costs 10x more
- god_bless_texas 12y ago
  I hear ya, but it does include the ability to develop drivers which is pretty cool.
  - 2close4comfort 12y ago
    And does support android as well as windows so I will give them that. But really they could not have done ANYTHING to bring the cost down a little bit?
    - joezydeco 12y ago
      That board is probably being sold under cost. Look at how much stuff is crammed onto that PCB! It looks like there's a large BGA bridge chip (southbridge?) on there as well as a bunch of large perpipheral controllers. And what's with that odd chip-on-board module directly south of the Atom? It's missing from this previous picture of the board: http://files.linuxgizmos.com/intel_sharkscove_front.jpg http://files.linuxgizmos.com/intel_sharkscove_front.jpg Compare this to a recent ARM quad-core A9 board, where a lot of the peripheral stuff is on the SoC (oh, and it has Wifi/Bt on board) http://boundarydevices.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Nit6Max_Top.jpg http://boundarydevices.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Nit6Ma... (Just a small plug for Boundary Devices here, their stuff is excellent. This is their new Nitrogen6_MAX, $249.).
Udo 12y ago
It's a small computer on a single board, but it's geared towards the high end as far as performance and features go. From the Arduinos, the RasPis, the BanPis, Beagleboards, to small but full-fledged Atom boards it's a huge spectrum. It's absolutely great that we have so many great systems to choose from, but I'm not sure one is really a "response" to the other. For example, the Raspberry Pi hits the sweet spot for me as far as home automation things go - it is reasonably powerful enough to run all the software I need including a full web stack, but it has a really low power consumption. For a media station I'd probably choose a Banana Pi instead. The Sharks Cove looks like a great solution if you have to run a minimal Windows (of course). Edit: the title has been changed so it no longer references the Pi, making parts of this post moot. Still, I'm leaving it as it was.
- awalton 12y ago
  I'm not sure why people even bother bringing up RasPi and its ilk here. It's very clearly targeted towards a different audience: professionals who need to develop hardware/drivers for Intel tablets. Just look at all of the headers they've broken out, the test points on the board, the LED display for bus/early boot debugging, etc. The Raspberry Pi was designed with extensibility in mind, designed so the headers are on one side of the board so it can be enclosed sensibly, no extraneous functionality, simple construction, etc. This thing is just a reference tablet board minus the touchpanel, with all of it's I/O ports exposed. You certainly can built Quark/Atom SBCs into a "RasberryPi" like device, but this is not the device you were looking for. It's a terrible hobbyist board. Perhaps some one will use this board to develop a decent hobbyist Atom SBC/"NUC" - Intel's certainly has enough publicly available documentation to make it happen now.
  - Udo 12y ago
    I "bothered" because the Pi was explicitly used as a target for comparison in the original title of this thread. And I'm not sure where the hostility is coming from, but my point was actually similar to yours, minus the abrasive attitude. My comment was about different capabilities and use cases, and I criticized the label "Raspberry Pi" in this context - which, in case you missed it, was in the original title of this thread. > You certainly can built Quark/Atom SBCs into a "RasberryPi" like device, but this is not the device you were looking for. In no part of my comment did I remotely advocate or even hint at anything like that.
baconstrp 12y ago
So it is gut of used pc laptop you can farm on eBay (probably with a functioning LCD as a plus), for a price of shining new Chromebook.
- awiesenhofer 12y ago
  Don't compare apples and oranges - this board is not meant as a pc-equivalent. It's selling point are the numerous UART- and GPIO-Ports. This is a DevBoard, not some random mainboard.
AaronFriel 12y ago
Not quite - this might just be a board used by Microsoft as a high-powered test for shrinking Windows, but it's not the "Internet of Things" board that they've been talking about. That's this: http://ms-iot.github.io/content/SetupGalileo.htm http://ms-iot.github.io/content/SetupGalileo.htm It's a cheaper device, and it's about $70. It runs an even slimmer version of Windows. So it's much more a competitor with the Raspberry Pi than other Windows development boards (i.e.: this $300 one.)
- taylorbuley 12y ago
  Right. No way I'm breadboarding this up at $300 per "Thing" This appears to be a solid workbench device for developing add-on hardware (and the drivers to communicate with it) The desire to compare to RaspPi is understood, especially when it plays into my preconceptions of the difficulty of Windows development. This thing is a monster. http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/rsz_b--300x225.jpg http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/rsz_b-... http://www.mouser.com/images/circuitco/lrg/595-SHARKSCOVE-PROMO.jpg http://www.mouser.com/images/circuitco/lrg/595-SHARKSCOVE-PR...
- steverb 12y ago
  Don't forget the Gadgeteer stuff MS has had for quite a while. It's pretty cool for rapidly prototyping "things". http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/gadgeteer/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/gadgeteer/

24 points by artimaeis 12y ago

More information: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_and_driver_developer_blog/archive/2014/07/26/the-sharks-cove-is-now-available-for-pre-order.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windows_hardware_and_driver_develope...

Someone1234 12y ago
Can someone explain why you'd utilise that board in order to develop Windows Drivers rather than just a generic x86-64 PC with a serial connection for kernel debugging? For $300 you can easily buy a fully functional PC. Particularly if you don't care too much about the spec.

2close4comfort 12y ago

Go figure the m$ response costs 10x more

god_bless_texas 12y ago
I hear ya, but it does include the ability to develop drivers which is pretty cool.
- 2close4comfort 12y ago
  And does support android as well as windows so I will give them that. But really they could not have done ANYTHING to bring the cost down a little bit?
  - joezydeco 12y ago
    That board is probably being sold under cost. Look at how much stuff is crammed onto that PCB! It looks like there's a large BGA bridge chip (southbridge?) on there as well as a bunch of large perpipheral controllers. And what's with that odd chip-on-board module directly south of the Atom? It's missing from this previous picture of the board: http://files.linuxgizmos.com/intel_sharkscove_front.jpg http://files.linuxgizmos.com/intel_sharkscove_front.jpg Compare this to a recent ARM quad-core A9 board, where a lot of the peripheral stuff is on the SoC (oh, and it has Wifi/Bt on board) http://boundarydevices.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Nit6Max_Top.jpg http://boundarydevices.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Nit6Ma... (Just a small plug for Boundary Devices here, their stuff is excellent. This is their new Nitrogen6_MAX, $249.).

Udo 12y ago

It's a small computer on a single board, but it's geared towards the high end as far as performance and features go. From the Arduinos, the RasPis, the BanPis, Beagleboards, to small but full-fledged Atom boards it's a huge spectrum. It's absolutely great that we have so many great systems to choose from, but I'm not sure one is really a "response" to the other. For example, the Raspberry Pi hits the sweet spot for me as far as home automation things go - it is reasonably powerful enough to run all the software I need including a full web stack, but it has a really low power consumption. For a media station I'd probably choose a Banana Pi instead. The Sharks Cove looks like a great solution if you have to run a minimal Windows (of course). Edit: the title has been changed so it no longer references the Pi, making parts of this post moot. Still, I'm leaving it as it was.

awalton 12y ago
I'm not sure why people even bother bringing up RasPi and its ilk here. It's very clearly targeted towards a different audience: professionals who need to develop hardware/drivers for Intel tablets. Just look at all of the headers they've broken out, the test points on the board, the LED display for bus/early boot debugging, etc. The Raspberry Pi was designed with extensibility in mind, designed so the headers are on one side of the board so it can be enclosed sensibly, no extraneous functionality, simple construction, etc. This thing is just a reference tablet board minus the touchpanel, with all of it's I/O ports exposed. You certainly can built Quark/Atom SBCs into a "RasberryPi" like device, but this is not the device you were looking for. It's a terrible hobbyist board. Perhaps some one will use this board to develop a decent hobbyist Atom SBC/"NUC" - Intel's certainly has enough publicly available documentation to make it happen now.
- Udo 12y ago
  I "bothered" because the Pi was explicitly used as a target for comparison in the original title of this thread. And I'm not sure where the hostility is coming from, but my point was actually similar to yours, minus the abrasive attitude. My comment was about different capabilities and use cases, and I criticized the label "Raspberry Pi" in this context - which, in case you missed it, was in the original title of this thread. > You certainly can built Quark/Atom SBCs into a "RasberryPi" like device, but this is not the device you were looking for. In no part of my comment did I remotely advocate or even hint at anything like that.

baconstrp 12y ago

So it is gut of used pc laptop you can farm on eBay (probably with a functioning LCD as a plus), for a price of shining new Chromebook.

awiesenhofer 12y ago
Don't compare apples and oranges - this board is not meant as a pc-equivalent. It's selling point are the numerous UART- and GPIO-Ports. This is a DevBoard, not some random mainboard.

AaronFriel 12y ago

Not quite - this might just be a board used by Microsoft as a high-powered test for shrinking Windows, but it's not the "Internet of Things" board that they've been talking about. That's this: http://ms-iot.github.io/content/SetupGalileo.htm http://ms-iot.github.io/content/SetupGalileo.htm It's a cheaper device, and it's about $70. It runs an even slimmer version of Windows. So it's much more a competitor with the Raspberry Pi than other Windows development boards (i.e.: this $300 one.)

taylorbuley 12y ago
Right. No way I'm breadboarding this up at $300 per "Thing" This appears to be a solid workbench device for developing add-on hardware (and the drivers to communicate with it) The desire to compare to RaspPi is understood, especially when it plays into my preconceptions of the difficulty of Windows development. This thing is a monster. http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/rsz_b--300x225.jpg http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/rsz_b-... http://www.mouser.com/images/circuitco/lrg/595-SHARKSCOVE-PROMO.jpg http://www.mouser.com/images/circuitco/lrg/595-SHARKSCOVE-PR...
steverb 12y ago
Don't forget the Gadgeteer stuff MS has had for quite a while. It's pretty cool for rapidly prototyping "things". http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/gadgeteer/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/gadgeteer/