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Comparing BeagleBone Black & Raspberry Pi

fustini

A discussion thread recently popped up on the ChiBots mailing list to which I subscribe.  One of the members had just heard about the BeagleBone Black (BBB) and was curious to how it compars to the Raspberry Pi B.  Here's the reply I sent to the list which I thought might be useful to others.  And I thought subsequent discussion here would help me flesh out some additional advantages and disadvantages of both:

BBB $45 vs RPi Model B $35: BBB includes 2GB built-in flash & can run off

computer USB port [<500mA] so that would make up the cost

difference if one has to buy SD card and power supply for Pi.

 

BBB is Open Source Hardware: schematics, layout & BOM, plus it only uses

parts that are avail in low qty. RPi only have schematics released and

its processor is not available (only via high volume contract). I think

BBB is great for design engineers to prototype with and then modify for

their specific application.

 

BBB has programmable realtime units (PRU or PRUSS): Two 200 Mhz

microcontrollers built-in to its main processor.  It is possible to offload realtime control to the PRU where

instructions are single cycle.  Great blog posts about PRU:

 

http://www.element14.com/community/community/knode/single-board_computers/next-g\
en_beaglebone/blog/2013/06/07/bbb--building-a-thermal-imaging-camera

http://hipstercircuits.com/accelerated-stepper-motors-on-beaglebone/

http://bb-lcnc.blogspot.com/

 

BBB has no video decode/encode hardware: It does video in software. It

is ARM Cortex A8 (ARM v7) with NEON (vector processing) so it can play

video but it won't be the video workhorse the Pi is.  I believe

media center is the best use case for RPi model B over the BBB.

 

BBB has the ARM v7 instruction set so there is a wider range of distros

available. Things are still in progress post April launch, but the orig

Bone had Android, Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Angstrom & many more. The Pi's

ARM v6 instruction set holds it back requiring specialized distros that

recompile packages for the older instruction set (like Raspbian).

 

BeagleBoard.org and the BeagleBone leaders are passionate about getting

everything in the mainline kernel. They work with Linux kernel

maintainers to get their patches accepted upstream. I've been told they

hope to have everything in the mainline by sometime this year. BBB was a

big jump forward from BB White as they went from Linux 3.2 to Linux 3.8

*and* the shift to Device Tree for configuration of peripherals. This

was been alot of work for the Beagle developers but they are now the first

ARM dev board to embrace DT. This has the advantage of making hardware

configuration as simple change to a config file rather than having to

recompile the kernel. The transition has to be done by an new ARM board

looking to get accepted upstream. TL;DR - BBB has a strong commitment to

running the latest Linux kernel and not getting stuck in some vendor

specific fork of Linux.

 

Cheers,

Drew

Parents

  • There's a very long discussion about this here: http://www.element14.com/community/thread/23575?tstart=0

     

    I'll quote from my first comment at that thread, since it makes IMO a good "elevator speech" summary:

    I don't think BBone Black will displace RasPi, because RasPi is still cheaper (especially the Model A) and has a very effective community.  BBone has higher CPU performance, but RasPi probably has better media performance since that's what the BCM2835 was designed for, so people who just want a media engine will prefer it.  But BBone has much better I/O capabilities (clearly now a better choice for geeks*) and has rounded corners so it actually fits in an Altoids tin image  And BBone has a full Technical Reference manual.

     

    * I use the definition of "geek" that requires hardware expertise: "you can't spell geek without EE".

     

    I'll also add that all the BBone parts are fully documented, except for GPU internals.  I'll also add that BBone has a fully-capable USB controller (RasPi is still flaky in that regard) and has Ethernet built into the chip instead of via USB.  RasPi's SoC is a media engine.  BBone's SoC is a serious industrial compute and I/O engine with things like hardware support for IEEE 1588 Precision Time Protocol.

  • in reply to johnbeetem

    John Beetem wrote:

     

    I use the definition of "geek" that requires hardware expertise: "you can't spell geek without EE".

     

    I'd go further and say that, from an Edu perspective, the strong statement "BBB is a better platform for EE education" is a certainty.

     

    It probably continues to be a certainty even if we replace "EE" with "IT", since most of the educational material that runs on the Pi will run on BBB as well.  The few examples that won't port across because they are specific to Pi hardware have arguably rather more limited educational value.

     

    If I were still teaching computing to EE undergrads, a BBB would be on the recommended purchase list ahead of all but a few essential textbooks.

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  • in reply to johnbeetem

    John Beetem wrote:

     

    I use the definition of "geek" that requires hardware expertise: "you can't spell geek without EE".

     

    I'd go further and say that, from an Edu perspective, the strong statement "BBB is a better platform for EE education" is a certainty.

     

    It probably continues to be a certainty even if we replace "EE" with "IT", since most of the educational material that runs on the Pi will run on BBB as well.  The few examples that won't port across because they are specific to Pi hardware have arguably rather more limited educational value.

     

    If I were still teaching computing to EE undergrads, a BBB would be on the recommended purchase list ahead of all but a few essential textbooks.

Children
  • in reply to morgaine

    Morgaine Dinova wrote:

     

    The few examples that won't port across because they are specific to Pi hardware have arguably rather more limited educational value.

    I'm trying to think of things that won't port across and failing. The only one that comes to mind is the camera.

     

    Other than that you're talking about a pi specific software library, something like wiringpi perhaps? I think that's very similar to saying that an AIX library won't run on Solaris, true but not particularly relevant. In any case the libraries API could be ported if someone felt it was worthwhile.

     

    Maybe GPU related stuff?  But what's the educational value in a closed GPU that you're only likely to encounter on the Pi ?