Interesting "Competitors" for the Raspberry Pi

I like the thought of the 16 core machine ! To be honest, I think the Pi will spawn a number of alternatives / competitors and sooner or later one will hit another price / performance ratio that resonates with the market.

If I had a bit more cash, I'd think about committing $99 to that kickstarter :-)

The hardware specs look very nice for all the new low-cost ARM computers,

with more ram and faster cpu's than the RPi.  What the articles don't say,

and what we've all learned to ask is: does the USB work without dropping packets? 

Can I use a keyboard with a built-in hub?  Can I mix USB 1.1 with USB 2.0? 

Can I use any SD card?  at high speed? Is X11 accelerated?  Does mplayer work? 

Are the drivers included in mainline Linux?

Eventually it will happen.

coder27 wrote:

 

What the articles don't say,

and what we've all learned to ask is: does the USB work without dropping packets? 

Can I use a keyboard with a built-in hub?  Can I mix USB 1.1 with USB 2.0? 

Can I use any SD card?

The Pi's USB problems stem from use of that dreadful USB controller, which must be seen as a hardware fault in the Broadcom SoC.  Presumably this problem is also shared by any other device which uses that same  piece of junk hardware.

I'm not aware of any other computer in existence with such an utterly broken USB.  All past and future competitors are likely to be completely superior to Pi in that respect.

Mentioning the junk USB controller brought to mind a little question.  Do any other devices of Broadcom's apart from the unfortunate BCM2835 use the same USB core?

I sure hope that the answer is 'No', otherwise the potential exists for the next generation of Pi to have the same USB problems as the current one.

Doesn't the Roku HD use almost the same design (BCM2835 and LAN9512) yet AFAIK there are no constraints with their USB port. http://www.mycablealternatives.com/2011/07/roku-2-xs-teardown/

How would you know the roku isn't having the same usb problems?

Most people will just use the usb port on that to connect an usb stick, and they don't have a way to figure out if there is an issue.

Besides that, some on the foundation say that the problems occur due to the interrupt latency being 2 high. One of the troublemakers for that

seems to be the sd card driver. The roku has an on board flash, so it probably isn't using the sd card slot and it's driver during normal operation.

The official pi troubleshooting forum even had someone passing by that had used the synoptic usb core in another design.

He wished them good luck with it to get it going as it should.

Fact is, if I can choose between 2 product, and one is powered by broadcom, I will choose the other one. Not just because that BCM2835 is having issues, but mainly because of the way the foundation (mostly broadcom employees) tries to hide and minimise them.

I didn't say that the Roku didn't have problems but I haven't run across any threads that say that there is. Trust me, I'm not a fan of Broadcom solely based on the fact that they don't sell to you unless you're a multi-million dollar account and also for the fact that you brought up about "hiding" issues. This also goes for NVidia to a certain extent with their Tegra line.

I've been trying to get a straight answer on the USB issues and as no surprise it doesn't appear that anyone is offerring any help. I would think that the amount of trouble with the USB port that this would be a major focus yet it certainly doesn't appear to be. I don't even know if anyone has ruled out hardware problems or if it's a firmware problem. I would think that if it's a firmware issue that someone with experience would use the JTAG port and try to capture the events. The problems are fairly repeatable so I would think it wouldn't take a long time to narrow down a fix.

The board has done well and it set new grounds with what you can do for $35 but I might take a different view of the Foundation if they released the version 2 board and didn't address the USB problem.

There's no reason to believe that any other product based on the BCM2835 wouldn't have exactly  the same USB problems as Pi, since those problems are determined by the USB core used in the SoC.  That's why I asked whether Broadcom continues to use the same USB core in their more recent SoCs.  If they do then a new generation of Raspberry Pi boards based on a newer SoC could be at risk of having the same issues.

After all, we know that the Foundation won't use anything except Broadcom for the Pi SoC because they are strongly tied to that company by numerous factors.  I bet RS at least wishes it were otherwise, from what we've heard about device shortage leading to RS's terribly long wait queue.

Do you mind if I ask how know that this is a problem with the USB core? When you say that it makes me think that the hardware design and firmware are OK but the SoC itself is flawed.

Morgaine Dinova wrote:

 

After all, we know that the Foundation won't use anything except Broadcom for the Pi SoC because they are strongly tied to that company by numerous factors.  I bet RS at least wishes it were otherwise, from what we've heard about device shortage leading to RS's terribly long wait queue.

I've heard that the BCM2835 is made to order with a 23 week lead time.  (Yes, that's what I heard.)  So you have to predict future needs very carefully or you'll end up with a shortage (can't make boards) or a surplus (which you can't sell to anyone else because you can't provide data sheets).