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Pi vs BeagleBone-Black

Former Member

So, just over a year on from the initial availability of the R-Pi and the new BeagleBone Black is upon us.  They've obviously taken a leaf out of the RPF's playbook and produced a cost reduced version at a price only marginally above the Pi.

 

I find it interesting that the compromises are very different, for example there's a proper PMIC and the ethernet is not troubled by being connected to USB, however the on-board HDMI seems less capable.

 

Other differences are in the documentation, I'm currently viewing the pcb gerbers for the beaglebone..  Have yet to see any sign of those for the R-Pi a year later. There's even an up to date devicetree capable kernel too.

 

Technology has also moved on somewhat, we get a 1GHz Cortex A8 which is better than the Pi, along with various other stuff and lots more GPIO's too.

 

Ok, so it's clear that I like the look of the new beaglebone, and given the price I'm likely to put any further R-Pi plans on hold until I have a chance to play with this. It's also making things like the Olinuxino-maxi I bought recently look very slow/expensive while still being cheaper than the similarly specced Olinuxino-A13

 

Some details of the beaglebone-black here http://circuitco.com/support/index.php?title=BeagleBoneBlack

 

What do the rest of you think ?   I don't expect this to displace the Pi anytime soon, but I expect it to be very attractive to those people who don't simply want to put XBMC on it and duct tape it to the back of the TV..

Parents

  • John Beetem wrote:

     

     

    Personally, I prefer having the flexibility of knowing what my boot code is doing.  Maybe this comes from memorizing the PDP-8 RIM loader at an impressionable age, and knowing what it did in assembly and machine language.  Having this kind of access lets me do unusual things, like the time I booted an IBM PPC403GA embedded PowerPC through a FIFO.  That was a challenge, because a FIFO can only execute sequential code -- you can't branch.  Having full control of the machine language was necessary in that case.  Besides, it gives me Isaac Asimov's "Feeling of Power", which makes computing in general more enjoyable IMO.

     

     

    I wonder if it would be possible to get a flowchart on the boot process that went something beyond power->bootcode.bin->config.txt->kernel.img->OS (or whatever order they go in).  Obviously it couldn't be anything that gave away too much or else we'd never get antyhing, and they'd probably have to be careful not to reveal information that could potentially create a boot time security threat, and it's not like it would actually enable us to do anything extra, but it would be pretty cool and informative just to see. 

     

    It's constantly facinating to me that if the Foundation had chosen to add an eprom and put this information in there where it could never be touched and then rolled the cost of the two gpu codecs into the price of the pi, it would be considered more open source than them giving us power over boot configurable run time tweaks and the option of paying codec fees if we want them.

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  • John Beetem wrote:

     

     

    Personally, I prefer having the flexibility of knowing what my boot code is doing.  Maybe this comes from memorizing the PDP-8 RIM loader at an impressionable age, and knowing what it did in assembly and machine language.  Having this kind of access lets me do unusual things, like the time I booted an IBM PPC403GA embedded PowerPC through a FIFO.  That was a challenge, because a FIFO can only execute sequential code -- you can't branch.  Having full control of the machine language was necessary in that case.  Besides, it gives me Isaac Asimov's "Feeling of Power", which makes computing in general more enjoyable IMO.

     

     

    I wonder if it would be possible to get a flowchart on the boot process that went something beyond power->bootcode.bin->config.txt->kernel.img->OS (or whatever order they go in).  Obviously it couldn't be anything that gave away too much or else we'd never get antyhing, and they'd probably have to be careful not to reveal information that could potentially create a boot time security threat, and it's not like it would actually enable us to do anything extra, but it would be pretty cool and informative just to see. 

     

    It's constantly facinating to me that if the Foundation had chosen to add an eprom and put this information in there where it could never be touched and then rolled the cost of the two gpu codecs into the price of the pi, it would be considered more open source than them giving us power over boot configurable run time tweaks and the option of paying codec fees if we want them.

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