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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

  • There isn't a GPU in existence in the ARM world that is open, so the manufacturers are all equally bad in that regard.

     

    That said, the Lima driver people are making great progress with ARM's own MALI GPU, so perhaps ARM licensees like Allwinner that use MALI are unwittingly going to be leading the way towards open ARM hardware despite lacklustre support by the companies themselves.

     

    It's ARM's loss really.  ARM took a step backwards in their excellent "profit by licensing" model when they didn't make MALI completely open and reverted to the utterly dumb "profit by secrecy" wishful thinking.  Message to ARM:  1) You failed totally. 2) Get rid of the person who suggested that  stupidity.  All it did was put a throttle on ARM's fantastic profit stream.

     

    mynameisJim wrote:

     

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that we need more of a weighted average when it comes to talking about how open a board is

     

    No we don't need a "weighted average".  It's either fully open or it's not.  You can't be partially pregnant.

     

    Engineers tend not to be concerned with GPUs on SoCs not being open (probably because they don't use them) and so SoCs in which everything but the GPU is fully documented are regarded as "open hardware".  It's easy to understand that point of view --- why care about something in which you have no interest?

     

    In an ideal world everything will be open, but only the PC world has examples of that --- most Intel and AMD GPUs are fully open.  In the ARM world we're lagging badly.  In the absence of interest in openness from any ARM licensee, those who use MALI seem destined to win just because that's where the open source community is active.

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  • There isn't a GPU in existence in the ARM world that is open, so the manufacturers are all equally bad in that regard.

     

    That said, the Lima driver people are making great progress with ARM's own MALI GPU, so perhaps ARM licensees like Allwinner that use MALI are unwittingly going to be leading the way towards open ARM hardware despite lacklustre support by the companies themselves.

     

    It's ARM's loss really.  ARM took a step backwards in their excellent "profit by licensing" model when they didn't make MALI completely open and reverted to the utterly dumb "profit by secrecy" wishful thinking.  Message to ARM:  1) You failed totally. 2) Get rid of the person who suggested that  stupidity.  All it did was put a throttle on ARM's fantastic profit stream.

     

    mynameisJim wrote:

     

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that we need more of a weighted average when it comes to talking about how open a board is

     

    No we don't need a "weighted average".  It's either fully open or it's not.  You can't be partially pregnant.

     

    Engineers tend not to be concerned with GPUs on SoCs not being open (probably because they don't use them) and so SoCs in which everything but the GPU is fully documented are regarded as "open hardware".  It's easy to understand that point of view --- why care about something in which you have no interest?

     

    In an ideal world everything will be open, but only the PC world has examples of that --- most Intel and AMD GPUs are fully open.  In the ARM world we're lagging badly.  In the absence of interest in openness from any ARM licensee, those who use MALI seem destined to win just because that's where the open source community is active.

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