22 replies to this topic

[TheOtherCliff]

I have waited and searched here to see if anyone would post about the Raspberry Pi board.

700mhz ARM11v6 plus DSP plus GPU

I post because I wonder if this could have a place here in OP, perhaps as an INS number crunching board.  I am certainly looking into it for vision processing.

$25 128 meg
$35 256 meg plus ethernet plus more USB
Availability estimated as Nov 2011

# 700MHz Broadcom media processor featuring an ARM11 (v6)  (ARM1176JZF-S) core, Broadcom GPU core, DSP core and support for Package-on-Package (PoP) RAM
# 128MiB (A Model) or 256MiB of SDRAM (B Model)
# One USB 2.0 port provided by the BCMxxxx
# SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
# 16 GPIOs at 3v3
# I2C and SPI interfaces
# MIPI CSI-2 & DSI interfaces

Main site
Wikipedia style info with links

[peabody124]

That looks optimistic about Nov `11.  That main site doesn't mention any software development done, or that they even have hardware prototypes working?

Then again - if they can go from layout to working released product in 3 months that will be a promising sign.

[dankers]

Saw this when it was on Reddit, hope its going to be as good as it looks.

Yeah, they have hardware prototypes for sure and a Linux stack running on it, right now its a 6 layer board with burred / blind vias and they want to convert it to a 4 layer to save costs.

Will buy buying one for sure, I know who the guys are behind it and the Acorn BBC Model B was my first ever computer. There was some talk about having BBC Basic running on it. All this should be very exciting.

[peabody124]

dankers, on 11 August 2011 - 07:30 PM, said:

Saw this when it was on Reddit, hope its going to be as good as it looks.

Yeah, they have hardware prototypes for sure and a Linux stack running on it, right now its a 6 layer board with burred / blind vias and they want to convert it to a 4 layer to save costs.

Will buy buying one for sure, I know who the guys are behind it and the Acorn BBC Model B was my first ever computer. There was some talk about having BBC Basic running on it. All this should be very exciting.

I stand corrected

[Brian]

TheOtherCliff, on 11 August 2011 - 06:28 PM, said:

700mhz ARM11v6 plus DSP plus GPU

I post because I wonder if this could have a place here in OP, perhaps as an INS number crunching board.  I am certainly looking into it for vision processing.

Have you found any info on the DSP/GPU?  It would be great if they provide an SDK for the DSP/GPU.

[cwabbott]

Sounds interesting. Of course, all the stuff I'm working on should be trivially portable to this board - just a matter of changing port numbers, gpio pins, etc.

[TheOtherCliff]

Brian, on 11 August 2011 - 10:55 PM, said:

Have you found any info on the DSP/GPU?  It would be great if they provide an SDK for the DSP/GPU.

I recall reading that they have the DSP working (24 GFLOPS), and the GPU code was closed source but they really wanted to make an open source API for the GPU in the future.

Cliff

[Haldir]

That thing is just another media processor, that's why I don't think Broadcom will ever release a dsp sdk. They sell the hardware sdks (including the dsp sdk) for quite a bit of money. I wouldn't except more than a library with a few media related functions, atleast not in the foreseeable future.

That thing also has no permanent storage on board, everything is done with sdcard (hell they use the gpu for booting according to the wiki). That's quite some weird architecture there.

[dankers]

Haldir, on 12 August 2011 - 06:12 AM, said:

That thing also has no permanent storage on board, everything is done with sdcard (hell they use the gpu for booting according to the wiki). That's quite some weird architecture there.

Its all about price point for sure, certainly a bunch of corners cut to make it cheaper, but still both boards are still amazing value even if it is a bit weird.

Broadcom... Yeah, had a laptop with a broadcom Wifi device, really bad to use under Linux and I think Broadcom was a major reason why NDIS wrapper was even written, I fear you are right on the DSP SDK.

[K Wells]

QT Devs can now get the Raspberry Board Free....Maybe!

http://wiki.qt-proje.../Device_program

Here is a Link to the Website

http://www.raspberrypi.org/

[Adverse Effects]

this is soooo cool

[LenzGr]

FWIW, it's available for sale now, but their web site got slashdotted due to the demand. One thing that caught my eye was their manufacture model - maybe something that would work to better scale the sale of OpenPilot boards?

Why are we using a licensed manufacture model?

The involvement of RS Components and Premier Farnell means that we can build volume much, much faster than would have been possible on our own. We are no longer limited to batches of only 10k Raspberry Pis; the Raspberry Pi will now be being built to match demand.

Both Premier Farnell and RS Components have worldwide distribution networks, so wherever you are in the world, you will be able to buy from a local distributor. This will saves you money on shipping; it’s a much better way for you to buy than getting them all shipped from the Foundation in the UK.

We’ve listened to what the community has to say. The most frequent request was for the ability to make preorders (something that was impossible for the Foundation to administer for this first batch), so we have ensured that both RS Components and Premier Farnell will be taking preorders from the start.

Edited by LenzGr, 01 March 2012 - 01:50 AM.

[Caustic]

They do not have the same QA issues, it is simple to mass produce what is essentially a pico-itx board.

I wish I could share in any amount of excitement for that board but...

[dankers]

That manufacturing model is very cool however it relies on one thing we don't have massive volume and additionally it is a really low cost part.

If we could get a company like RS to take it on and we could set the price, it would make sense. However all we could get is places like Sparkfun (they have asked us already) and they would ensure that the price would be much higher than it is now, they are a for profit business, nothing at all wrong with that but they would charge what the market will bear. Additionally something like OP needs support, we don't want millions of devices out there as it will mean a huge support burden and we simply would lose the high level of support we do already.

I think that post was great, it's nice to see what they are doing and in their shoes, I have no question I would do the same thing. However the Pi also has a huge advantage, everything on it is generic except the SoC, so Farnell / RF are already buying 99% of the parts direct from manufacturers in the millions, additionally Broadcom are a backer and the people behind the Pi are employed by them, the SoC they will be getting very cheaply.

The one thing everyone needs to be really clear on is that where things have gone wrong with the OP manufacturing is the IDG-500 issues, without those we would have scaled up more long ago but seems that every batch needed a serious amount of testing and then rework, there was no point. I could easily see us doing 2,000 unit runs of the CC long ago if it was not for all the IDG-500 issues.

With the new sensors, the gyro issues should be solved (when we can get them) and we will do things a little differently with the hardware in future all aimed at keeping the cost down as well as keeping the distros that are still involved here happy.

Quote

I wish I could share in any amount of excitement for that board but...

It's not something I personally want but I am very excited to see what people do with it, it will also pave the way to better devices in the future.

[LenzGr]

I see your point, thanks for the insight. I guess I'll have to be patient and continue to wait for my chance to finally obtain an OP board here in Germany before they are sold out again in minutes
Having an actual device to toy around with would make it much more encouraging for me to contribute more actively to this community. I've been lurking for quite some time and I really like the all the activities that are happening.

[dankers]

If you really want to get involved, I can help you get hardware howevr I have been down that path a lot in the past and given hardware away to people offering to get involved and it hasn't worked out.

I guess you know if you have been reading the forums but the lack of hardware is totally outside our control, the old gyros can not no longer be bought and had a really high failure rate anyway and the new sensors we simply can't get.

[Caustic]

dankers, on 01 March 2012 - 08:02 AM, said:

It's not something I personally want but I am very excited to see what people do with it, it will also pave the way to better devices in the future.

You may have misunderstood my comment, and in a large part it is related to the same support and development issues etc that you expressed. There is nothing impressive about that board, and it is missing AE support that manufacturer EVM and devkits have. If you are qualified, those usually do not cost anything.

For commercial applications, it is pretty much the same specs and cost as the wallwart sized micro servers.

It does not surprise me that Newark/Farnell/Element-14 are backing this. They are moving into fab and assembly services as well as pushing hard for social community loyalty.

Manufacturing partnerships are fairly easy to acquire if goals, requirements, and systems are in place. Initially it surprised me that OP did not have any.

[Adverse Effects]

http://www.raspberry...rg/archives/723

Quote

Well, that was an incredible week.
For those of you just joining us, we have entered into licensed manufacture partnerships with two British companies, Premier Farnell and RS Components.
They’ll be manufacturing and distributing the devices on our behalf, and handling the distribution of our first batches as they arrive in the country.
We continue to make a small profit from each Raspberry Pi sold, which we’ll be putting straight back into the charity.

This arrangement means that we can build volume much faster than would have been possible on our own.
We are no longer limited to batches of only 10k Raspberry Pis; the Raspberry Pi will now be built to match demand.
Both partners have worldwide distribution networks, so wherever you are in the world, you will be able to buy from a local distributor.
This will save you money on shipping, and both partners are taking preorders, or expressions of interest, for the Model B from the start.
There has inevitably been some confusion around pricing and parts of the ordering process; within a few days, we hope to have a country-by-country summary of each partner’s policies, showing how the $35 price of a Model B translates into a final cost.
In the meantime, feel free to share your experiences either here or in the forum.

We’ve also announced a doubling of the Model A RAM capacity to 256MB; these devices should be available to pre-order shortly.
Finally, an apology – not everyone on our mailing list received a notification of our impending launch, as it now takes about a week to mail personalized messages to each of our 100,000 subscribers.
Given the large volumes our partners are able to produce, the penalty for being further back in the queue is much smaller than it would have been had we been the only manufacturer; if you place an order, we’ll do our best to make sure you’re not waiting too long.

\

its listed on  RS Components $38 AUD

Edited by Adverse Effects, 04 March 2012 - 12:53 PM.

[Adverse Effects]

what gets me is that can make a full computer for $38 retale but a tablet with about the same unit in it will cost 100's of dollars

[Caustic]

You can make a tablet for sub-50 ...
Granted, not much of one. The next OLPC is a tablet.

Edited by Caustic, 04 March 2012 - 07:41 PM.