Hi, I have a question and maybe a suggestion. What do you think about developing a new maker board with arduino, like the X86, but with the new Kaby Lake processors. Having such a board with the i7 7500u would be great! Merry Christmas! Cheers, Krzysztof
Hi, For n3710 they are only slightly below $200. I7 7500u triples the computational power of the n3710, offers hdmi 2.0, native USB 3.1, and many other features. And the prices will fall for sure as well. You could also ask why someone needs a n3710 in such a board. For the cost of the chip you can get a complete x86 board with a simpler one... The board with i7 7500u (or maybe even with 7100u or 7200u) would be the most powerful maker board available
The price you are seeing is for delivery to the port of Shenzhen (FOB), as the customer your are responsible for transportation and import taxes to you destination country. Having interacted closely with these types of Chinese sellers, I can tell you the quality of these boxes will be below par, software support for the BIOS will be non existent and warranty claim impossible (unless you cover the cost yourself). Furthermore have worked closely with one of the top 3 embedded board manufacturers (whom are far east based), the cost of bringing a board to the market isn't as cheap as you think because of the design/testing cycle to ensure quality/reliability and post production support costs involved.
That was exactly the reason behind my question. @UDOO: Do you think it is feasible and reasonable to think about a Kaby Lake based maker board? Of course made by you 7Y75 or 7Y54 (both 4.5W tdp) could be even a better option than 7500U or other from the 15W range. UDOO X86 could be a great base for that. In a near future? What do you think? Krzysztof
Let them first finish their current new product development first. Then, given their track record I guess they are likely to come up with something new in a foreseeable period of time.
@Krzysztof Piotrowski hi! First of all, thanks for your suggestions. Anyway, here are my two cents. I think that power/price ratio is not the most important thing in a product. I don't see where I found that report, but I clearly remember having read a list of things makers want, and a low price wasn't the first one. First ones were support, open source software and hardware, wide community. Low price was the fourth or fifth. Why do I say this? Because there is plenty of Chinese manufacturers ready to deliver at incredibly low prices. But, is that all that matters? Look at the very bad results met by Pine64: this is the (un)review by Hackaday this is the second result in the Google SERP if you search for Pine64 review But in particular, I've been particularly impressed by this piece of the Hackaday's article: "However, Pine, or the people behind Pine, have not held up their end of the bargain. It’s relatively easy to pick up a few thousand ARM chips, hire an EE for a month or two to produce a single board computer, and find a contract manufacturer in China. The hard part is getting the software working, getting the documentation together, and fostering a community that isn’t stumbling in the dark trying to get this board to work. This is where the Pine64 fails. The forums are a mess right now, and the comments on the Kickstarter campaign aren’t much better." Finally, if you or some of you are going to make a maker board my suggestion is to focus on making something different, not something better. Different is better than better.
Dear Andrea, you are absolutle right. It is not about making a new Mainboard with soldered components, there are many. What makes x86 different is the arduino block (and some other features). It was the main thing that cought my attention, for instance. It enables experiments using the great number of available extension boards. Available for beginners as well. My point in starting the thread was to ask you where you see next steps. Same functionality, more power? Or new functionality? A board for makers should be generic and flexible - special blocks restricting the use cases or blocks too complicated for use by beginners, may reduce the target group. I would say, add an FPGA. A medium sized one, capable to realize medium projects, but not too expensive (it may be not the main success factor, but it is important). But many beginners do not have a clue on FPGA use, so for them it will only be a block making it more expensive. But a maker board with FPGA together with some support framework (IDE, libraries, etc.) could be a great idea. So, one idea. Replacing the pentium and celeron with a core with mooore power might be another. I also agree with Maurice, saying that I am asking questions in a wrong time. But, on the other hand, will ther be a better time? I am sure excited about the X86 and cannot wait having it in my hands. But am also excited about UDOO and your next boards Krzysztof
Hi @Krzysztof Piotrowski, I'm very happy to see you so curious about our next steps! First of all, let me say that we have already something going on with FPGA. Take a look at the AXIOM Project: axiom-project.eu It is an EC-funded 3-yrs research project in which the UDOO cofounders, together with many other enterprises and research groups, are designing and building an FPGA board for easy, fast interconnects, clusters on steroids, accelerated parallelism. Of course I'm talking about a research project, not something in the likes of UDOO. Surely, FPGA opens up new possibilites, but for which purpose, in your opinion? What do you think is the best use case for FPGA in a maker board? For example, an idea could be to exploit the FPGA to get another hardware, an Arduino for example. I think this feature, the reconfiguration of the schematics/architecture, is really intriguing. It makes me think about sort of a shapeshifting board! I've also written a couple of articles about this, because IMHO this feature of FPGA is not very well-known: http://www.udoo.org/what-about-fpga-for-makers/ http://www.udoo.org/udoo-at-droidcon-turin-italy-and-other-good-news-from-the-udoo-world/
Dear Andrea, See, I was not aware of that project. Only seen its name in the X86 kickstarter (on clustering). Thanks for the info, I will check it. As you say there are many possible uses of FPGA on a maker board. Project specific realisations of FPGA implemented algorithms. For instance for audio/video processing maybe, but the question is if the embedded hardware modules available in the current processors are not already delivering enough power with that respect. There is of course the trade-off between the flexibility and power consumption. Having a board where you can load different MCU into the FPGA you can do many different things, but for an application in a battery powered solution, like a robot, it may be better to buy a specific MCU board for several dollars. Or maybe not and the additional several tens of mAmps are acceptable. I am working with sensor networks, so low power is a must for me. But it would be interesting to have a flexible maker board with FPGA to check how you could partition the HW and SW parts for the potential future solutions. Krzysztof
Hi @Krzysztof Piotrowski, at the moment there only is a prototype of the AXIOM board, and it's still uncertain if and when the board will hit the market. As I said, for the moment it is a research project.
@Gery The UDOO X86 board uses less than 36 watts of power. An MXM slot requires up to 35 watts, so having this slot would double the power requirements of the board. If you would like to have a more powerful GPU, you can stream-in-home from a full sized desktop to the UDOO X86 - http://store.steampowered.com/streaming/
Yes, MXM GPU will need more juice in what I see no problem. In today's demanding applications is to have a minimum external graphics. Stream in home is not a solution.
@Gery The embedded Intel GPU is good! It can run games like TrackMania 2, which was very popular at the UDOO stand during Maker Faire Rome last year - https://twitter.com/UDOO_Board/status/787634471377993728 Of course, the Intel GPU cannot compete with an Nvidia or AMD GPU, but it can hold its ground.
Track Mania ?,,,you just kidding, yeh ? Intel graphics may be fine if you take 515 or 520, but here it is not about.
I was being serious The UDOO X86 is targeted at makers and hobbyists, plus users who might benefit from low energy operations, like researchers and scientists, and those who might benefit from it's space saving size. It's not aimed at hardcore gamers.
@Gery, the UDOOx86 is hardly to be used as a gaming PC. It is a makers device, especially with the Arduino 101. Here it will be running to do several tasks 24/7 so power requirements are very important. In only one task graphic performance is important, but not for running 60fps 3d games.
Notebook GPU is nowadays also used for various calculations in the field of research. The fact that there was an option to install an external graphics and other Processor does not mean that it did not belong to the hobby category. The option to install an external notebook graphics does not mean that it will be hard core gamers, it is the minimum standard of what one requires from the PC.
