Re: affordable arm boards with plenty of ram.
On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 10:35:15AM -0700, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> On 2016-05-19, peter green wrote:
> > I'm looking for an arm board/box to add to my collection of buildboxes.
> >
> > Critera (in roughly descending order of importance):
> >
> > Reasonablly affordable (upper limit ~£200)
> > As much ram as possible.
> > Plenty of CPU power would be nice.
> > A good storage interface (in order of preference SATA is better than
> > USB3 which is better than USB2).
> > Support in Debian kernels would be nice.
> > arm64 support would be nice.
>
> The LeMaker Cello looks promising, but isn't shipping yet. It is a
> little out of the price range you're talking about (US$299 + cost of ram
> and other accessories). It has dual sata, installable ram, and mainline
> support seems plausible (other similar boards have pretty full
> support, from what I can see).
>
>
> > Currently looking at the cubox i4x4. Anyone have any other suggestions?
>
> Some brief comparisons follow of the best perfoming boards used in the
> reproducible builds network. Most only have 2GB of ram, none are arm64
> capable, all are running armhf, most are supported to some degree by
> debian kernel and u-boot. Builds is average number of package builds
> per day (multiple entries for multiple boards). Prices may vary
> presently, but most were purchased within the last year.
>
> It seems like the best performance vs. price comparison is with the
> Odroid-XU4, if you can bear only 2GB of RAM and a noisy fan.
>
>
> Cubox-i4x4:
> price: ~US$180
> kernel: 3.16.x in jessie
> cpu: quad-core cortex-a9 (freescale imx6)
> ram: 3.8GB
> disk: eSATA
> u-boot: vendor or patched u-boot to use 3.8GB of ram.
> builds: 180, 187
>
> Cubox-i4pro:
> price: ~US$150?
> kernel: 3.16.x in jessie
> u-boot: 2014.10 in jessie
> cpu: quad-core cortex-a9 (freescale imx6)
> ram: 2gb
> disk: eSATA
> builds: 166
>
> Firefly-4GB:
> price: ~US$260
> kernel: 4.6.x in experimental (4.4.x worked fine, but 4.5.x broke
> ethernet).
> cpu: quad-core cortex-a12?/a17? (Rockchip rk3288)
> ram: 4GB
> disk: USB2
> u-boot: patched u-boot 2016.01 to recognize 4GB of ram
> builds: 182
>
> Firefly-2GB:
> price: ~US$160
> kernel: 4.6.x in experimental (4.4 worked fine, but 4.5 broke
> ethernet).
> cpu: quad-core cortex-a12?/a17? (Rockchip rk3288)
> ram: 2GB
> disk: USB2
> u-boot: 2016.03 in stretch (2016.05 currently does not load boot
> kernel successfully)
> builds: 165, 158
>
> Odroid-XU4:
> price: ~US$80-90
> kernel: 4.5.x in jessie-backports
> cpu: octa-core 4 x cortex-a15, 4 x cortex-a7 (Exynos 5422)
> ram: 2gb
> u-boot: 2016.05 in experimental
> disk: USB3
> builds: 201, 181, 168
> notes: noisy fan
>
> BeagleBoard-X15:
> price: not yet available, estimated ~US$239
> kernel: 4.6.x, currently needs custom kernel with compiled-in sata
> cpu: dual-core cortex-a15 (TI AM57xx)
> ram: 2gb
> disk: eSATA
> u-boot: 2016.03 in stretch
> builds: 179
> notes: noisy fan
What fan? I don't recall seeing a fan on that board. I know it can
drive one if you want though.
> Wandboard quad:
> price: ~US$160
> kernel: 3.16.x in jessie
> u-boot: 2014.10 in jessie
> cpu: quad-core cortex-a9 (freescale imx6)
> ram: 2gb
> disk: SATA
> builds: 188
>
> Orange pi plus 2:
> price: ~US$50-60
> kernel: custom patched 4.4-rc6
> u-boot: 2016.03 in stretch
> cpu: quad-core cortex-a7 (allwinner H3)
> ram: 2gb
> disk: SATA, but over USB2
> builds: 154, 148
>
>
> Builds per day derived from:
>
> https://jenkins.debian.net/view/reproducible/job/reproducible_nodes_info/lastBuild/console
--
Len Sorensen
Reply to: