The Atomic Pi is a small single-board computer that sells for $35, making it about the same price as a Raspberry Pi. But instead of an ARM-based processor, the Atomic Pi features an Intel Atom x5-Z8350 Cherry Trail processor. And while both computers have microSD card slots for storage, the Atomic Pi also comes with 16GB of eMMC storage built-in.

Lee wrote about the Atomic Pi late last year when the developers behind this little computer launched a Kickstarter campaign.

Now you don’t need to back a crowdfunding campaign to get one — the Atomic Pi is available from Amazon for $34.50.

Update: It seems to be out of stock at Amazon as of 4/27/2019, but you can also buy the Atomic Pi, along with optional accessories, from the Digital Loggers website.

Before you order, there are a few things to keep in mind. The most important is probably that the Atomic Pi doesn’t come with a power supply — you’ll need to supply your own — and it’s not as simple as buying a micro USB charger.

The board requires a 5V/2.4A or 5V/4A power supply and you may need to do some manual wiring to hook it up.

It’s also worth noting that the Atom x5-Z8350 isn’t exactly a high-performance processor. But it is an x86 chip, which means that while the little computer ships with Ubuntu Linux pre-installed, you could theoretically install Windows or other operating systems.

Still, the Atomic Pi appears to be one of the cheapest x86 mini PCs you’re likely to find — it basically has the specs of a first-gen Intel Compute Stick but more ports… and no included case or power supply.

The little computer measures about 5.1″ x 3.9″ and features USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, a microSD card reader, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and Gigabit Ethernet. It has 2GB of DDR3L-1600 RAM, 16GB of eMMC flash storage.

There’s also a 9-axis orientation sensor, a 26-pin GPIO connector, and support for optional breakout boards.

via CNX-Software

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21 replies on “$35 Atomic Pi dev board with Intel Cherry Trail now available from Amazon”

  1. WARNING, this board is a system pull from a robot, this means limited stock , “explaining computers” just did a video on this. I have seen allot of push of this board and it looks to be a rename PULL board which means once gone that is it. Also means that development may be null

  2. There are some boards on ebay, along with the full and baby breakout boards

  3. Hey, Brad, if you see this, I tried sending a message through the site’s contact section but could not tell if the message went through. I discovered where the Atomic Pi came from and what its likely original use was(robotics), as it’s clearly not designed to be an SBC. I thought it might be the kind of thing you would like to have on the site as it’s interesting. Let me know and I will provide the info.

  4. Gee, So this might finally spell the end for those long-lived PCEngines AMD Geode LX/GX IAx86 compatible boards? See here: pcengines_dot_ch

  5. Just checked Digital Loggers’ website shipping options – at cheapest it’s $12 to Cleveland, Ohio area. For some reason they only ship UPS Ground, with such a small footprint I can’t imagine it’d be more than $4 for USPS First Class. And the problem with the Amazon listing is you can’t get the $5 small breakout board. So if you want a kit you’re stuck with paying around $50 on Digital Loggers’ website.

    Another thing to note – the eMMC is too small for running Windows 10, at least an up to date version. As of the latest update, the 16 GB minimum requirement for Windows 10 is gone, replaced with 32 GB.

  6. Hard to find benchmarks to compare it to RPi3 but it’s clear it smokes it. In the SunSpider 1.0 Javascript benchmark, RPi3 takes 2873ms to complete the benchmark, according to PC World, and the Intel Atom x5-Z8300, a very slightly slower version of the CPU in the Atomic Pi, takes 505ms. Over 5.5 faster Javascript processing. It won’t win any speed competitions, but for the price and form factor, it’s an excellent addition to the market.

  7. Aaaaand…. it’s gone! Instantly it’s “not available” on the Amazon link.

  8. USB 3.0 and good linux support. It appears that they are liquidating boards that were already built for android media boxes?

  9. I’ve had one sitting on my desk, in need of a decent power supply, since the Kickstarter. I just sent a board off to OSH Park last night that uses the same efficient “12-24v input to 5.2v” power supply and power inputs as I built for the Pi, but has the pinouts for the Atomic, and then I added a 12v LDO for the speaker power input on the Atomic.

    Since I used the Atomic’s 2×13 GPIO header on the bottom for it, I also connected the GPIO ports and brought them across to match a few pins of a Raspberry Pi’s GPIO header. It’s certainly not user-friendly, since the GPIO voltages will be different, but it makes doing prototyping a little easier.

    TLDR: the $5 mini power breakout from the Atomic peeps is a much better deal, but who can resist nerding out?

    1. Have a link to your power supply schematic? I would like to take a look if you are interested in sharing it.

  10. Love the form factor, hate the processor. This would be perfect for lots of cool projects if it weren’t for that ~!@#$%^ of a processor. Atom needs to die already.

    1. Realistically, Atom is dead, and because of this manufacturers can sell it for next to nothing. Intel would no doubt much prefer you get a Celeron N4100 for your low-powered board, only it ain’t gonna cost you $35.

    2. There are many Atoms- are you talking abut the Atom SOC? I think it’s already dying since they didn’t get anyone to take x86 on smartphones seriously. It’s terrible compared to, say, a NUC, but great compared to a Raspberry Pi, especially if you need to get off ARM and can stay with the low amount of RAM available on both the Raspberry and Atomic.

    3. For retro gaming , KODI cheap NAS/OwnCloud is good and better than many media players with android ,plus with a cheap Kingston/PNY 256Gb ssd cost around 60$ i think is nice(and dont forget is clock at 1.92Mhz so is better than any z8350 in the market tablets or sticks)

    4. What CPU would you prefer that would still result in this costing $35? Maybe you’re just not the target for this board. At least compared to the horrible ecosystem that is ARM SoCs, this is much better than an ARM board for many people.

    5. Well, if the leaks about Lakefield are true, then the Atom is far from being dead. Supposedly, Lakefield will pare a Core CPU with some Atom cores creating Intel’s version of ARM’s BIG.little design. The chip is reported to have been made for a specific customer but it’ll be available for everyone.

    6. What’s with the hate on the Atom line? I think it’s been fantastic for different form factors. Chipsets after bay-trail were great. They would run a windows tablet super smooth for normal operations and even do light gaming. They seemed to just get better from there for simpler computing.

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