The maker of the Cubieboard line of mini-computers and dev boards have released the most powerful version to date. The Cubieboard4 is a single-board computer with an Allwinner A80 octa-core processor, Gigabit Ethernet, HDMI and VGA ports, and USB 3.0 support.
Cubietech has announced the the Cubieboard4 (also called the CC-A80) is now available for about $125.
The computer is basically a small form-factor PC board with developer-friendly UART, I2C, and JTAG connectors, up to 2GB of RAM, up to 64GB of eMMC storage, and dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth.
It also features a Gigabit Ethernet port, four USB 2.0 host ports, one USB 3.0 OTG port, audio jacks, a mic input, and a microSd card slot.
The Cubieboard4 is powered by Allwinner’s octa-core chip which combines four ARM Cortex-A15 processors cores, four lower-power ARMÂ Cortex-A7 cores, and PowerVR G6230 graphics. I was pretty impressed with the overall performance of this chipset when I reviewed the Rikomagic MK80 (which has similar hardware… but in a more consumer-oriented package).
Cubietech says the system will come with Android pre-loaded, but it also supports Ubuntu or Debian Linux for folks that want to use the system as a tiny, low-power desktop computer or server. Hoping to use the Cubieboard4 as a media center? You might be better off running Android for now… the Ubuntu image does include some support for hardware-accelerated graphics and video, but it’s a work in progress.
Maybe I wil buy Odroid Xu3-Lite Exynos5422 ARM® Cortex™-A15 Quad 1.8G 2GB Ram price 99$
They keep building devices that have video chipsets that will never work properly with Linux. I have a Cubiebord 2 and the only way to make it work properly is to use Ubuntu or Debian from three years ago and a 3.4 kernel. They are fine if you want a headless device for robotics or whatever. Never again. It is not just Cubie. What is wrong with someone building an ARM board with usable open source graphics. Even if it costs $10 more at least it would be usable and accelerate adoption. Even the Rasberry Pi with it’s millions of users have just got reversed engineered drivers. What went through their minds when the designed the first model? The very same Achilles heel that meant thousands of VIA mini-ITX boards were useless for running Linux when that was the very market they should have embraced.
Enough ranting.
I’ve heard rumors that MediaTek might be using Radeon GPUs in the future. I hope that happens and I hope someone puts one on a board like this.
A 64bit octo core would be nice, but not with 2G of ram.
I read that too and can only hope it actually happens.
Nominating a $125 price point is misleading when the specification is so vague as to say “up to 2GB of RAM” and “up to 64GB of eMMC storage”, since both of these parameters are major influences on price. I expect the version with 2GB RAM and 64GB of eMMC storage may cost quite a bit more than $125.
No 3D H/W Accel NO DEAL!!!!
what 3d h/w does ?
no deal is the lack of video hw decoding also….
no real deal here.
the pcDuino8 – a board with same specs more or less will cost about 25% less
https://www.cutedigi.com/development-tools/pcduino/linksprite-arches-single-board-computer-pcduino8-default-with.html
AIUI, pcDuino8 has 8GB flash which may be similar or vastly different from “up to 64GB eMMC storage”.
I have a feeling the “up to” part is going to be extremely costly.
at a base price of 125, my guess is that the Cubie will get about 8-16 gb of storage.
Very happy to see them developing new models. The form factor growing is quite funny though. Call me when they release an ATX 24 core ARM board 😉