Onion’s Omega2 computer may give the Raspberry Pi a run for its money if the success of the Kickstarter campaign is any indication. The Daily Dot reports: “With an initial goal of just $15,000, over 11,560 backers have pledged the company $446,792 in hopes of getting their hands on this little wonder board. So why are thousands of people losing their minds? Simple; the Omega2 packs a ton of power into a $5 package. Billed as the world’s smallest Linux server, complete with built-in Wi-Fi, the Omega2 is perfect for building simple computers or the web connected project of your dreams

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/onion/omega2-5-iot-computer-with-wi-fi-powered-by-linux

Since the introduction of the Raspberry Pi, the embedded Linux scene has been rocked by well supported hardware that is produced in quantity, a company that won’t go out of business in six months, and a huge user base. Yes, there are a few small problems with the Raspberry Pi and its foundation – some stuff is still closed source, the Foundation itself plays things close to their chests, and there are some weird binary blobs somebody will eventually reverse engineer. Viewed against the competition, though, nothing else compares.

Here’s the NanoPi Neo, the latest quad-core Allwinner board from a company in China you’ve never heard of.

The NanoPi Neo is someone’s answer to the Raspberry Pi Zero, the very small and very cheap single board Linux computer whose out-of-stock percentage has led some to claim it’s completely fake and a media conspiracy. The NanoPi Zero features an Allwinner H3 quad-core Cortex-A7 running at 1.2 GHz, 256MB RAM, with a 512MB version being released shortly. Unlike the Raspberry Pi Zero, the NanoPi Neo features a 10/100 Ethernet port. No, it does not have PoE.

http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=132

Catalog of 81 open-spec, hacker friendly SBCs
Jun 1, 2016 — by Eric Brown
http://hackerboards.com/catalog-of-81-open-spec-hacker-friendly-sbcs/

[Eric Brown] recently compared several inexpensive development boards from FriendlyARM including the NanoPi M3, the NanoPi M1, and the NanoPC-T3. These range from about $11 to $60 with the M3 costing $35. You can see an M1 booting on an HDMI screen in the video below.

Open-spec, octa-core “NanoPi M3” SBC sells for $35
http://hackerboards.com/open-spec-octa-core-nanopi-m3-sbc-sells-for-35/

FriendlyARM’s NanoPi M3 SBC runs Linux or Android on a 64-bit, octa-core Samsung S5P6818, and offers WiFi, BT, GbE, and a 40-pin RPi connector.

In April, FriendlyARM blew away the scant competition in octa-core, 64-bit hacker SBCs with its $60 NanoPC-T3 board. Now it has stepped even harder on the affordability scale with a smaller, somewhat stripped down NanoPi M3 featuring the same Samsung S5P6818 octa-core SoC. The open-spec, community-backed boards sells for only $35, plus $10 shipping to the U.S.

UP, the credit card computer board for makers powered by Intel Quad Core Atom X5-8350 1.92 GHz, running Linux, Windows 10, and Android

http://www.up-board.org/

The current crop of ARM single board computers have a lot in common. Everything from the Odroid to the Raspberry Pi are built around Systems on a Chip, a piece of silicon that has just about everything you need to build a bare minimum board. You won’t find many hardware hackers playing around with these chips, though. That would require putting some RAM on the board, and some other high-speed connectors. Until now, the only people building these ARM boards were Real Engineers™, with a salary commensurate of their skills.

This is now about to change. Octavo Systems has launched a new product that’s more or less a BeagleBone on a chip. If you can handle putting a PCB with a BGA package in a toaster oven, you too can build your own ARM single board computer running Linux.

Octavo’s new System in Package is the OSD335x family, featuring a Texas Instruments AM335x ARM Cortex A8 CPU, up to 1GB of DDR3, and peripherals that include 114 GPIOs, 6 UARTs, 2 SPIs, 2 I2Cs, 2x Gigabit Ethernet, and USB.

The chips used in commercially available single board computers like the Pi and BeagleBone have hundreds of passive components sprinkled around the board. This makes designing one of these single board computers challenging,

Octavo is baking a bunch of these resistors, capacitors, and inductors right into this chip, allowing for extremely minimal boards running Linux.

OSD335x
A New Era of Integration and Flexibility
http://octavosystems.com/octavo_products/osd335x/

Each OSD335x device incorporates a Texas Instruments AM335x Sitara™ Processor, TPS65217C Power Management IC, TL5209 LDO Voltage Regulator, a DDR3 SDRAM, and over 140 passive components. Since the OSD335x encapsulates the complicated high-speed design of the processor/DDR3 interface, the power management IC, and the complete complement of related capacitors, resistors, and inductors, the final system design is vastly simplified.

Even before the announcement and introduction of the Raspberry Pi 3, word of a few very powerful single board ARM Linux computers was flowing out of China. The hardware was there – powerful 64-bit ARM chips were available, all that was needed was a few engineers to put these chips on a board, a few marketing people, and a contract manufacturer.

One of the first of these 64-bit boards is the Pine64. Introduced to the world through a Kickstarter that netted $1.7 Million USD from 36,000 backers, the Pine64 is already extremely popular. The boards are beginning to land on the doorsteps and mailboxes of backers, and the initial impressions are showing up in the official forums and Kickstarter campaign comments.

This un-review covers the least expensive Pine64, featuring a 1.2 GHz Allwinner A64, 512MB of RAM, Ethernet, HDMI, and two USB ports.

Right now, the Pine64 is available for preorder in three configurations. The lowest tier, the one being reviewed here, is $15 USD with worldwide shipping. The Pine64+ includes 1GB of RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, and connectors for a camera, LCD, and a touch panel. This version costs $19 USD, plus $7 shipping to the US, $12 for the rest of the world. The top-tier Pine64+ 2GB includes 2GB of RAM, priced at $29, plus $7 shipping to the US, $12 for the rest of the world.

There’s a lot of space on the Pine64, and the headers, ports, and plugs take full advantage of this fact. Power, Ethernet, and HDMI are all on one side of the board, USB and the 3.5mm mic and headphone jack are opposite, the SD card is along the side. There’s a DSI header to connect a touch sensitive LCD, but the connector for the touch panel is on the other side of the board.

The hardware is pretty much what you would expect from a 64-bit ARM board. The quad-core ARM A53 Allwinner CPU is effectively the same CPU that is found in the Raspberry Pi 3. The GPU, however, is entirely different.

https://www.pine64.com/