The Raspberry Pi may not have been the first single-board computer on the market, but its success – selling five million units and counting – has led to an explosion in the market never seen before. Here’s a look at the most notable competition to the Pi.
Lemaker Banana Pro
Lemaker Banana Pro
The follow-up to Lemaker’s Banana Pi, as reviewed in Issue 131, the Banana Pro improves on the original design by adopting the new B+/Raspberry Pi 2 GPIO header and adding integrated 802.11/b/g/n Wi-Fi. Additional features over the Raspberry Pi 2 include on-board SATA, infrared support, Gigabit Ethernet and wider compatibility with various operating systems. Its dual-core AllWinner A20 processor, however, lags behind the Pi 2’s BCM2836 in the performance stakes, and there are only two full-sized USB 2 ports – although, unlike the semi-compatible ports of the Pi, they’re fully standards-compliant.
Intel MinnowBoard Max
One of several open-hardware projects Intel is throwing at the hobbyist market, the MinnowBoard Max is significantly more expensive than the Raspberry Pi but includes a full-fat dual-core 64-bit x86 Atom processor and 2GB of RAM in its top configuration. As detailed in Issue 136’s review, it’s a significant improvement over the 32-bit original and boasts some of the best software compatibility of any hobbyist single-board computer. It lacks the community built up around the Raspberry Pi, however, and the add-on Lure boards for it are currently thin on the ground.
SolidRun HummingBoard
The HummingBoard began life as an internal development board. Available in several editions, ranging from a single-core model to the reviewed HummingBoard-i2ex, it uses an uncommon computer-on-module (COM) design. As such, it’s theoretically possible for SolidRun to release upgraded modules you can buy at a lower cost to replacing the entire device, although no such modules have appeared yet. A promised quad-core variant is also missing, leaving the top-end model lagging behind the Raspberry Pi 2, despite using the more efficient Freescale i.MX6 SoC.
CubieTech Cubieboard 4
The Cubieboard 4 might be bulky and pricey, but it’s a beast. Based around the AllWinner A80 SoC, it packs four Cortex-A15 1.8GHz and four Cortex-A7 1.2GHz cores in ARM’s big.LITTLE layout, but with the ability to run all eight cores simultaneously, giving highly threaded workloads a great speed boost. The 2GB of RAM is also generous, but the PowerVR G6230 GPU means hardware graphics acceleration is unavailable outside Android – a major blow for anyone hoping to run a more flexible operating system.
Hardkernel Odroid C1
As soon as the Raspberry Pi 2was announced, Hardkernel was quick to position the C1 as a more powerful alternative board. Based on an Amlogic SoC, the Odroid C1 includes four 1.5GHz Cortex-A5cores, a Mali-450 MP2 GPU and 1GB of DDR3 memory, along with Gigabit Ethernet and a Raspberry Pi+/2 compatible 40-pin GPIO header. Support for Android and Ubuntu 14.04 is included as standard, but the board again lacks the excellent community enjoyed by the Raspberry Pi.
Imagination Technology Creator CI20
The Creator CI20 uses the MIPS instruction set rather than the more common x86 or ARM ISAs. The CI20 has enjoyed an upgrade since its first release; with double the flash storage at 8GB and an eye catching purple PCB. Its dual-core 1.2GHz CPU is also more efficient than its ARM rivals, but can’t beat the quad-core BCM2836 for multi-threaded speed. Its PowerVR SGX540 also lacks acceleration support outside Android, although Imagination has promised to address this issue in the future.
