back to article VIA outs $49 Raspberry Pi-alike

El Reg hasn't written about VIA for yonks, but it's one of the original x86 CPU makers, thanks to its purchase of processor design firm Centaur in 1999. VIA has long pitched low-cost, low-power CPUs, and now it's trying to do so again, this time with ARM technology, in a bid to take a bite out of Raspberry Pi. VIA APC Banana …

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  1. spencer

    gpu

    does it have one?

    1. Antony Riley
      FAIL

      Re: gpu

      Knowing Via is has some awful non standard homegrown chipset which has little or no support.

      Dear Via, if you'd ever shipped the nano cpu with anything resembling a working & supported graphics chipset I'd have considered buying one.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: gpu

      Wondermedia.

      If memory serves me right older Wondermedia did MPEG accel and sucked bricks sidewize through a thin straw on most other stuff (just the way Via GPUs of old used to do on PCs). The library support was horrible too and refused to work with a lot of android apps.

      On the positive side this being VIA it probably does crypto accel so it may be a good VPN gateway if there is support for its crypto in openssl and/or kernel.

      I have no idea how bad will this one be. I am definitely not holding my breath here.

      It may be worth it for a firewall or CCTV/telemetry server if it is possible to boot Debian on it. In fact, I may buy it (to add to the stack of Via MBs which I have and still use from time to time).

      1. Neil 7
        FAIL

        Re: gpu

        That's the thing about the Raspberry Pi, the VideoCore IV GPU is an absolute beast. This VIA board seems to just be cashing in on the Raspberry Pi fuss, it's got approximately the same puny CPU, a much punier GPU (can't do 1080p), double the RAM (which is the only thing it has in its favour), needs a special PSU rather than any common or garden mobile phone power supply, doesn't boot from an SD card so is potentially brickable, and it's a fair bit more expensive. Plus, it will have fark all community behind it, and good luck finding documentation for the hardware.

        So mostly negatives and only one small positive - this VIA is so easy to pass up.

        Now, if it had been x86 at that price, that might have been a little more interesting but again the lack of any community to speak of and no doubt the unsupported/undocumented drivers would have combined to put a major dampener on that enthusiasm also.

  2. JDX Gold badge

    Does the banana come with it?

    1. Code Monkey
      Trollface

      If it does I hope they ship em quicker than Rasberry Pi - otherwise it'll just be a black smear of banana-smelling goo.

  3. Chris Wilson
    FAIL

    720p

    It'll only do 720p? It's obsolete before it's launched.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: 720p

      Not everyone wants a media player (there are platforms far better for that than this or the Pi).

      The 512MB RAM is very welcome.

      1. DrXym

        Re: 720p

        Even as a media player it could be okay. Not everyone has 1080p content. It might also be capable of downscaling 1080p to 720p. Really depends on what GPU is in there, the size of the VRAM and how much hardware acceleration it offers.

      2. Captain Scarlet Silver badge

        Re: 720p

        A Ram slot would be nice to replace the memory with some more of what I want.

  4. DrXym

    Looks more useful in some ways

    More memory, onboard flash, more USB ports. I'd be worried about the 720p output though. What's that mean for the GPU / hardware decoding capability of the device.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Looks more useful in some ways

      For normal programming you don't need a GPU. By the time you start doing 3D graphics you're pretty advanced.

      1. DrXym

        Re: Looks more useful in some ways

        You don't need to program to a GPU to benefit from a GPU. If your desktop windows are rendered into surfaces they don't need to be repainted every time some other window is dragged over them. This reduces the amount of repainting and context switches which results in a more responsive desktop.

  5. Aaron Em
    Trollface

    Well at least

    there's somebody with some manufacturing capability behind this one --

    1. Mikel
      Devil

      Re: Well at least

      This being Via you can expect shipments in sample quantities by the end of 2015.

  6. Tom7
    Meh

    Compared to Raspberry Pi

    Things to like:

    * Extra CPU cycles

    * Extra RAM

    Things not to like:

    * Soldered-on flash - makes it brickable

    * No 1080 graphics / OpenGL ES 2

    * No GPIO - at least none mentioned

    Who really needs a VGA connector these days?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

      > Who really needs a VGA connector these days?

      Loads and loads of schools with older monitors?

      Actually seems a more appropriate platform to learn programming than the Pi - you don't need 1080p video playback for that, but extra memory is nice.

    2. Jess

      Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

      I also like the form factor. Should go in normal cases.

      A shame they didn't just make it a clone of the Pi.

      1. Neil 7

        Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

        Amazingly it looks a far more complicated (and thus expensive) design than the Pi, with separate RAM ICs (has VIA not heard of Package on Package?), the ARM SoC and of course the Flash IC that permits bricking, plus a bunch of other discrete ICs (I counted at least 5, not including the socketed BIOS chip) that aren't considered necessary at all on the R-Pi which is basically built around three ICs in the case of the Model B - LAN IC, Broadcom SoC and a single RAM IC (no LAN IC at all in the Model A).

        It really doesn't look like a lot of thought has gone into this design, and in fact it looks like VIA have used all of their PC motherboard design skills to create it, which probably wasn't a good idea.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

      This also has mounting holes. Sadly missing from the Pi making casing it a bit tricky.

      1. Irongut

        Re: mounting holes (Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi)

        "This also has mounting holes. Sadly missing from the Pi making casing it a bit tricky."

        You sir need to buy new glasses! The Pi clearly has mounting holes in the picture published earlier today by this very organ. I can see at least 4 holes and another may be hidden by the ethernet socket.

        1. Luke McCarthy

          Re: mounting holes (Compared to Raspberry Pi)

          That's the alpha board. The final board does not have mounting holes.

    4. Eponymous Cowherd

      Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

      Also, it appears to be pre-flashed with Android 2.3 (a phone OS), with no indication of other options. Its still an ARM11 (ARMv6) device.

      Given the clock speed is only 800MHz compared to the Pi's 700MHz and they are running the same cores, the only real benefit in this over the Pi is the extra RAM.

      On balance, I'd say the Pi's GPIO ports, 1080p hdmi, multiple OS options and brick-proofing make it the better bet.

      1. Gordan

        Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

        If it'll run Android, it'll run any Linux (you DO know Android is based on the Linux kernel, right?).

        And the chances are that it'll be able to boot from USB, which makes it just as unbrickable.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          brickable?

          If it tries to boot from the soldered-on flash before it tries to boot from USB, and it is possible to change the contents of the soldered-on flash, then it is probably brickable.

          When I am emperor it will be illegal to sell brickable devices and it will be a requirement to provide instructions for restoring a device to a usable state. This isn't just imperial beneficence. It would be a matter of national security if a virus or worm could permanently damage components of widely used hardware.

      2. Alain

        Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

        Hmmm... I have an ARMv6-based tablet clocked at 800 Mhz running Gingerbread and it's a real dog.

        It can't run a significant amount of software for Android too (e.g. Skype video) because of the CPU's generation. I don't know how better than the Telechips TCC8902 in my tablet this VIA CPU could be, but I wouldn't expect it to be a performer compared to more recent (and very cheap too) SOCs like e.g. the Allwinner A10.

    5. Gordan

      Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

      Soldered on flash doesn't mean you have to use it. The chances are it'll run uboot, which means you can boot off a USB disk.

    6. DrXym

      Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

      I studied the screenshot and it's powered by a WM8750. According to the spec sheet for that it supports OpenGL ES 2.0 *and* 1080p.

      http://www.wondermedia.com.tw/en/products/platform/soc/wm8750/

      Why this Via says 720p only is a mystery. Maybe it hasn't the VRAM for any higher.

    7. Luke McCarthy

      Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

      Actually one of the biggest complaints/wishes about the Raspberry Pi is the lack of VGA, it's possible that it might appear in a future revision.

    8. Anonymous Coward 15

      Soldered-on flash

      And a socketed BIOS. So only as brickable as, say, a Joggler.

      1. Neil 7

        Re: Soldered-on flash

        But still brickable, unless you have a spare BIOS IC. And most people won't have spares. So for those without a spare BIOS, it remains brickable.

        Whereas the Raspberry Pi is impossible to brick - if you make a mistake all you need to do is reformat your SD card.

        Despite years of messing with BIOSes and embedded systems, I know which system I prefer and yes, it's actually the SD card method - perfect for tinkering and repeated tweaking, far more forgiving for novice users, and cheaper too.

        1. heyrick Silver badge

          Re: Soldered-on flash

          "it's actually the SD card method - perfect for tinkering and repeated tweaking"

          Not to mention, you aren't tied to picking your OS of choice. Some devices (Beagleboard xM) have a button so u-boot can load different operating systems (RISC OS & Angstrom Linux, for example). In the absence of a button, it's still not a problem, just swap the card and power up. Android, RISC OS, regular Linux, etc etc - the SD card method makes it stupidly easy to choose what you want when you want, with zero risk of bricking the hardware. Now that this stuff is available, and boot times are pretty fast (remember, the OS is probably copied into RAM, not executed directly from Flash, so there's little Flash can do that an SD card can't), I don't see why anybody who wants to use their device would stick with Flash. Maybe an embedded industrial application, it makes sense. A device like this? No. Flash is so last-decade..

    9. heyrick Silver badge

      Re: Compared to Raspberry Pi

      Who really needs a VGA connector these days?

      How about anybody who does not have an HDMI monitor and would like something a little better than composite video? Hell, even S-video is a step up!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NiC location seems odd.

    Putting the network connector on top of the USBs almost doubles the height of the board, which means the case has to be much larger.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NiC location seems odd.

      Looks like standard PC mboard connector ... given they are calling it a "Neo ITX" board then I'd assume its designed to fit in (mini)ITX cases. Placement of fixing holes near connectors looks to be same as mini-ITX and connectors would fit in the standard ITX/ATX port template.

  8. Matthew Smith

    New unit of measure

    The Reg occasionally looks at strange units of measure, especially comparing countries to be multiple times the size of Wales. Well, I like the introduction of the banana. 3/4 banans in size looks good to me.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Hmm.

      If the banana gets added to the list of standard measures and we use it to measure ARM boards like the Raspberry Pi does that make a smoothie?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hmm.

        only if it appears on will it blend....

  9. Gordan

    So, a bit like...

    ... the R-Pi only it's likely to become available in volume before the R-Pi, then?

    Plus double the RAM, similar price, _AND_ *TX form factor! Sounds pretty awesome!

  10. Gordon861

    Size?

    quote "1708 x 85mm"

    Is this thing really nearly 2m long?

    1. Luke McCarthy

      Re: Size?

      It's actually 170x85mm.

    2. Matt Piechota
      Facepalm

      Re: Size?

      "quote "1708 x 85mm"

      Is this thing really nearly 2m long?"

      That's a big banana.

  11. Code Monkey

    Banana or Raspberry. Which is best?

    1. DuncanL
      Joke

      Only one way to find out...

      TRIFLE!

  12. Cosmo
    Thumb Up

    Hobbyist Wars

    Is this the start of a war behind rival manufacturers trying to cash in on the coding enthusiast? Bring it on I say!

  13. Luke McCarthy
    Thumb Up

    Yay

    I for one welcome the new era of cheap ARM development boards!

  14. Pete 2 Silver badge

    I like!

    That 2GB of flash sounds handy - instantaneous bootage (well, close) and having all the ports along one edge is definitely a good move.

    This is exactly the sort of competitive reaction that benefits consumers and users. Anyone want to buy my Pi?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I like!

      Competition is great, but are VIA contributing to the Raspberry Pi Foundation to improve computer education for kids, or just profit taking?

      I can see this VIA board as benefiting consumers/hackers (although not really, as the Pi IMHO is better in almost all areas other than RAM) but selling to consumers/hackers is not the reason Raspberry Pi's are being produced.

  15. Paul 185
    Coat

    sounds like they'd like..

    a piece of the pi

  16. Joe 3
    Thumb Up

    Assembled in...

    I can see "Assem: GB" on the board - does that mean it was actually made in Britain? There's actually a factory somewhere, making physical goods? How marvellous!

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