Are there any high performance single-board computers on the market currently? I use a lot of Rpi's in personal projects, and I've been thinking about a home file server in a super small form-factor. What I would like is an SBC somewhere on the size scale of a smartphone, with performance in the range of a current flagship phone.
> In many geeky circles, single-board computers are popular machines. SBCs come in small form factors and generally run GNU/Linux, but unfortunately, many boards like the popular Raspberry Pi are dependent on proprietary software to use. The Free Software Foundation maintains a list of system-on-chip families, sorted by their freedom status.
Let's ignore the concept of Raspberry Pi hats for a second and instead look further back.
Nearly all SBCs have been used as simple platforms to interact with extra peripherals. The idea that SBCs shouldn't support peripherals is new, and arguably pointless. Want a computer with no peripherals to just run code? Pay a VPS provider.
I hate the use of SBC for Single Board Computer. First, the acronym is already in wide use for Session Border Controllers. Second, most PCs are single board computers (just a motherboard), so the name is meaningless.
Buying an SBC to then use extra modules (pcie, camera, etc.) sounds like defeating the purpose of the 'single board' computer.
Interesting experiment nonetheless.
The "single board computer" meaning of SBC dates back to the mid-1970s when microprocessors first started coming out. Whatever a session border controller is, it's unlikely to pre-date that.
I don't understand what you mean that SBCs are sold as entire laptops. SBC is Single Board Computer. Like a raspberry pi. A raspberry pi is not a laptop. If you just look up "RISC-V SBC" none of them are laptops. Is the intent that you want the SoC to be socketed and easily replaceable like AM4 Ryzen?
I think projects sometimes use the trade name "Raspberry Pi" as a shorter form of SBC with plenty of GPIO. Every week there are multiple semi-clone/specialized/enhanced Banana Pi, Lichee Pi, BigTreeTech, ARM or RISC-V, etc.
- pre-built libraries and software compatibility (easier)
Example: I used an rpi4 and old LED TV to drive a digital wall art piece. SBC fit the space and pre-built software cut hours: I coded it up in HTML/JS and headless chrome.
It's a laptop shell (keyboard + screen + battery + i/o) that has a daughter board (connected to the computer via USB and HDMI) and enough space for any reasonable SBC. Comes with Raspberry Pi as standard.
Yes but that's not an SBC, that's a laptop. I don't understand who would call that an "SBC". I guess technically any laptop that's only 1 PCB is an SBC, but that still doesn't answer the original question of SBC -> Laptop.
Can someone speak to their experience with these Raspberry Pi-style SBCs? I'm curious, in particular, if their performance actually aligns with their on-paper specs and how reliable they are.
I feel like "SBC" has specific connotations of the board being sold standalone, which ain't really the case for (the vast majority of) laptops and desktops/AIOs.
Yes and no. Back in the day having a tiny sbc for any type of small task at home made a ton of sense since they were so incredibly cheap. GPIO, while nice, remained a gimmick for the most part. Fast forward to the 2020's, yes SBC's have become pretty powerful. However their price has skyrocketed and availability is almost none. For the price of a raspberry pi(or less), I can get a second hand office mini atx with 16 gigs of ram, 500gb ssd, a 5-6-7-th gen quad core i5 and a good amount of USB's and video outputs. And although 4-5 years old, it is stupid fast in comparison to any pi. I still have a bunch of pi's. One is an ssh server from the outside world to my home network but that's all it does. For anything else, I have two similar mini pc's in the corner of my flat and they do a much better job than any pi. One is processing a ton of data from a subreddit I moderate, along with backups, a small ml model to quickly filter out crap and whatnot. The other hosts dozens of docker containers running self hosted stuff - time management, documents, backups and so on. And there is no denying that x86(with all it's horrors) will always offer a ton more than ARM. All of which is horrible news for the pi's.
There are some potential applications still for consumers. Namely something that recently came to my attention - the beepberry. They are currently out of stock but this is something I'd adore. Get Kali running on it, and I want two immediately: toss one in my car and one in my backpack. I cannot even begin to describe how useful this would be. Then again - kind of a niche problem which is a subset of a relatively small niche to begin with - consumer sbc.
In this instance consider the SBC a lightweight, low-power, always on server sitting behind his/her router.
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