I've never been keen on SBCs using "Pi" in the name to ride on the Raspberry Pi's coattails. I'm surprised the Raspberry Pi foundation aren't more protective of it, if I'm honest.<p>At least in the case of the Banana Pi etc the board is the same form factor and fits into existing RPi cases, and even runs on the same architecture. This thing has literally nothing in common with the RPi apart from being another SBC.
The price to performance is crazy. If this had an extra ethernet port it would be the go-to router.<p>What is really lacks is a easy power supply option. No barrel jack and it needs up to 20w so more than regular usb can supply. The breakout board, which I assume as a barrel jack, is not for sale on amazon yet.<p>I don't think antennas are included, and I don't know if they are absolutely required.<p>Edit: I don't see any sata or pci interfaces which is disappointing. Also the power breakout board has screw terminals not a barrel jack.
The consensus in the comments seems to be that these boards were designed for another product that was scrapped and now being sold off as a SBC. So stock is likely to be extremely limited.
I got one of these as an emulation box because a retropi couldn't handle the N64 games I wanted to run, and for that purpose it's worked brilliantly. It's pretty cool that it's x86-I plan to try and do some WINE gaming on it as well which isn't possible on, say, a retropi. I haven't tried the official images, but it runs fine with the standard Ubuntu image.<p>Setup notes: <a href="http://blog.eamonnmr.com/2019/04/atomic-pi-emulation-setup-notes/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.eamonnmr.com/2019/04/atomic-pi-emulation-setup-n...</a>
What about power consumption?
I have a RPI 3B+ at house that runs Docker containers, these would be a major step up in terms of image compatibility, but I'm worried about a major step up in terms of electricity cost too.
Just a fair warning to anyone thinking about backing anything on Kickstarter: <i>You have absolutely no legal recourse to against a company that doesn't deliver your goods</i>. You pay Kickstarter, Kickstarter pays the company. Kickstarter is the only one who can enforce their terms against the company, and they're notoriously famous for refusing to do so. There is a long list of Kickstarter campaigns where the founders just took the money and ran. Even ones where the founder appears to have all of the best intentions fall apart.<p>Not saying to never back any croudfunding, but know what you're getting in to. From what I've seen, you get better odds at a casino.
I've always been curious - having a x86 chip in a this form factor - is this a big deal? Hasn't ARM already saturated this segment of the market?
Hell yes. This is a cheaper looking latte panda... though the panda you can get 4GB RAM (~$149)... I’m really hoping to see more x86 based single board computers. The ARM manufacturers I think have gotten a bit lazy and could use some competition... plus running x86 chips does make life a lot easier for more complex applications.
I have an itch to cram as many as possible into a 2U or 3U rack case just to get a massive cluster of compute going. It would certainly be an interesting project.