Page 1 of 1

ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 12:43 pm
by gimmeapill
Fresh from the Hardkernel forums here are the preliminary specs for the next Odroid.
ODROID-N1 key features:
- Rockchip AArch64 RK3399 Hexa-core processor
- Dual-core ARM Cortex-A72 2Ghz processor and Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 1.5Ghz processor, big-LITTLE architecture
- Mali-T860MP4 GPU, support OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0, OpenCL 1.2
- 4Gbyte DDR3-1866 RAM, Dual channel interface for 64bit data bus width
- 2 x SATA3 port, native SATA implementation via PCIe-gen2 to SATA3 interface
- eMMC 5.0 (HS400) Flash storage and a UHS capable micro-SD slot.
- 2 x USB 3.0 host port
- 2 x USB 2.0 host port.
- Gigabit Ethernet port
- HDMI 2.0 for 4K display
- 40-Pin GPIO port
- OS: Ubuntu 18.04 or Debian Stretch with Kernel 4.4 LTS, Android 7.1
- Size: 90 x 90 x 20 mm approx. (excluding cooler)
- Power: 12V/2A input (Attaching two 3.5inch HDD requires a 12V/4A PSU)
- Price: US$110 (To be adjusted based on DRAM market price changes)
- Mass production schedule: TBD
Image
Image
Image

https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php? ... 9&start=50

The selling point as far as I'm concerned is primarily the native Debian support + dual SATA (even given the limitations).

Cheers,

LX

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2018 5:04 pm
by folderol
This is looking seriously impressive!

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2018 10:39 am
by gimmeapill
Yes, this looks like a solid base for many projects.
Especially if it gets an RT kernel :twisted:

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2018 10:32 am
by gimmeapill

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2018 8:53 am
by gimmeapill
Up-update: N1cancelled, N2 cancelled, it's gonna be called H2 and be...Intel based:
Brand New ODROID Single Board Computer

Unread postby odroid » Fri Oct 19, 2018 6:12 pm
As you all know, we do not disclose our products until it reaches a certain stage.
The N1 was the only one that we dropped after the official announcement. Behind, we had quite some projects attempted, incomplete or dropped.
Today, I would like to reveal one Intel platform, H2, which will be available in November. Why it is not H or H1? It is our 3rd X86 platform. We kicked off the first x86 project in 2015.

Here are advantages that encourage us to start x86 platforms as well as the ARM architecture.
x86(x64) platform has very decent Linux software support
- The latest Kernel 4.18 perfectly works out of the box (Today’s Ubuntu 18.10)
- Modern OpenGL 4.5, OpenCL 2.0, Wayland and Vulkan GPU drivers are working via standard Mesa library.
- MPEG2/MPEG4/H.264/H.265/VP8/VP9 HW video decoder & encoder works with VAAPI standard.
x86(x64) platform has very strong hardware interfaces
- Dual channel 64bit DRAM interfaces for much faster data processing
- Multiple video outputs
- Multiple PCIe lanes
- Multiple USB 3.0/2.0 root hubs
- Multiple Ethernet ports
- Multiple SATA ports

HISTORY OF PROJECT
2015 October,
We started to develop the first x86 based ODROID board with Intel Cherry Trail x5-Z8500 2.2Ghz CPU which was supposed to be the ODROID-H.
In 2015 and 2016, there were several single board computers in the market using Intel x5-Z8300 1.8Ghz Quad-core CPU from other manufacturers.
We saw significant performance difference on Z8500 2.2Ghz. It was in a different category.
After 3 months of schematics and PCB design, we started manufacturing process. We faced a big issue that Z8500 had a very fine pitch of BGA which raised PCB cost and manufacturing cost twice more than expected.
Think that Z8300 had 592 pins while Z8500 had 1380 pins. LPDDR3 RAM sourcing was another big hurdle. Z8300 supported a normal DDR3 while Z8500 supported only LPDDR3 which was much more expensive with very long lead time.
Z8500 CPU itself was very competitive. But, it was not competitive enough when it was turned out the final products.

2016 August,
We started another x86 board design with Intel Braswell N3160 CPU.
From the previous lesson, the second development was faster and more successful. This time, we made a project name as ‘ODROID-H1’.
We made the first engineering sample in February 2017 with 8GB onboard DDR3 memory.
ODROID-H1 was used for a dedicated project and the result was quite successful.
But the next generation Intel CPU Apollo Lake was already available in the market and we thought Braswell was not competitive in the generic SBC market.
Additionally, the 1GB DDR3 chip shortage problem also blocked the launching of the H1 model.

2017 December,
We considered AMD Ryzen 5 2500U 3.5Ghz mobile processor. The performance was very impressive, but the price of the CPU was also very impressive.
Fortunately, Intel also announced the Gemini Lake processors. It was slower than Ryzen but much faster than Intel Apollo Lake, and the price was reasonable.
Finally, we decided to build a high-end single board computer ODROID-H2 as the following outstanding specification.
- 2.3Ghz Quad-core processor J4105 (14nm) with 4MiB Cache
- Dual-channel Memory DDR4-PC19200 (2400MT/s)
- Total 32GiB RAM Space with two SO-DIMM slots
- 4 x PCIe 2.0 for one NVMe storage
- 2 x Gbit Ethernet ports
- 2 x SATA 3.0
- SSE4.2 accelerator (SMM, FPU, NX, MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, AES)
- Intel UHD Graphics (Gen9.5) 600 (GT1) 700Mhz
- HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.2 multiple video outputs

Therefore, we started the hardware design from March 2018 and we made the first engineering samples in July.
After fixing some hardware issues, we had the second engineering samples in September. Everything went well and we could pass FCC, CE, KC and RoHS certification tests in the past few months.
We will begin mass production of ODROID-H2 within a few weeks and our first shipment will be available in late November.

ODROID-H2 includes a large heatsink, which will give you a quiet and powerful computing experience.
The size of the board is about 110x110x43mm and weighs about 320 grams including heatsink, two DRAM modules, and M.2 NVMe SSD.
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image

More details in the forum post:
https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=32536

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2018 10:11 am
by folderol
Well that me out then. These days I won't touch anything from Intel :(

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Thu Oct 25, 2018 10:38 am
by gimmeapill
folderol wrote:Well that me out then. These days I won't touch anything from Intel :(
Can't blame you, but I might get one for my next NAS actually - as the lesser of two evils.
I've been growing tired of the rabbit hole with ARM SOCs and custom kernels.
I need a more hands off approach as well as timely security updates, so whatever can run on the stock Debian stable kernel will do.
An Intel SOC with passive cooling and decent I/O capabilities sure fits the bill here. UEFI is another story, but let's see what the Odroid folks come up with..

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 9:52 am
by sadko4u
Bad news, indeed. Anyway, we still have ASUS Tinker Board, Raspberry Pi 3 B+ and set of cheap chinese microcomputers like Orange Pi and so on.

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Sun Oct 28, 2018 8:12 pm
by asbak
It's great news. Why put up with the hassles of dealing with ARM architecture especially for audio. With x86 almost everything should work straight out of the box.

I'm currently using a Chinese Mini-PC based on a much less powerful Intel N3450 or something like that, even that little box has served me really well as a home server, remote login server, for casual video watching and so on. This thing, on paper, is so much more powerful with native fast on-board IO options, USB3, decent and well supported graphics.

If the price is right this thing looks like a killer. It'll be an awesome base for any Linux <insert-audio-project-here>.

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 12:07 pm
by gimmeapill
& It's alive (pre-order at least):
https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2/

Image

The specs and price look competitive for an x86 server/desktop, not so much for a DIY appliance.
The bummer for me is the power consumption: it looks like this thing would need a notebook battery at least to be portable - I can probably do the same with my wife's mini notebook.

But I might actually get one to replace my old armel debian/qnap NAS, & I really have a soft for those plexi enclosures (at least the ones with a proper airflow design)

Image

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 2:18 pm
by gimmeapill
...And all the above doesn't really matters because the H2 is already sold out:
https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=168&t=32833

At least this tells us that x86 is not dead yet ;-)

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:23 pm
by asbak
Wouldn't be my first choice for a NAS, it only has 2 SATA ports, RAID1 at best. Nah, that's mickey mouse level storage.

A cheapo second hand HP N54L + at least 8GB + FreeNAS + a flashed BIOS and you get 5 SATA Ports and Terabytes worth of RAID 5 ZFS storage space. Best bang for the buck.

Re: ODROID-N1 Announcement

Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 8:26 pm
by gimmeapill
For the minimalistic configuration with passive cooling I want to replace, it is actually spot on.
I don't want any software RAID or ZFS, and only use standalone drives with ext4 (with LVM if needed) - drives which are also spinned down when not in use. Eventually I'll have a look at bcache to speed things up a bit, but that's about it. I just need a bit more memory than 256MB to run the syncthing cluster ;-)
But don't get me wrong, I like HP micro servers, just they're already overkill for what I have to do here.