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Single Board Computers

The document discusses single board computers, which are computers contained on a single circuit board rather than multiple boards like traditional computers. It provides examples of popular single board computers like Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone and describes their specifications and uses for hardware development and education.

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72 views3 pages

Single Board Computers

The document discusses single board computers, which are computers contained on a single circuit board rather than multiple boards like traditional computers. It provides examples of popular single board computers like Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone and describes their specifications and uses for hardware development and education.

Uploaded by

Sri Sri
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Single Board Computers

It’s a computer in a single board! ;) Now obviously you might raise the question “Are
there Multiple Board Computers as well?” Well, as a matter of fact, yes! There is a
difference between traditional computers and single board computers. You must be
familiar that full-fledged computers (like PCs and Mac) have a motherboard. On the
motherboard, you will essentially find a processor (like the Intel® Core™, AMD®
Athlon™, etc.), and other circuitry associated with that. You will also find slots for
other peripherals like RAM, ROM, Hard Disk, LAN Card, CPU Fan, Heat Sink, LCD
monitor, etc. These peripherals need to be attached to the motherboard separately
in order to make the PC/Mac fully functional.
Unlike PCs/Mac, single board computers consist of everything on a single board
itself! On the board, we have a processor and all other necessary peripherals and
circuitry as well. We have onboard RAM, ROM, flash storage, AV ports, Ethernet port,
etc. This means that one board is sufficient to act as a full-fledged computer! Yes,
even they can boot into an operating system (OS) like Linux, Android, etc. and
operate like any other computer. Being lightweight and specific, they have found
huge application in smartphones, tablets and other consumer products.
These days’ semiconductor manufacturers are building ever powerful processors,
which are no less than beasts, thanks to Moore’s Law. These processors, based upon
a unique architecture like ARM, Intel x86 or other custom architectures, give
whopping performances like 1.2 GHz clock frequency, etc. When combined with 1GB
DDR3 RAM, 2GB Flash storage, HDMI/AV port, USB ports, LAN ports, etc. on the
same board, it becomes a single board computer! Simply power it up, connect to a
display device and boom! You are all set to go… your computer has successfully
booted into an OS like Linux, Android, etc.
In addition to that, the processors are designed in order to generate less heat and
consume less power. That’s why you can run your smartphone the entire day without
charging the battery or cooling it down! All the electronic gadgets that you see around
– smartphones, tablets, etc. have one such single board computer inside them – their
motherboard! Most of them will run Android and iOS (an OS just like Windows,
Linux, Mac OSx, etc.). You can download and install apps just like you do on your
PC.
Why do we need them?
Portability being one of the major features. These devices are pretty intuitive to use
as well. They consume less power and energy and being cost effective! Suitable for
developer applications as well for development of new apps, testing, debugging,
hardware development, hacking etc.
Examples
As a developer, apart from the gadgets, there are some notable single board
computers available in the market for both, hardware and software development.
Some of them include Raspberry Pi, The Beagles (BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard xM,
BeagleBone, BeagleBone Black), PandaBoard, MK802, MK808, Cubieboard,
MarsBoard, Hackberry, Udoo, etc. Recently, Intel® has also entered into the Open
Source world with its Atom™ processor based MinnowBoard.
Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi Model B (Image Courtesy: Wikipedia.org)


Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized single board computer developed by the UK based
Raspberry Pi Foundation for the sole intention of teaching programming and basic
computer science to school students. It runs Linux on a 700 MHz ARM processor,
has two USB ports to connect the keyboard and mouse, supports video via HDMI
and/or RCA, connects to the internet via the Ethernet port, storage handled by a SD
card.
The presence of GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) pins on the board has lured
many developers to use it for several physical computing projects which include
hardware interfacing of electronics!
So you can see that Raspberry Pi is powerful enough to drive a 1080p monitor and
serve as a full-on desktop computer!
The Beagles
Based upon ARM based processors from Texas Instruments, the Beagles are a bunch
of single board computers aimed at open source computing. The Beagles consist of
four siblings – BeagleBoard, BeagleBoard xM, BeagleBone and the all new
BeagleBone Black.
BeagleBoard and BeagleBoard xM

BeagleBoard xM (Photo Courtesy: Texas Instruments)


BeagleBoard contains the OMAP3538 SoC by Texas Instruments (TI) based upon 720
MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor. It has an on-board Digital Signal Processor (DSP)
along with the ARM processor. The TMS32064xx DSP by TI is pretty powerful and is
used for processing analog/digital signals (like audio, video, etc). It has a 512 MB
SDRAM as well.
BeagleBoard xM is the successor of its elder sibling contains the AM37x SoC by TI
based upon 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor. It has significant developments in the
board design and specifications over the traditional BeagleBoard. This board is
powerful enough to give laptop-like performance!
One of the best things about these boards is that they are open source and have good
support from the developer community and has also developed an ecosystem by now.
BeagleBone

BeagleBone
This is a smaller version of the BeagleBoard(s). It has an AM335x 720 MHz ARM
Cortex-A8 processor from TI. But unlike the BeagleBoard(s), this doesn’t have a DSP
at all. It has 32 KB of EEPROM and 256 MB DDR2 RAM. What made it more popular
among developers is its greater scope for hardware interfacing with more number of
GPIO pins and more supported interfaces (like UART, Timers, PWM, ADC, SPI, etc).
The All New BeagleBone Black

BeagleBone Black (Image Courtesy: Texas Instruments)


The BeagleBone Black is a mini-PC and is the most recent version of the Beagles and
contains a TI Sitara AM335x ARM Cortex A8 processor running at 1 GHz clock speed.
It has the same pin layout as that of its previous white version BeagleBone. It has
512 MB DDR3 RAM and 2 GB on-board flash storage which is used to boot an OS.
By default, it comes with the Linux Angstrom pre-loaded OS and can support
different flavors of Linux and Android.
Similar to the Raspberry Pi, it comes with one USB port, one microUSB port, a micro
HDMI port, a micro SD card slot and a 10/100 Ethernet jack. Now unlike the 8 digital
pins of Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone Black has 65 digital I/O pins, analog pins, SPI,
I2C, PWM, timers, and much more! We will discuss more features in the next section
where we compare BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi.

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