[time-nuts] single board PCs

Bob Camp lists at rtty.us
Mon Jan 7 02:09:29 UTC 2013


Hi

Ummm, errrrr you want to run Matlab and you are likely paying $100 an hour to whom ever is waiting on the machine. My *guess* is that a micro board of what ever flavor will do an arbitrary Matlab run in maybe 30 days. That same run would take something large about 30 minutes. That of course assumes you can even get Matlab to load on something small. 

An Ivy Bridge based PC with multiple cores can be built up for less than $800 in a fairly small package. It won't be single board, but it will be small. Not the fastest system on the planet, but pretty fast. You'll be paying a significant chunk of that for the Windows license. The cost of the Matlab license will be well above the cost of the entire system (unless you have some sort of crazy deal going).

Put another way, you'll pay for the more expensive hardware in the first week of use - why cheap out?

Bob 


On Jan 6, 2013, at 8:56 PM, Jim Lux <jimlux at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On 1/6/13 5:43 PM, Chris Albertson wrote:
>> There is not "hottest ticket".  It depends on what you need.  The TI
>> "launch pad" is less then $5 shipped which makes it really popular.
> Somehow I suspect the MSP430 launchpad won't run windows/Linux and Matlab, eh?
> 
> 
> If
>> you need loots of compute power and have an $85 budget and can stand a 9"
>> square PCB buy an Intel Atom motherboard it comes with dual core Atom CPU
>> soldered down and will run a full-on Linux server.
> 
> Sure.. the budget is even higher.. when you're paying the developers $100/hr burdened rate, I'm more than happy to spend a few hundred bucks more to make the development/operating environment something easy and familiar.
> 
> This isn't a "gonna make 10,000 copies and need to squeeze out every penny".. it's a "stick a PC inside so software development is like doing it on your desktop machine"
> 
> 
> 
> If you just need a
>> small computer with a nice display
> 
> No display.. as mentioned, sole interface is via network.
> 
> any Android phone works and of course
>> Androids all run Linux.  Arduino is nice because the software is set up for
>> some one who know ZERO about computers and programming but is still quite
>> powerful and yo can run the programmed Arduino off a 9V battery
> 
> Dude.. Arduinos don't run Matlab or Labview..  Arduinos (of which I am a big fan) are an "embedded microcontroller", not an "embedded PC"..
> 
> I want something that people who are used to working and developing software on a desktop can use for a embedded box.
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> Of those for your use, just buy the miniITX/miniATX with a USB or SD "disk
>> drive".  Cost is under $100 and they burn about 20W of power.  The
>> little launch
>> pad chip will goes for months (years?) on AA battery power.
>> 
>> I think as a general rule ofthumb the bigger the computer the less cost for
>> make the software.
> 
> Precisely why I want a "PC" not a microcontroller.  This is a situation where the developer cost is hugely bigger than the processor cost.
> 
> But which miniATX?  There's tons out there.. and that's the source of the question..
> 
> 
> Phones are out of the question..
> 
> I'm not building an NTP server, but something else of comparable complexity, hence the question.  Folks who have built NTP servers (recently) using off the shelf stuff will have gone through the exercise of finding boards that work, etc.
> 
> 
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