Korean company's tiny quad-core ARM Linux computer packs a punch at $129

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Need a powerful alternative to the Raspberry Pi? Check out this 3.5-inch board.

Hardkernel's little Linux computer, with a quad-core Samsung Exynos CPU

Little Linux computers have attracted a lot of interest from hobbyists this year. The $35 Raspberry Pi ARM board, which met with huge demand when it launched in February, is a compelling solution for affordable embedded projects. But what if you need more power than the 700MHz ARM11 board can offer?

A Korean hardware manufacturer called Hardkernel is launching a high-end alternative. The company’s new ODROID-X board comes with a Samsung Exynos 4 processor, a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.4GHz. The board also has a quad-core Mali 400 GPU, 1GB of RAM, six USB host ports, an ethernet adapter, headphone and microphone jacks, and an SDHC card slot for storage.

With four times as much RAM as the Raspberry Pi and a much more powerful processor, the Hardkernel board seems like a nice option for more computationally-intensive usage scenarios. The system is still highly compact, measuring at about 3.5 x 3.7 inches.

Because the Hardkernel board is based on the Cortex-A9, which uses the ARMv7 architecture, it is capable of running the latest version of Ubuntu in addition to Android. Ubuntu doesn’t support the Raspberry Pi’s ARM11 architecture (the Raspberry Pi foundation recommends using Fedora on its board).

Of course, users can expect to pay more for the higher specs of Hardkernel board. It is available for $129, which is a lot more than the Raspberry Pi’s hobbyist-friendly $35 price tag. It’s still less than the $183 PandaBoard ES, however, which has a dual-core 1GHz ARM CPU and 1GB of RAM.

We’ve seen a growing number of hobbyist-centric ARM boards materialize, with a wide range of prices and hardware specifications. The more affordable options are making it easier than ever before for hobbyists and independent developers to experiment with embedded computing systems.

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