14 DAY TRIAL // PINE A64 is a new, first 64-bit expandable Quad-Core board that can be used as a regular PC, a media center, server, and pretty much everything else. Its makers are now looking for funding on Kickstarter and they are having a lot of success.
There are numerous small PC boards out there like the Raspberry Pi, Banana Pi, Odroid, Arduino, BeagleBoard, and so on. It’s getting difficult to keep track of them all, but one thing we do know for sure. None of them is using a 64-bit process, but that’s about to change with PINE A64.
Like any other single-board computers, the PINE A64 is really cheap. In fact, it’s so cheap that it’s hard to believe it is real. As customers, we usually pay a lot more just on shipping, but PINE A64 costs only $15, and it’s powerful enough for almost any task that you’ll be throwing at it.
PINE A64 is more powerful than the first Xbox
The fact that computers are getting smaller and more powerful shouldn't really be all that surprising, but you have to look at the PINE A64 and think that it’s more powerful than the original Xbox, which was ten times bigger.
“The PINE64 CPU is a quad-core ARM A53 64-bit processor that runs at 1.2GHz. The GPU on the PINE A64 is a dual-core MALI-400 MP2 and runs at 500MHz, capable of 1.1 Gpixel/s throughput. This means the graphics capabilities are slightly higher than the original X-Box's level of performance. PINE A64 board is powered by the latest 64-bit quad-core ARM A53 CPU and delivers up to 20-30% better performance than other 32 bit open source counterparts,” reads the Kickstarter entry.
The makers of this new board from PINE64 Inc. are saying that it also comes with two USB ports, HDMI output, 3.5mm Audio/Mic Output, Ethernet port, and 2 I/O expansions. The more expensive version also has ports for a camera module, a touch panel module, and even an LCD port.
PINE A64 is also capable of running Android Lollipop 5.1, Ubuntu, OpenWRT, and OpenHAB. These are the supported OSes, but others should work as well.
The Kickstarter project still has about two weeks to go, and the launch date for PINE A64 is February 2016. They managed to raise almost $900,000 and they will probably manage to do a lot better.