A new, high-speed competitor to Raspberry Pi could soon be hitting store shelves. Libre Computer just announced on Twitter that its next-generation line of single-board computers, which it calls Project Cottonwood, will be available in Q3 with the flagship "Big Cottonwood" offering speeds that are double those of a Raspberry Pi 4, the fastest Pi on the market today.

Long known as a maker of Raspberry Pi-sized boards, the Shenzhen China-based company posted just a single image of Project Cottonwood, along with a handful of details. These will be at least two SKUs: a "Little Cottonwood" that costs $10 more than the brand's current "Le Potato" board, which goes for $35 on Amazon, and a "Big Cottonwood" that costs twice as much as Le Potato but is double the speed of the Pi 4.  Doing the math, that sounds like $45 and $70 for the two boards respectively.

The company was very coy about specs, covering the SoC with a heatsink in the sample photo and responding to user questions on Twitter by just saying that it is some kind of ARMv6 processor. However, we can glean some information just from the picture.

The board looks very similar to the company's existing Le Potato, which is the same shape and size as a Raspberry Pi 3B, but with a white PCB. Like the Pi 3B (and unlike the Pi 4), it has a single, full-size HDMI output rather than dual micro HDMI ports. Like all Pi B models, the product in the picture has a 40-pin GPIO, a CSI camera connector and a DSI display connector. 

In an improvement over Le Potato, which tops out at USB 2.0, it appears that there are at least two USB 3.0 ports on the back. We say this simply because of the blue color that shows through the metal in the image. It also looks like the board is using a USB-C power connector instead of the microUSB one on the earlier board. However, the connector is blurry so we can't tell for sure.

While we don't know who makes the Project Cottonwood's SoC, we know that Libre uses processors from AllWinner, RockChip and Amlogic on its current line of SBCs. Amlogic's S905X powers Le Potato, which looks the most Cottonwood and Raspberry Pi 3. 

Le Potato can run a variety of operating systems, including Ubuntu, Android, Debian and Raspberry Pi's own Raspbian "Buster" platform. So it seems likely that the same set of OSes would run on Project Cottonwood. However, according to a review I read,  Le Potato isn't fully compatible with Raspberry Pi HATs, though with software translation, they may work.

In its Twitter post, Libre Computer said that it started working on Project Cottonwood all the way back in 2019 and this line, along with another named Sweet Potato, will be its first new products in more than five years. Coincidentally, the Raspberry Pi 4 was released in 2019 and it has remained at the top of Raspberry Pi's product stack since that time.

Raspberry Pi products have been harder to find in the last couple of years thanks to a chip shortage, though availability seems to be improving and CEO Eben Upton recently told Jeff Geerling that inventory will improve a lot later in the year. He also has gone on record saying that there will not be a Raspberry Pi 5 launching in 2023.

If it does beat Raspberry Pi 4 on speed and availability, it's possible that Libre Computer could secure a place for itself with makers. However, the size of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem, which includes HATs, cases and other accessories, makes it tough for anyone else to compete for the SBC throne

The stock levels of Raspberry Pi are slowly returning to normal, and it is hoped that by the end of 2023, things should be back to pre-pandemic, pre-chip shortage norms. But the "gap" left by Raspberry Pi has seen other board makers rush to offer alternatives, and the $33 BigTreeTech BTT Pi v1.2 looks like a low-cost SBC for makers and 3D printer fans.

BTT Pi v1.2 is an SBC, and it can be used as a Raspberry Pi replacement on par with the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. At the heart of BTT Pi v1.2 is the Allwinner H616 SoC, which features a quad core Arm Cortex A53 running at 1.5GHz. BTT Pi v1.2's CPU clock is 300MHz higher than its direct competitor, the Raspberry Pi 3 B. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W also uses the same 64-bit Arm Cortex A53 CPU, clocked at 1GHz and with only half the RAM.

The 40-pin GPIO is color-coded and, from a casual glance, the pinout looks to be flipped 180 degrees, along with the rest of the board. That will make pretty much all Raspberry Pi cases incompatible with BTT Pi v1.2. How the GPIO can be used is a mystery for now. Looking in the support section of BigTreeTech's website we cannot find a guide on accessing the GPIO via any programming language. At a guess, we would assume that the GPIO can be accessed via the Linux OS, in a similar manner as to how Khadas VIM boards can. Can you use a Raspberry Pi HAT on the board? Again this depends on the GPIO pinout and software compatibility.

So why has BigTreeTech released the BTT Pi v1.2? Well, it all boils down to 3D printing. BTT Pi v1.2 is designed for bringing extra features to even the best 3D printers.  BTT Pi v1.2 features support for Klipper, an alternative firmware for 3D printers that requires a little more processing power than G-Code. You'll still need your own 3D printer mainboard, but adding BTT Pi v1.2 and an ADXL345 accelerometer (via the dedicated port) will enable the use of Klipper's input shaping tool. Klipper can greatly increase the speed of your 3D printer, but all that high-speed and heavy print heads mean inertia, and that can manifest itself as ghosting / ringing. Input shaping (resonance compensation) reduces these issues by attempting to cancel out the resonance, and this is where the accelerometer comes in handy. BTT Pi v1.2 also provides a means of cloud printing via the Cloud 3D Print app.

BigTreeTech BTT Pi V1.2 is currently for sale, priced at around $33.

Another RISC-V development system has become available — this time with an Allwinner D1s processor on board in a package designed to teach programming. The DongshanPI-D1s, brought to our attention by CNX-Software, is for sale with its carrier board on AliExpress for less than $20 or maybe less with an AliExpress promo code.

Compared to something like a Raspberry Pi 4, the 100ask-designed DongshanPI-D1s is a little light in the specs department — but it’s also much smaller and cheaper. The Allwinner D1s features a single XuanTie C906 64-bit RISC-V core clocked at 1GHz, with just 64MB of DDR2 RAM. There's also 16MB of flash storage and it's allegedly powerful enough to encode and decode 1080p video at 60fps (though the encoding appears to be limited to Motion JPEG). 

The central board itself is the red bit on the image above, which plugs into a carrier board — no images are available of the core module without its carrier, so they may be soldered together. The carrier adds a Micro SD card slot and a pair of USB Type-Cs, both of which can apparently be used to power the device, but which function differently when not hooked up to the juice: one as an OTG port, the other for UART and CKLink debugging. 

There are also three arrays of pins, all of them with 40 of the thin metal spines, but with slightly different uses. One supports display and audio interfaces, one is GPIO, USB, I2C, SPI, and TV in/out, while the third is GPIO, UART, and I2C. The latter pair are also compatible with Raspberry Pi power signaling. There's no mention of networking capabilities.

With its on-board RISC-V debugger, the board appears to be aimed at those interested in low-level programming of the open-source processor architecture, and data sheets are available from 100ask. Software support is limited to the Tina Linux SDK, but a crowdsourcing campaign is underway to provide greater software support and documentation — though at the moment it appears to only be in Chinese.

BigTreeTech known primarily for its 3D printing accessories, has released a Raspberry Pi CM4 alternative board. The device, as reported by CNX Software, uses the exact same form factor as the Compute Module, but downgrades the specs. Still, if you’re after a low-power board for IoT or other product that needs the kind of IO a CM4 can provide, this looks like a reasonable replacement.

There's also a carrier board that turns it into a full-fat Pi 4 B-style board, but the actual specs look weak in comparison to the real thing. You get an Allwinner H616 quad-core Cortex-A53 SoC running at 1.5GHz, a Mali-G31 MP2 GPU and a single gigabyte of RAM. DDR3 RAM, at that. It’s not a great comparison to the tiny powerhouse that is the Pi 4, but it might be enough for a NAS or other low-power computing project.

The CB1 will decode video up to 4K/60 and display it via a single HDMI port on a carrier board. It can communicate using Wi-Fi 4, or 100Mbps Ethernet via a carrier, and there are two board-to-board connectors close enough to those on the CM4 to make it compatible with accessories made for the more powerful module. It measures 55 x 40 x 4.7mm - the same as, you’ve guessed it, the CM4.

There's good software support too, with an image of Debian Linux available to download from GitHub. It’s a version of Bullseye, the distro that powers the official Raspberry Pi OS, and uses kernel 5.16, so isn’t particularly out of date, though the chipset is supported in the new 6.0 Linux kernel.

Performance should be similar to the Raspberry Pi 3, which was never released in the CM4’s form factor, instead appearing as a DIMM-like board with a broad edge connector. The CB1 is available from the Biqu store in a bundle with the Pi adapter for around $40. It has yet to appear on BigTreeTech’s AliExpress store but when it does make sure to use an AliExpress promo code.

The MangoPi MQ Pro has launched in China. This tiny single-board computer (SBC) uses the same form factor as the better known but equally diminutive Raspberry Pi Zero W, which we reviewed in October 2021. However, the new MangoPi MQ Pro has a crucial difference from the UK-designed SBC, setting it apart from the multitude of clones - it uses a RISC-V processor.

In January, the MangoPi MQ Pro had reached its final design and was ready for mass production. The SBC used a green PCB at that time, but now it is pleasing to see it has fully ripened, with an eye-catching red PCB.

With the design finalized, it hasn't taken long for MangoPi to get the first MQ Pro boards to retail. CNX Software noticed it had started to become available in China, priced at the local equivalent of ~$20. It is only on China's Taobao right now, but the news outlet reckons it will arrive on retailers like Aliexpress in due course, an accessible portal for buyers that are outside of China.

The big attraction of the MangoPi MQ Pro for a particular group of developers, makers, and tinkerers will be the RISC-V architecture processor on board. The exact processor used is the Allwinner D1 C906, which also features on MangoPi's postage-stamp-sized MQ1 board. In brief, this SoC's RISC-V core runs at up to 1 GHz and features a DSP, 2D graphics acceleration, and a VPU capable of 4K H.265/H.264.

You may have noticed by omission – that the Allwinner D1 SoC doesn't feature 3D acceleration. Thus the MangoPi MQ Pro won't be as well-rounded as the $15 Raspberry Pi Zero W. The MangoPi MQ Pro is probably more suited to 2D desktop applications and headless use cases. Moreover, if you buy a MangoPi MQ Pro, you will also have a more limited choice of OS – with purported support for either Tina-Linux or Debian. Finally, it's important to note that the GitHub repository for the MQ Pro is a bit empty currently. We hope that some more software and documentation become available before this SBC gets into the user's hands.

Readers may balk at the $20 ticket price of the MangoPi MQ Pro when the Raspberry Pi Zero W has an MSRP of $15. However, it is one of the most affordable RISC-V boards currently available, and the scarcity and uniqueness have a price. In addition, we recently reported that potential Raspberry Pi purchasers are presently having a hard time sourcing stock, depending on the model, so scarcity is also affecting SBCs like the Pi Zero W.

Single-board computers seem to be getting smaller and smaller, but a new board being teased by Mango Pi must surely win some sort of award for compactness - the as-yet-unnamed module packs a Linux-capable SoC - and precisely zero ports - into a space slightly smaller than an SD card. Much smaller than the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4, and the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W.

That’s a proper, old-fashioned SD card, not the Micro variety - though a computer that size must surely only be a short while away - so we’re looking at something 1.2 x 1 inches and 0.08 inch thick. Possibly called the ‘Linux Box’, as there's a blank product page of that name on the Mango Pi website and discussion of it on the forum, the tiny board looks to bring four Arm Cortex-A53 cores (the same as in a Raspberry Pi 3 or Zero 2 W) to the party, and run Tina Linux (Allwinner’s embedded distro based on OpenWrt). It’s apparently good for 1080p output at 60Hz, but you’ll need some way of breaking out the HDMI output to get that - a carrier board of some description seems the most likely candidate. 

The processor at the heart of the Linux Box is the Allwinner H616 previously seen in the Orange Pi Zero 2, which along with those four cores also carries a Vulkan 1.1-capable GPU, and supports a maximum of 4GB of various flavors of DDR3 and 4. It has an SD 3.0 interface, which means UHS-I transfers on SDHC and SDXC cards without using extra pins, and an 8-bit NAND Flash interface with ECC. The video engine can decode H.264, H.265, VP9 and more, there's HDR with 10-bit processing, plus two digital audio channels. 

The chip supports full disk encryption with AES, XTS and comparable algorithms, there's tamper-proofing using MD5 and other methods, a 160-bit hardware pseudo-random number generator, and an integrated EFUSE chip for ID and security.

Potential ports include gigabit Ethernet, USB 2/OTG, a second 100MBs Ethernet interface, UART, a PWM controller, and SDIO. Due to the nature of the tiny board, all ports including power delivery must be provided by a carrier board.

The board isn’t yet for sale, but Mango Pi is clearly experimenting with it, suggesting on Twitter it will be testing out the Armbian operating system next.

Clockwork Pi has announced the availability of a new CPU module for its DevTerm  small-form-factor portable computer powered by the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, or a 4-6 core Arm CPU. DevTerm resembles the Radio Shack / Tandy TRS80 Model 100 machines from the 1980s for a combination of retro styling and modern computing power. 

Previously, the options for DevTerm core modules have been the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 3, and a range of Arm SoC from a four-core Arm Cortex A53 with 1GB of DDR3 up to a six-core dual-processor Arm solution with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM and a Mali T864 GPU. These are described as suitable for general computing, writing, coding, e-mails, making indie games, and running most video game emulators.

The new RISC-V core module, however, walks a different path. Not only is the R-01 RISC-V, with an Allwinner D1 64-bit single-core chip beating at its heart, but it doesn’t come with a GPU. It does, however, have 1GB of DDR3 RAM, and is described as a “highly experimental model [that] requires some experience with Linux system & FOSS”. Beginners are “strongly advised” to choose a different model.

DevTerm core modules use the SODIMM form factor and slot into a carrier board using their edge connector. This means existing DevTerm owners can slot in a new core to try out RISC-V computing instead of having to buy a whole new unit, unless they want to.

As the new core slots into the DevTerm’s carrier board, it can be expected to interface with the rest of the IO ports provided. These include a non-standard PCIe slot, 40pin GPIO, Bluetooth, and a built-in thermal printer that emerges from the top left of the machine. Software is provided by ClockworkOS, which comes in various versions based on Armbian or the 32bit Raspberry Pi OS kernel, depending on which core board you’re using. It will presumably be recompiled for RISC-V, but at the time of writing there's no mention of it on the Wiki page.

A complete DevTerm kit with the R-01 core, but without batteries, which you'll have to source yourself, is available for $239. An R-01 core on its own costs $29.

A new version of the Orange Pi, one of the Raspberry Pi competitor boards built around the hexa-core Arm-based Rockchip RK3399 SoC and with a distinctive Wi-Fi antenna, is now available for pre-order, with prices starting from $55, as spotted by CNX-Software.

The Orange Pi 4 LTS (not Long-Term Support, but LTS versions of Orange Pi boards tend to be more compact versions of previous releases) features a six-core processor that sees two Arm Cortex A72 cores matched with four A53 cores and a Mali T860 GPU. There's a choice of either three or four gigabytes of LPDDR4 RAM, and a 16GB eMMC chip can be specified. 

The main difference between the Orange Pi 4 LTS and the 4 and 4B boards that preceded it is the GPIO. While previous boards contained 40 pins on their headers, the LTS houses just 26, just like the original Raspberry Pi. And while we can use some  Raspberry Pi HATs designed for 40-pin GPIO with the original Pi. Don't expect true GPIO compatibility with the Orange Pi 4 LTS, a quick glance of the GPIO layout shows that I2C is mapped to different pins, effectively breaking compatibility with cards which use this protocol. The audio chip also seems to have been changed, from a  Realtek ALC5651 to an ESS ES8316.

Elsewhere on the Orange Pi 4 LTS board you’ll find a USB-C port that can be used for power, data or display, a 5v/3A power jack, a full-size HDMI port, micro SD, two USB 3.0 and one USB 2, gigabit Ethernet, a 3.5mm headphone socket, a 24-pin mini PCIe slot, and ribbon cable connectors for two cameras and one LCD monitor. There are also recovery and reset buttons, while the board measures just 56mm x 91mm (2.2 x 3.6in). There's Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.0 too, delivered by an Allwinner chip last seen in the Orange Pi 3 LTS.

Software should consist of a range of Linux distros, including Armbian, Debian Bullseye, and Ubuntu, plus Android, as these were compatible with the original Orange Pi 4. The issue will be updated drivers for the audio and wireless systems, so these will need to be checked before fully compatible images are available. 

At the time of writing the Orange Pi 4 LTS was available for pre-order on Aliexpress ($62.90 for the 3GB RAM/16GB eMMC version), but wasn’t yet listed on the official Orange Pi site. Estimated delivery is at the end of March.

Made from $15 of parts and looking rather worryingly like a Nokia N-Gage (the original sidetalkin’ model), the ‘minimum viable computer’ is the creation of San Francisco-based inventor and journalist Brian Benchoff. As reported by Liliputing, it’s a Linux-ready computer based around an ARM9 processor that can slip in your pocket, and can also run Doom. But then what can't?

For $15 we can pick up a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, but then we need to add a screen, keyboard and other peripherals. What Benchoff is theoretically offering for $15 is a complete permissively licensed low spec machine with enough power to ping a server and toggle the GPIO. Don’t go expecting a GUI, though, as Benchoff isn't writing one. The 2.3 inch IPS TFT screen has a resolution of 320x240 pixels, and while it can run Linux (Buildroot embedded) on its 533MHz Allwinner F1C100s SoC, based on an ARM9 core with 32MB of RAM, you’ll only be getting the command line. There's no touchscreen, so you’ll have to use the 48-key membrane keyboard, split in half with the screen in the middle to make for efficient thumb-typing. Storage comes via a micro SD card, and power from AAA NiMH batteries which charge over USB-C. Battery life is described as ‘long enough’.

With a board based on the now discontinued LycheePi Nano, the minimum viable computer sits in a plastic clamshell case that snaps together without requiring tools. On the back sit a USB 2 Type-A port, the micro SD card slot, and the USB-C charging port. There's no built-in Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but you can attach an adapter to the Type-A port. 

There are a lot more details, a full parts list including the cost of components ($14.16), and some thoughts about future work on Benchoff’s GitHub page. Benchoff plans to make the device available, eventually, and asks for interested parties to contact him via Twitter.

Over the past decade there have been many Raspberry Pi clones. The latest clones the Raspberry Pi Zero form factor but introduces a RISC-V processor in place of the usual Arm powered SoC. MangoPi has appeared in a series of Twitter posts (as reported by Liliputing), and looks like a good choice for those needing more fruit in their diet.

The Mango Pi MQ Pro, in fact. The little Allwinner D1 processor we’ve covered before beats at its heart, a 1 GHz single-core, 64 bit chip built on the open-source RISC-V architecture. RAM can range from 512MB to 2GB, and while the MQ Pro carries enough ports (2x USB Type-C, HDMI, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), along with its 40-pin GPIO (Pi compatibility to be confirmed), to function solo, there's also a carrier board in testing to add Ethernet and USB Type-A.

The MQ Pro isn’t the first Mango Pi board. The company, whose Twitter account gives its location as Beijing and New York, previously created the postage-stamp sized Mango Pi MQ around an Allwinner D1s processor. This tiny SBC sports a pair of USB Type-C ports, but no video output beyond a 15-pin DSI FPC connector.

There's scant additional information about the MQ Pro. The official web page is mostly blank, the GitHub repository is empty. The MQ board runs Tina Linux, Xboot, and RTT-smart, so we should expect to see those on the new board, and the recent appearance of RISC-V in the mainline Linux kernel could see more familiar distributions make their way to the boards. The Twitter account claimed last month to be porting Debian.

The board isn't available for purchase yet, and the company is sharing few details. We were also unable to find the MQ board for sale anywhere.

The Allwinner D1 RISC-V processor has turned up again, this time forming the core of the $17 LicheeRV from Sipeed, a tiny computer module with a curious form factor, as spotted by CNX Software.

Measuring just 46.2 x 25mm, the board sees the CPU, running at 1 GHz, backed by 512MB of DDR3 RAM. It looks rather like a RAM stick itself, in the vein of the older Raspberry Pi Compute Modules, but those aren’t SODIMM connectors you can see down the edge of the board - it’s two sets of 67-pin M.2 B-key connectors. 

These are built to slot straight into a docking board that will supply additional connectivity, such as HDMI, Ethernet, MIPI DSI  and GPIO access. You could use the board as it is - there's a micro SD slot, a USB-C port for power, and if you opt for the more expensive model, an extra $5, you can add a 1.14in magnetic SPI display.

Docking boards should be with us next month, according to Sipeed’s Twitter account, along with a version with GPIO pin support. Compatible operating systems include Tina and Debian Linux, and the LycheeRV is available from AliExpress now.

A new version of the Allwinner D1 RISC-V media board has come to light (via CNX Software). The D1s, also known as the F133-A SOC and referred to as a ‘high-performance decoding screen display processor’ on the Allwinner website, has 64MB of DDR2 RAM and can decode video up to 1080p.

The D1s should appear as a single-board solution, just like the Linux-capable development board that featured its older brother, the D1. The main difference between the two chips appears to be the embedded RAM and the HDMI interface that has been deleted from the new board.

Housed on a super-small board by MangoPi, just 14mm on each side, it should fit neatly into big-screen displays, connecting through its RGB LCD output interface. Storage is taken care of by an onboard eMMC. You also get up to gigabit networking with Media Access Control and some USB 2.0 connectivity, presumably via one of the Type-C ports seen on the board.

The MangoPi Twitter account has also confirmed that the board will run AllWinner's Tina Linux distro and provided some useful pictures. A short statement on its website reads: "MangoPi-MQ1/Code name: Sparrow, high-value and cost-effective RV-Linux hot plate (based on D1s) will be on sale soon."

Pine64 today announced its latest Linux-powered device, the PinePhone Pro, an update to the original PinePhone which sees a more powerful device running mainline Linux (Manjaro in this case) on a mobile device that works as a cell phone and a desktop computer. 

This combination of hardware and software makes the still slightly futuristic idea of confluence between mobile and desktop devices seem a step closer. Carry it around with you, and it’s a phone. Plug it into a monitor, and it’s a desktop PC. The KDE Plasma Mobile front-end adapts to the circumstances. 

This isn't Pine64's first mobile Linux device, the original PinePhone was released in July 2020 and has seen much interest from the Linux community who have used it for a diverse range of projects, including some light system administrator work.

Inside, it’s much like any other phone, with a Rockchip RK3399S six-core SoC operating at 1.5GHz, 4GB of dual-channel LPDDR4 RAM, and 128GB of internal eMMC flash storage. It features a 13MP main camera sensor and a 5MP front-facing camera. There's a Micro-SD slot for expanded storage, and a six-inch 1440 x 720 IPS touchscreen. The PinePhone Pro is not a typical cell phone, rather the concept of convergence, the ability to use your phone as a computer is intriguing. Plug your PinePhone Pro into an external display and use it as a low-power desktop computer is something that has been attempted by a number of companies, including Canonical's attempt with Ubuntu Edge.

PinePhone Pro offers something that is missing from the majority of phones, privacy. A series of hardware DIP-switches, hidden under a rear cover, cut off access to the cameras, microphone, Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4.1 chips, headphone jack, and LTE modem (including GPS) should you ever need to. The layout and Pogo Pins of the new phone are identical to the original PinePhone, so all existing accessories should work. 

Retailing at $399, the PinePhone Pro’s makers are realistic about the challenges of putting desktop Linux on a mobile device, especially in an ecosystem dominated by iOS and Android. “Contemporary mobile Linux operating systems have a way to go before they can be considered true alternatives to Android or iOS,” they say in a statement accompanying the announcement. “While mobile Linux isn’t in a state that could satisfy most mainstream electronics consumers, we recognize that a sizable portion of our community is ready to make the jump to a Linux-only smartphone today. The PinePhone Pro has the raw horsepower to be your daily driver, granted you’re ready to accept the current software limitations.”

It’s an interesting glimpse of a possible future, one already being explored by Samsung’s DeX mode and Android’s built-in (but often not activated) desktop environment. It’s encouraging that the original PinePhone was enough of a success to warrant an upgraded version being released, and we look forward to getting things such as more RAM, and a higher-resolution screen, in the future.

Readers of a certain age may remember the SMART Response XE, a handheld computer released for educational purposes in around 2009 but since discontinued. Currently available very cheaply as a result (we’ve seen the opportunity to buy a box of 32 units for less than $300) they are becoming good targets for experimental hacks. Ingenious hacker chmod775 has turned an XE into a fully functional Linux terminal computer, as highlighted by Hackaday.

The idea of the SMART Response XE was that teachers could compile a test or other assessment on a host PC (a Pentium 4 was required, or an early Intel Mac) then distribute it to a fleet of XEs via IEEE 802.15.4 low-power wireless, the standard used these days in Zigbee and other home automation standards. The XE probably has more processing power than a Hue lightbulb, but its ATmega128RFA1 microcontroller and wireless transceiver unit isn’t exactly going to run Crysis.

Pupils answered the questions on their terminals, and received immediate feedback as to whether they were right or wrong, while the teacher got all sorts of stats about pupil performance. 

Experimenter chmod775 has turned an XE into a fully functional Linux computer, albeit command line only, by loading a terminal emulator onto the ATmega128RFA1 and hiding a NanoPi Neo Air in the battery bay where four AAA cells once sat. This causes something of a power deficit, which is fixed by adding a USB power supply. 

Chmod775’s pictures show the NanoPi Neo Air running Ubuntu 16.04 without breaking a sweat on its Allwinner H3, a quad-core Cortex-A7 SOC with 512MB of RAM. The Raspberry Pi alternative’s square form factor makes it a good fit for the battery bay, and chmod775 says he’s using the machine for JavaScript, C, and Python programming on the move.

The 64bit RISC-V Raspberry Pi alternative we wrote about last month has turned up again, this time on Indiegogo, with a new name. The Nezha board, named after a protective deity in Chinese mythology, was also briefly listed for purchase directly from AliExpress but it seems that it has since been taken down. Nezha offers a low cost, point of entry into the RISC-V world for developers eager to try a new IoT platform.

Buyers get a single-core Allwinner D1 64-bit RISC-V processor running at 1GHz, backed by 1GB of DDR3 RAM and 256MB of flash storage. The 40 pin GPIO looks to be Raspberry Pi compatible, but we would bet against being able to use HATs and other add-ons with it. Allwinner’s favoured OS is Tina, a fork of OpenWrt, itself a Linux project targeting embedded devices such as routers. It’s been around since 2004 and is optimized to fit in tiny spaces, generally being configured through the CLI. Debian 11 with a lightweight desktop environment is also available, while Fedora, Gentoo, and Ubuntu are also being worked on.

The board is available in a few bundles, such as the one with a 720p USB camera board, or an eight-inch capacitive touchscreen. A ‘full suite’ bundles those two with a six-mic array, that also comes with five hardware buttons, for around $170.

Performance isn’t expected to be great, as the board doesn’t feature a 3D GPU and the 1GHz single-core CPU will be weak in comparison to others. It’s perfect for anyone looking to play around with RISC-V architecture.

Remember that backing a crowdfunded project is not a guarantee of receiving the final product. Crowdfunding is not the same as a retail purchase and so due diligence is required before you invest.

In the ongoing contest to find the world’s smallest booting computer, we might have found a new contender. In a post via Hackaday, prolific builder of things Ryan Walker has posted on Medium about his project to squeeze a fully functional Wi-Fi router into the casing of a phone charger. And for once this doesn't involve a Raspberry Pi rather an alternative single board computer has been chosen.

The project, which Walker describes as a ‘Pineapple’ (a router designed for network attacks and exploits that you connect to your target’s network for password sniffing, man-in-the-middle attacks and other nefarious network noodling), is designed to look completely innocuous, housed inside of a typical phone charger case. It boots Linux on an Allwinner A33 (a quad-core processor used in cheap Android tablets) with 1GB of DDR3 and an SD card for storage.

The device, from initial CAD files to final firmware, is planned to be completely open-source, hence the rather down to earth Bill of Materials (BoM) that lists easily sourced parts. The initial prototype uses USB Wi-Fi adaptors, but the plan is to use a dedicated chip for seamless integration into the device. 

Aside from its potential security implications, this project shows the interesting story behind what’s effectively a DIY SBC, and we look forward to the second part of Walker’s blog, in which he promises to detail more of the process of putting the thing together, and making it small enough to fit in a phone charger casing. He’s already wrestling with the power supply implications - and we suspect the final product won’t be able to charge your phone.

A potential new Raspberry Pi competitor will soon be announced, according to a post on embedded systems blog CNX-Software. Based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture, the Allwinner D1 development board is a credit-card-sized single board computer with a single core XuanTie C906 64-bit RISC-V CPU running at 1GHz along with 1GB of DDR3 RAM.

The board has a lot in common with the single-board computers we already know and love, though seems to be aimed at the less powerful end of the spectrum. The Raspberry Pi 4 has this board beat for pure computational power. There’s the familiar 40-pin GPIO which we assume is compatible with layout used on the Raspberry Pi but that remains to be seen. Also present on the board is a single full size HDMI 1.4 port, Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth, two USB Type-C ports and a single USB 2.0 Type-A, a Micro SD slot, Gigabit Ethernet, a 3.5mm audio jack, plus camera and display connectors which look to be the same format as the CSI and DSI connectors found on the Raspberry Pi. Interestingly, there’s 256MB of onboard flash storage, and a four-pin UART header for debugging. 

Allwinner is positioning the board as a ‘multi-media decoding platform’, and CNX’s figures show it’s good for H.265 up to 1080p60 or 4Kp30, and H.264 up to 1080p60 or 4Kp24. The display header can run a touchscreen at up to 1080p60, and the HDMI port hits the 1.4 standard.

The Allwinner D1 Linux RISC-V has the same dimensions as a Raspberry Pi 4 at 3.3 x 2.2 inches (85 x 56 mm) but the overall layout is different enough to prevent Raspberry Pi cases from being used. Beyond its video engine, the Allwinner D1 Linux RISC-V development board doesn’t have much in the way of graphics processing. A quoted Coremark score of 3.8/Mhz doesn’t compare well with the Raspberry Pi 4’s 15.1/MHz, but we’d expect this board to be considerably cheaper, and it could be interesting for use in smart displays or networked cameras. Allwinner has its own Debian-based Linux distribution, Tina OS, though its Github page was last updated in 2017, so we’re hopeful for a newer kernel to go with this new board. 

Right now that is all we know, but we are hopeful that this board will introduce the RISC-V platform to more makers and lead to more powerful machines coming in the near future.

Raspberry Pi isn't the only single-board computer maker. Other companies have developed their own takes on diminutive systems, with one of the most notable being Pine64. Now, its latest board, the Pine H64 Model B, appears to be getting closer to  seeing general availability. 

Pine64 revealed the Pine H64 Model B in a January blog post. It also shared previews of laptops, phone dev kits and other devices. Now the Model B is available for order on AmeriDroid, if you're a developer. 

The Pine H64 Model B is an update to the Pine H64 Model A that debuted in 2017. This version has been shrunk down to the same footprint and I/O layout of the company's Rock64 single-board computer, which should make it compatible with Rock64 accessories.

Pine64 announced at the time that it equipped the Pine H64 Model B with onboard Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities at users' requests. The company said it was planning three variants of the board based on its RAM configurations: 1GB at $25, 2GB at $35 and 3GB at $45.

Pine H64 Model B Specs and Availability

The Pine H64 Model B's page on AmeriDroid, meanwhile, revealed more information about its specs. The retailer said the model boasts an Allwinner H6 Arm Cortex-A53 processor clocked at 1.8GHz, an Arm Mali T-722MP2 dual-core GPU and an assortment of slots and sockets.

AmeriDroid seemingly plans to offer two variants of the board 2GB (price not yet listed) and 3GB ($48.95). The 1GB version is not mentioned.

Both companies noted that the Pine H64 Model B is currently early in its development cycle, advising that anyone who isn't a developer refrain from buying one. (Not that it's possible via Pine64, since all three variants of the board are "out of stock.")

"Until a functional OS boot image is available, we will not be selling this product, except by special request (for developers, etc.). Please send an email to orders@ameridroid.com to submit your request," the AmeriDroid product page reads as of writing. 

Still, those who are willing to deal with even more tinkering than is usual for these single-board computers can email AmeriDroid to request a unit. As for everyone else? Well, they'll have to wait.

Want to comment on this story? Let us know what you think in the Tom's Hardware Forums.

Five security researchers from the Vrije University in the Netherlands have developed an attack that can bypass address space layout randomization (ASLR), one of the most important security mechanisms in modern operating systems. The attack affects at least 22 CPU microarchitectures, including some from Intel, AMD, and several ARM chip makers such as Samsung, Nvidia, and Allwinner.

ASLR Protection

ASLR randomizes the location of an application’s code and data in the system’s memory to make it difficult for a potential attacker to compromise that application or the system itself. ASLR has been broken before, but it has still been believed to be a good defense for browsers, according to the Dutch researchers.

Last year, the researchers showed that a JavaScript-enabled attacker can break Microsoft Edge’s ASLR protection through a side-channel vulnerability. Microsoft patched the specific vulnerability that allowed the attack to work by disabling Edge’s memory deduplication feature.

However, the researchers later discovered that the ASLR protection is limited because of the way current CPU microarchitectures manage memory. This allowed them to create an attack that can fully derandomize ASLR from JavaScript without relying on a particular software feature, as was the case with the Edge attack.

The AnC Attack

According to the Dutch researchers who developed the AnC attack, the same cache hierarchy that is used by the memory management units (MMUs) of the CPU to efficiently execute code is also shared by untrusted code in a browser, such as JavaScript.

This set-up allows side-channel attacks to detect which memory locations are accessed during a page table walk performed by the MMU. According to the researchers, the AnC attack is able to find the offsets accessed by the MMU for all of the four-page table pages. The offset within each page breaks nine bits of entropy, which means that even a “perfect” ASLR implementation with 36 bits of entropy is not safe.

The researchers implemented the AnC attack both natively, which allowed them to test it on 22 different CPU microarchitectures, as well as in JavaScript, where they tested it in the Chrome and Firefox browsers.

Precise JavaScript Timers

The AnC attack requires a precise timer in JavaScript to tell the difference between cached and uncached memory access. The major browsers have recently broken the precise timer in JavaScript to prevent other cache attacks that would utilize it.

The Dutch researchers said that they built two new timers that bypass this mitigation, allowing them to not only make the AnC attack possible, but also to revive older cache attacks that now work as well.

Making AnC Work On 22 CPU Architectures

The researchers noticed that various CPU microarchitectures implement page table caches with different behaviors, so they would need to flush the caches to make the AnC attack work reliably on all of them. However, these caches are not properly documented, so they had to reverse engineer the properties of the page table caches for each one of those 22 microarchitectures.

The Dutch researchers’ reverse engineering work benefits not just the AnC attack, but also all the other cache attacks out there that needed to flush these caches on all of the 22 CPU microarchitectures. One of these attacks is the RowHammer attack, which manipulates page tables by exploiting a DRAM flaw.

Mitigation Is Limited Without New Hardware Architectures

The Vrije University researchers found that AnC works on “only” these 22 CPU architectures, because those were the only ones they tested. However, it’s likely that the attack works on many more, potentially covering all existing CPUs. According to them, the attack worked on every single microarchitecture they tried, which doesn’t leave much optimism for the ones they didn’t.

The researchers, as well as a few browser vendors, agreed that ASLR is no longer a good enough defense for browsers.

AnC exploits the way current microprocessors run code efficiently, so until this architecture is overhauled, there isn’t a quick solution that can protect everyone. Eventually, browser vendors may come up with some other mechanisms to avoid this. However, this may be quite difficult to achieve, as the attacks exploit a hardware feature, rather than a software one. Typically, hardware flaws can bypass all software protections.

Until browser vendors come up with a solution to mitigate the attack, if such a solution is even possible, users can do one thing to stop most of the potential attacks that could come through the browser. That solution includes using NoScript or a similar add-on that disables JavaScript in their browsers. However, this comes with a high cost these days, as many websites require JavaScript to run properly.

A Billion Android Devices More Vulnerable To Stagefright Than Ever

Something to note is that Google said ASLR protection would be enough to stop the Stagefright attacks soon after the vulnerability was made public. Even if that were true (and it eventually turned out it wasn't, for most Android devices, anyway), anti-exploit solutions such as ASLR are still only a temporary protection. The long term solution should always be patching the devices. However, because of Android's long-term update problem, and because of the carelessness of Android manufacturers, roughly a billion users with old Android phones will now be vulnerable to Stagefright attacks enabled by the ASLR-bypassing AnC attack.

Google will probably try to stop the attacks utilizing these exploits with its own  "Verify apps" anti-malware service. However, it will essentially be a cat-and-mouse game between attackers finding new ways to use the attack and Google trying to figure out the new attacks before they do too much damage (not unlike the typical malware vs antivirus cat-and-mouse game).

An Increasing Focus On Devastating Hardware Flaws

AnC is one of the last few major attacks that exploit hardware flaws, which can’t be fixed without changing the underlying hardware in significant ways. Some of these recent hardware attacks include RowHammer, the attack that exploits the high-cell density in modern DRAM; BadUSB, which can allow malware to reprogram the embedded firmware in USB devices, and then further spread itself to other computers; or “Jump over ASLR,” a recent hardware flaw found in Intel’s branch predictors, that also allows attackers to bypass the ASLR protection.

Until more recently, there hasn’t been that much research that goes into how secure our chip architectures are, in part because it’s much more difficult to find a vulnerability without reverse engineering parts of the hardware. Not all chip makers offer good documentation for their chips, especially for the latest generations. This makes it difficult for researchers to even understand how the chips work, let alone find security vulnerabilities in them.

The other side is that hardware flaws have been believed to be much rarer because there are fewer opportunities to make a mistake at a low level. However, as shown by the AnC or RowHammer attacks, sometimes a chip's very design makes it vulnerable to certain attacks.

Hardware flaws may require more research work and funds, but when the flaws are discovered, the impact is usually much more significant as well. Some of the hardware flaws, such as the ones mentioned above, can affect almost everyone, bypass most if not all software protections, and take many years for most people to mitigate them by simply buying new hardware. This makes hardware flaws a much better target for both security researchers and malicious attackers.

Hands-On And First Impressions

A week ago, if you told me that I could have a complete desktop experience in a $70 mini-PC smaller than the size of my hand, I would have scoffed. But today, I quite literally have in the palm of my hand the Remix Mini by Jide.

This is an ambitious product resulting from Jide Technology's successful Kickstarter in July 2015, which followed the company's successful crowdfunding campaign for the Android-based Remix Ultratablet. The initial goal for the Remix Mini was $50,000, and it hit that in just over an hour. Within five days it rocketed to $500,000.

At a glance, it's clear that the Jide Remix Mini isn't going to be incredibly fast. That's no surprise when you're paying $70. But at least you can upgrade a few components. For example, you can attach a USB splitter, increasing the number of connected devices. The microSD expansion card slot also supports up to 128GB, increasing the total storage capacity to 144GB.

In addition to its diminutive stature and price point, the Remix Mini also comes with Remix OS, the mini-PC's custom Android-based operating system.

Design And Features

The Remix Mini's design is unassuming, and perhaps this was Jide's intention. It looks like a smooth pebble with no discerning features besides the Remix logo on top.

There isn't even a power button; the system is turned on by tapping the top of the chassis. An almost unnoticeable green power LED sits at the very front of the Remix Mini.

Tapping the Remix logo while the system is on puts it to sleep, while using any connected input device or tapping the logo again wakes it up. At first, I hoped for some sort of tactile response while tapping the Remix Mini, either through a mechanical switch or pressure-sensitive bumper. But this would have affected the price, I'm sure. Another concern I had was that a poorly placed object could fall and put the Remix Mini to sleep. Not only is the Remix Mini unaffected by little accidents like that, it appears the touch sensor responds only to human touch. 

All of the Remix Mini's I/O is found in the back. From left to right, there's a DC power input, an Ethernet port, two USB 2.0 ports, a microSD card reader, one HDMI port and a headphone jack. The two USB 2.0 ports will accommodate keyboards and mice, while the headphone jack is sufficient for audio.

Benchmarks And Conclusion

Benchmarking the Jide Remix Mini required a unique approach. The hardware is powered by Remix OS 2.0, a custom operating system based on Android 5.1 Lollipop, so the synthetic metrics at our disposal are mobile benchmarks found on the Google Play Store. We went with AnTuTu, a familiar suite.

The Remix Mini is also a barebones mini-PC, and user experience is paramount, regardless of how well the system performs in a synthetic test. Normally, I use my personal machine as a media and entertainment center for streaming movies, playing music and browsing the Web. I wanted to see if the Remix Mini could satisfy that role, so for about one week I used it as my daily driver.

Synthetic Benchmark - AnTuTu

AnTuTu is one of the more popular mobile benchmarking applications that tests several facets of performance, including 3D, UX and CPU capabilities.

The Remix Mini scores 25,966 in AnTuTu. That's not an impressive result. It falls behind flagship phones released within the past couple of years. For comparison, Samsung's Galaxy S7 Edge and Apple's iPhone 6s score 134,599 and 133,781 in AnTuTu respectively.

Video Playback

And yet, you don't necessarily need a big AnTuTu score to enjoy your mini-PC. Using Netflix, I streamed a couple of movies and hour-long episodes from various TV shows with ease. YouTube videos similarly played back smoothly. Paying $70 isn't bad for a home theater solution that performs as-promised.

Music Playback

To test audio playback, I used Google Play Music, available on the Play Store. The Remix Mini ran through several hours of music streaming. Though I encountered the occasional hiccup from buffering, the experience was polished overall.

Web Browsing

To test web browsing, I used Google's Chrome browser, also found on the Play Store. Of course, this isn't a sophisticated use case, so browsing on the Remix Mini is much like perusing the Internet in a browser on Windows. You retain functionality like tab-dragging thanks to Remix OS 2.0. But the experience does feel cheapened somewhat due to the app's Android foundation. Websites like Facebook and YouTube automatically want to go to their mobile versions. Right-clicking doesn't work as you'd expect either; the OS supports long clicking the left mouse button instead.

Word Processing

I used Google Docs during my time with the Remix Mini. I try to make it a point to write each hands-on story I publish with the system I'm testing. Word processing on the Remix Mini is especially important since it's indicative of how well the custom Android 5.1 Lollipop-based distribution functions as a desktop operating system. Jide excels at creating desktop experiences featuring frequently-used keyboard macros like Copy, Cut and Paste.

Conclusion

The Jide Remix Mini is an ambitious little machine that achieves everything we expected of it. It can handle simple tasks like web browsing and word processing, which is about all you could hope for from a $70 platform. But it also proves to be a capable multimedia streaming device.

The Remix Mini isn't without faults, though. The biggest issue I had concerned browser functionality. Jide touts the Remix Mini's desktop experience, but my time with the system constantly reminded me that Remix OS 2.0 is still an Android-based operating system. I'm not trying to pick on Remix OS 2.0 here. Rather, the software is simply subject to the limitations of Android, an admittedly mobile-focused environment. Despite this, the Jide team delivers an OS that looks and feels like something we could get used to. And in time, we're confident that improvements to Remix OS 2.0 will make the Remix Mini shine even more brightly as a diminutive desktop platform.

Alexander Quejado is an Associate Contributing Writer for Tom’s Hardware and Tom’s IT Pro. Follow Alexander Quejado on Twitter. 

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Allwinner recently announced a new quad-core chip for tablets, called the Allwinner A64, that's not only based on the latest 64-bit ARMv8 architecture but also comes with a very low price point of only $5. The new chip is based on ARM's Cortex A53 CPU and has support for h.264 and h.265 codecs, 4k video streaming, and the latest Android 5.0 operating system.

If Allwinner can forge the right partnerships with OEMs, the chip could pose a threat not just to other ARM chip makers such as Qualcomm or Mediatek, but also to Intel, which is still struggling to turn a profit in mobile.

Intel hopes that if it can get Chinese chip makers such as Rockchip and Spreadtrum to build less expensive 28nm Atom-based chips, then it can increase Atom's market share and will later be able to increase its price, as well. However, with companies such as Allwinner that keep dragging the prices down for mobile chips while also raising performance, both parts of Intel's plan could face difficulties.

In the first case, if Rockchip and Spreadtrum can't match Allwinner or other chip makers willing to sell ARM chips for such a low price, then Atom won't be able to increase its popularity anyway.

Assuming the first part of Intel's plan does succeed, and Rockchip and Spreadtrum can make Atom chips that are competitive on price and performance, that still doesn't mean Intel itself will be able to start selling Atom chips at a premium. Companies such as Allwinner, and to a lesser degree Mediatek and Qualcomm, will continue to put pressure on mobile chip pricing. They could make it difficult for Intel to turn a significant profit for the next few years.

Allwinner's $5 ARMv8 chip doesn't just put pressure on Intel, though. Intel will just be the one hit the hardest by it, because the company is already in a position where it doesn't make a profit. Companies such as Mediatek and Qualcomm do make profits, even at the low-end of the market. However, all of them will use essentially the same ARM CPUs in their chips, and there could be OEM customers that will simply go with the lower-cost variant.

Allwinner's $5 quad-core 64-bit chip should make possible the creation of mobile devices that cost as low as $50, come with Lollipop out of the box, and deliver surprisingly good performance for the price -- all while encouraging competitors to lower their prices, as well.

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ARM-Based SoCs From China Are Poised To Take Off

Rockchip, Allwinner, Spreadtrum, and MediaTek are brand names that a lot of people probably won't recognize. But all of those companies are competing in the same space as Samsung, Qualcomm, and Nvidia for share of the Android-based device market.

When people talk about Android, they often mention products like the Nexus range from Google, the Galaxy line from Samsung, or one of Asus' Transformers, along with HTC, LG, and Sony. And sometimes, depending on the success of marketing campaigns and word of mouth, what also follows are the names of the SoCs powering those smartphones and tablets. Exynos. Snapdragon. Tegra. But that's only part of the story...As more companies compete for your dollar with an ever-increasing portfolio of mobile devices, we're seeing Chinese SoC manufacturers steadily staking claims in the low-cost Android device market. Android, iOS, and mobile computing in general are largely dependent on one U.K.-based company, ARM Holdings. Its history dates back to one of the first commercially successful home PCs of the early 1980s: the 8-bit BBC Micro. This computer was one of three that set the British and European home PC market in motion. The BBC Micro's war with another 8-bit system, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, is now computer legend.

Following the resounding success of the BBC Micro, Acorn (as the company was then known) cut its modern computing teeth on nascent adventures into the optimization of 16-bit CPUs. By intelligently simplifying and removing often-repeated instructions, Acorn developed a more efficient design that could do more with less. This approach is known as RISC, or Reduced Instruction Set Computing. The company's first commercial foray using this technology came in 1983 with the 16-bit Acorn RISC Machine, or ARM. It ran one of the first true multitasking operating systems in production, RISC OS, which, incidentally, was recently re-released as an open-source variant for the popular Raspberry Pi hobbyist PC—yet another device powered by an ARM SoC.

ARM’s emphasis on efficiency powered the company's own range of RISC PCs and operating systems for the next decade. ARM Holdings would later go on to design low-powered RISC-based SoCs for all manner of devices, starting with simple disk controllers and eventually winding up in the mobile computing SoCs at the heart of everything from the Compaq iPAQ to the Apple iPad—and, of course, the vast majority of Android devices.

This ubiquity happened when ARM Holdings cleverly removed manufacturer from its résumé. As part of a trend set in the late 1970s, ARM became a fabless semiconductor designer, allowing it to focus exclusively on design and constant improvements to its RISC architecture without worrying about manufacturing technology. That decision accelerated development and allowed some of the costs incurred during the design process to be offset by ARM licensees, which take the IP and determine how to implement it.

Such an approach has benefits beyond cost savings because it also allows for licensees to customize their SoCs to suit specific purposes. Aspects like the actual GPU, RAM, and modem can be selected, and often even modified, to satisfy any function or budget constraint. You could almost say that ARM SoCs can be built to order, which is of particular importance for companies that want to create devices for so many different needs and markets.

Given a diverse market with room for innovation and a sensitivity to cost, ARM SoCs and the fabless semiconductor industry present an exceptionally good fit for China.

China Needs Android, Not Google

Android is central to Chinese success in the mobile marketplace. Independent hardware vendors (IHVs) utilizing Chinese SoCs for their tablets tend to use Google’s OS because it's cost-free and open-source. Android is what allows $100 to $200 devices to work just as well as $600 flagship devices. Some buyers of China-made tablets may brag that their budget devices can do everything the more premium products can do. In some ways, they are right. But the story isn’t that simple. In many cases, "cheap" can also be code for "unsupported and closed-source."

And therein lies the problem. While Android (specifically, the Android Open Source Project) is open source, many of the Chinese SoC vendors aren’t true to the initiative’s spirit. There's been some valid criticism aimed at some of these companies and the ways in which they enjoy the benefits of being part of the Android experience, yet don't actually give much back in return. Companies like Rockchip, MediaTek. and Allwinner are unapologetically closed source when it comes to their kernels, making it difficult for owners of products based on those platforms to move beyond the version of Android that shipped with their devices. Furthermore, this also makes it nearly impossible for these devices to properly utilize aftermarket ROMs like CyanogenMod, Paranoid Android, and AOKP.

There have been some strides made on the Rockchip front; for instance, a Spanish tablet manufacturer opened up the source for its kernel. In turn, a beta version of Ubuntu surfaced for the SoC. Ithas since grown up, settled down, and now goes by the unfortunate name of PicUntu. The distribution has been making the rounds in the HDMI media stick communities, and is generally well-regarded. While it doesn't include full hardware acceleration, it's full-featured in almost every other aspect.

Still, that's Linux. Most RK3066 owners are stuck using older versions of Android, and the situation doesn't seem like it's going to change anytime soon. Meanwhile, the more modern quad-core RK3188 has yet to see a Linux variant. And that's even more disappointing since, in some cases, RK3188 devices ship with 2 GB of RAM and are far more powerful than the older RK3066.

For these reasons, Chinese SoCs and the devices they power tend to be somewhat devalued compared with their more prominently-branded equivalents from Qualcomm, Samsung, and Nvidia. Even though those familiar names and their partners do sometimes engage in closed-source, locked-down shenanigans, alternatives to their preinstalled versions of Android often do exist. XDA has countless forums for devices with Snapdragon, Exynos, and Tegra SoCs. Yet, the community push for China-based SoCs just isn't as effective. Most owners are left to "alternative solutions" on smaller forums, many of which lack support or are simply administered unprofessionally.

Also worrying, some of these Chinese companies are forking Android. They're doing it to avoid having to appease Google's Open Handset Alliance (OHA), and to ship their own software storefronts instead of Google Play.

Right now, we're seeing two major Android forks coming out of China: LeWa OS and the controversial Aliyun OS, the latter of which has been caught offering pirated versions of for-sale Android games, which could become a big problem down the road.

To make things worse, other China-based Android variants are not being particularly friendly with the open-source community: Flyme and MIUI. Flyme is available on Meizu's range of phones, while MIUI can be found on phones from Xiaomi or as a ROM for other devices. Both skin the OS in much the same way as HTC's Sense or Samsung's TouchWiz. The issue lies in the fact that both of these Chinese operating systems are closed source, which flies in the face of Android's AOSP GPL license. It also sets a worrying precedent that further releases may remain that way, again locking users into non-upgradable software experiences.

That trend probably worries AOSP fans and ROM developers, particularly in regard to how it may affect future China-based SoCs and devices.

Now, let's take a closer look at some of China's homegrown SoCs, starting with Rockchip.

Rockchip

Founded in 2001 and based in Fuzhou, China, the Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co. Ltd., or simply Rockchip, designs and develops integrated circuits, particularly SoCs. The company is a well-established ARM licensee, utilizing the IP company’s architecture for the majority of its products. Rockchip's focus has been predominantly on the tablet and personal media player (PMP) markets, so Rockchip SoCs do not include support for radios other than Wi-Fi.

RK2918

Released in 2012, the RK2918 was Rockchip's first ARMv7 chip. It used a Cortex-A8 CPU and Vivante GC800 GPU, supporting a display resolution of up to 1280x800, though it could encode and decode video of up to 1080p. The notable feature of this processor is that it was among the first to support the open-source VP8 codec.

RK3066

Released in 2012, the Rockchip RK3066 is a 40 nm, 1.6 GHz, dual-core Cortex-A9 SoC coupled with the Mali 400 GPU and up to dual-channel DDR3 support. It was designed to compete with the dual-core Samsung Exynos 4, and benchmarks proved its mettle, with the RK3066 registering around 7000 points in AnTuTu at the time.

In some ways, it went beyond its competitors' capabilities, offering support for faster memory, an upper limit of 2 GB (though implementations were rare) and five-point multitouch panels up to 1920x1080 (which, as far as we understand, never surfaced in devices, perhaps due to it being a largely budget-focused chipset).  

RK3066 was sold extensively in tablets from a wide variety of Chinese and European manufacturers, including Cube, Pipo, and Archos. In fact, Archos was still releasing RK3066-based devices in late 2012. That included some products in the company's budget line, Arnova, and the game-focused Gamepad, which includes a hardwired gaming controller. RK3066 also powered the OUYA competitor, GameStik.

RK3066 devices tended to be most popular in the budget 10-inch range of early- to mid-2012, and continued to sell well throughout the year. Another area of success for RK3066 was the HDMI stick form factor. Indeed, RK3066 quite clearly put HDMI Android Media devices on the map, with more than 20 such devices released over the 2012 period alone.

Interestingly, Archos released the 97 Titanium HD, which pushed the RK3066 beyond its theoretical limits by powering a 2048x1536 "Retinal" display. And while it didn't perform as smoothly as its 800p brothers in games, it still held its own in terms of browsing and general day-to-day tasks, proving the RK3066 to be extremely versatile.

RK3188

Building on the success of the RK3066, RK3188 ups the ante considerably by pushing into quad-core territory. The budget-oriented tablets that use it are in a performance tier previously reserved for premium devices like the Tegra 3-equipped Transformer Pad Infinity.

Excitement for this 28 nm quad-core Cortex-A9, Mali MP4-equipped SoC was so high that there was a record-breaking number of preorders for devices like the Cube U30GT2 and PIPO M4 Pro. The bump in GPU speed and CPU power meant that more devices with 1920x1200 screens were released, and the RK3188 SoC handled that gracefully, partly because almost all those devices came standard with 2 GB of DDR3 RAM. In fact, the only RK3188 devices that shipped with only 1 GB of RAM were budget HDMI media sticks.

Benchmarks put this chipset around the 14,000- to 18,000-point mark in AnTuTu, landing beyond Tegra 3's space at a lower price.

RK3168

Considering it has only a dual-core Cortex-A9 processor complex and a GPU that’s more commonly included with Cortex-A7-based SoCs, the RK3168 is a more budget-conscious revision of the RK3188. It's designed to ship in smaller, 7-inch tablets, which tend to be less expensive.

RK3288

The RK3288 is Rockchip's latest and most powerful SoC, and is expected to surface this year. It comes with a quad-core Cortex-A17 processor at 1.8 GHz, and a Mali-T760 GPU. Initially, Rockchip was supposed to use the Cortex-A12 core, but since ARM announced Cortex-A17 quite suddenly, improving Cortex-A12, Rockchip quickly updated its SoC to use the newer IP instead.

Cortex-A17 will target the mid-range market in 2015, while Cortex-A57 remains at the high end, possibly improved. Unfortunately, the -A17 core isn't based on the new and improved ARMv8 architecture, and it's still a 32-bit chip. That's disappointing for a piece of hardware surfacing in 2015, but Rockchip most likely chose it because of cost considerations. Rockchip sells some of the lowest-cost SoCs for mobile devices. It's also why the company chose the Cortex-A17 instead of something even more powerful for its mid-range chips.

On the GPU side, it doesn't look like Rockchip spares any expense, since the company is using a high-end Mali-T764 GPU. Considering Rockchip is mainly targeting tablets, it's not too surprising to see it match a high-end GPU with a more modest CPU. Tablets tend to use higher resolutions than phones, and a more powerful GPU can make sure the tablet doesn't overheat and doesn't use up the battery too quickly.

The GPU also supports the latest mobile graphics features, along with support for 4K video decoding. It even supports HDMI 2.0 and 10-bit color, in case you want to hook the tablet up to a 4K TV.

Rockchip recently partnered with Intel to build some 28 nm non-FinFET SoCs using the Atom core and branding. Intel hopes that with this partnership, it can lower the cost of Atom and push it into less expensive platforms. It remains to be seen how competitive these chips will be, particularly since Intel’s own 22 nm Atoms are barely fast enough to compete with high-end ARM chips. These SoCs will most likely be targeted at the mid-range market, and also use Intel's 3G modems. In the meantime, the ARM-based RK3288 will arrive with support for 4G LTE this year.

MediaTek

MediaTek Inc. is a leading fabless semiconductor designer with a focus on 3G GSM HSPA+ and WCDMA phone handsets and phablet SoCs. The company emphasizes power efficiency mixed with performance and, up until recently, built around Cortex-A7, coupling lower-power ARM7 CPUs with a potent GPU to deliver SoCs that save battery while offering comprehensive application and multimedia performance.

Smartphone Chips

MT6572

The MT6572 is one of MediaTek's newer chips, released in 2013. It’s aimed a low-end devices, and consists of a dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A7 CPU and Mali-400 MP1 graphics engine at 500 MHz. As you might imagine, it doesn’t support very high resolutions; its limit is 960x540p. The hardware also can't record video at higher than 720p and 30 FPS. But for an entry-level SoC, not much more can be expected.

MT6573

The MT6573 is based on the much older ARMv6 architecture, most likely for cost reasons. MediaTek still seems to be using it for ultra-cheap smartphones that have only the bare minimum of performance required to power Android, although with Cortex-A7 becoming almost ubiquitous for the low end, it should be on its way out within a year. The chip can't support resolutions and video playback higher than 480p, but it does seem to support 8 MP cameras.

MT6575

While the Cortex-A9 core is also pretty old, it still appears in some devices.  Performance-wise, it should be between the MT6573 and MT6572, because the latter is higher-clocked and has two cores. The chip comes with support for display resolutions of up to 960x540 and 720p video playback, along with support for 8 MP cameras.

MediaTek made a cheaper version of this SoC back in 2012. Called MT6575M, it had a GPU that was half as powerful and was manufactured using an older 65 nm process.

MT6577

The MT6577 SoC also utilizes the older Cortex-A9 (in dual-core trim, operating at 1 GHz). MediaTek keeps selling the processor because of its popularity, which enabled a lot of phones to shoot 720p video back in 2012.

Despite its age, the chip continues to support 720p display resolutions, full-HD video playback, and 8 MP cameras, making it a valuable offering from MediaTek at the right price.

MT6589 and Variants

The MTK6589 is another popular offering. It’s so in-demand, in fact, that MediaTek created another two versions of this chip: one slower (MT6589M) and one faster (MT6589T).

All three are based on the Cortex-A7 CPU, and all are quad-core. But the M version has half the GPU performance, supports cameras up to 8 MP, and can only play 720p video. The T version is 25 percent faster for both its CPU and GPU, and supports cameras up to 13 MP. All three of them use PowerVR GPUs from Imagination.

MT6592

The MT6592 is an eight-core Cortex-A7-based chip that runs between 1.7 and 2.0 GHz (typically 1.7 GHz), and comes with a Mali-450 MP4 GPU operating at 600 MHz. This chip can support cameras up to 16 MP, and you'll typically see it in higher-end Chinese smartphones that cost about half as much as the flagships we’re used to.

MT6595

The MT6595 isn't available yet, but it should be by the end of the year. This chip shows that MediaTek wants to compete against Qualcomm and Samsung near the high end of the market. The upcoming SoC will employ ARM’s big.LITTLE power optimization technology with a quad-core Cortex-A7 cluster clocked at 1.7 GHz and a quad-core Cortex-A17 cluster operating at 2.2 GHz. Of course, -A17 is a new core design from ARM that promises roughly twice the performance of Cortex-A7 at a given frequency, or around the same performance as the latest revision of Cortex-A15 (like the one from Tegra K1).

The new SoC will be coupled with a PowerVR 6200 GPU clocked at 600 MHz. It will also bring support for 20 MP cameras and 802.11ac Wi-Fi, in addition to integrating an LTE modem.

MediaTek must expect the chip to be very popular, because it's making two other versions of it: the MT6595M, which will have the Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.5GHz, and the high-end Cortex A17 cores at 2.0 GHz, and the MT6595 Turbo, which will have its Cortex A7 cores clocked at 1.7 GHz and the Cortex A17 cores at 2.4-2.5 GHz.

MT6732

At this year's Mobile World Conference, MediaTek announced its first ARMv8-based 64-bit chip, the MT6732, which comes with a quad-core Cortex-A53 complex running at 1.5 GHz and a powerful Mali T760 GPU boasting OpenGL ES 3.0 and OpenCL 1.2 support.

The chip supports dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, LTE, an ISP supporting 13 MP sensors,  and 1080p video at 30 FPS, with hardware-accelerated HEVC decoding.

Tablet chips

MT8127

The latest chip announced by MediaTek (MT8127) was designed specifically for tablets on which customers tend to watch more videos and movies. Unlike the MT6732, though, this is not meant as a high-end chip from MediaTek, but as a more low-cost SoC for low-end and mid-range tablets. As such, it comes with quad-core 1.5 GHz Cortex-A7 CPU, a Mali-450 MP4 GPU, and support for 1080p displays, 1080p video playback, and 13 MP cameras.

MT8377

The MT8377 is a lower-end offering for tablets, which was released last year. It comes with a dual-core 1.2 GHz Cortex-A9 CPU made with the older 40 nm process and a PowerVR SGX531 Ultra GPU, which supports a maximum resolution of 1280x720. It also supports Bluetooth 4.0, Wi-Fi, and GSM/GPRS/EDGE/HSPA modems.

MT8135

This is currently MediaTek's highest-end 32-bit tablet chip, which takes advantage of big.Little technology by integrating two Cortex-A15 cores at 1.7 GHz and two Cortex-A7 cores at 1.2 GHz. It also comes with a PowerVR Series6 G200 GPU that supports OpenGL ES 3.0. Tablets incorporating this processor should be capable of respectable gaming performance,  even at 1080p.

MT8125/8389

These two chips are MediaTek's older "high-end" products for tablets that have been shipping since last year. They both support 1080p displays and 1080p video playback, along with cameras up to 13 MP. The difference between them is that the MT8389 packs an embedded GPS module and comes with Bluetooth 4.0 support. Both work with wireless standards like GSM, GPRS, EDGE and HSPA+.

Allwinner

Allwinner Technology is a China-based fabless semiconductor company founded in 2007. It was one of the first few independent companies to become an ARM licensee, and is probably the first Chinese SoC manufacturer to get our attention in the U.S. with its Android-oriented platforms. Its single-core A10 (Cortex-A8 with Mali 400 GPU), released in late 2010, proved that a Chinese processor could compete with more heavily-marketed brands. Even still, its focus has been largely on mid- and low-end budget tablets, PMPs. and HDMI media sticks, and not so much on smartphones.

The A10 was so prolific that it distorted prices in the Chinese tablet market for almost a year. Its combination of a modest ARMv7 CPU and a then-leading-edge Mali 400 GPU meant that even though it employed one core, it could match the gaming performance of Nvidia’s substantially more expensive Tegra 2. Indeed, such excitement grew around the Mali GPU that a GPU emulation layer, called Chainfire 3D (no longer in development), gained a lot of support from customers with A10-equipped devices.

Back then, forums were filled with reports of A10-based tablets running quite a few high-end Tegra 2-optimized games smoothly and, in some cases, with more features enabled (such as FSAA) than what was thought to be theoretically possible at the time on Nvidia’s GeForce ULP GPU.

Allwinner is again focusing on premium GPU performance with its quad-core A31, based on Cortex-A7 and equipped with the PowerVR SGX 544 GPU. This is the same GPU that was used in the third-gen iPad, thus enabling a whole swathe of 2048x1536p-class 9- and 10-inch Android tablets at budget prices.

A10

The A10 SoC has been a major success for Allwinner; it's what put the company on the map as a Chinese mobile chip maker. It was mostly used to drive Android- and Linux-based mini-sticks, but also some sub-$150 tablets like the Ainol Novo 7 Aurora, from India. The processor supports a maximum resolution of 1920x1080, though it’s mostly often seen in tablets with 1024x600 or 1280x800 resolutions.

A10s

The A10s is basically a stripped-down A10 that’s less expensive. Allwinner uses the A10s to target cheap mini TV sticks. It also adds DLNA and Wi-Fi display support. Compared to the A10, you get better power management, too.

A13

Allwinner’s A13 is one of the company's more recently released chips, and is targeted mainly at small tablets and e-readers. However, even though it's new, the processor only comes with a Cortex-A8 CPU and Mali-400 MP1 GPU. This isn’t one of Allwinner's more powerful offerings.

A20

The A20 followed the A10, doubling CPU and GPU core count, while switching to Cortex-A7 from -A8 for better battery life and adding support for cameras. Cleverly, it was pin-compatible with the A10, theoretically meaning that tablet manufacturers could just use it in place of its predecessor to save design time. In practice, though, the market had already started shifting to quad-core platforms, so the A20 saw mixed success.

A31

The A31 seems to be recreating the A10 budget hero experience. Just as that old classic introduced 720/800p tablets to the market at affordable prices, the A31 seems to be doing the same for Retina-class resolutions in the 9.7-inch range. The -A7 CPU aspect of the chipset isn't particularly powerful, but it is extremely efficient. On the other hand, the PowerVR 544MP2 GPU is extremely powerful, maxing out many benchmarks. The chipset has also found its way into HDMI sticks. It's currently Allwinner's highest-end SoC, and it also supports camera sensors up to 12 MP.

A80

The Allwinner A80 is expected to arrive this year, at which point it’ll be Allwinner's highest-end chip. It’s too early to tell, but the A80 could put Allwinner in competition with the likes of Samsung, Qualcomm, and Nvidia. The processor will utilize big.Little technology, with quad-core Cortex-A7 and -A15 clusters. The chip is as high-end as you could expect, so it will also have support for 4K video and the hardware-accelerated  H.265 and VP9 codecs.

Spreadtrum

Spreadtrum Communications Inc. is a Shanghai-based fabless chip maker and the world's 17th largest semiconductor company. It is best known for making chipsets for the Chinese TD-SCDMA 3G network, but it also sells chips to customers from other countries. The company was acquired last year by Tsinghua Unigroup, a Chinese consumer electronics firm.

Back in 2011, Spreadtrum managed to win 25 percent of the 2G phone market in China, mainly from MediaTek, which introduced a weaker chip at the time and, in turn, gave Spreadtrum the opportunity to grow its market share rapidly.

Today, Spreadtrum is known mainly for making chipsets that work on China’s TD-SCDMA 3G network, which covers 50 percent of the customers there. But it's also making chips for other customers in other countries. If you’re looking at the overall Chinese smartphone market, Spreadtrum only has 11 percent share.

SC6821

While we generally think of companies like MediaTek as offering entry-level hardware, Spreadtrum goes even lower. Earlier this year, we learned that Spreadtrum and Mozilla are partnering to offer a $25 Firefox OS smartphone, which is way below the retail price of any phone we've tested on Tom’s Hardware.

This smartphone will come with a SC6821 chip. We don’t know too much about the platform, other than that it's based on ARM's Cortex-A5, has support for Wi-Fi (presumably 802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth, and integrates FM radio functionality. It also supports a camera (most likely up to 5 MP) and HVGA resolutions, will run Firefox OS, and will work on WCDMA and EDGE networks.

Mozilla most likely chose Spreadtrum due to its processor's low price. Therefore, performance and features probably weren’t the priority. At least Mozilla picked an ARMv7-capable chip, as it prepares to completely drop ARMv6 support from both Firefox OS and the mobile Firefox app for Android. The sooner everyone gets rid of ARMv6, the sooner developers can focus on supporting ARMv7 and ARMv8 architectures.

SC7735S

Mozilla is not the only big-name customer serviced by Spreadtrum. HTC has also put the Spreadtrum Quak (SC7735S) chip inside its Desire 700 mid-range smartphone. This chip is based on a quad-core Cortex-A7 1.2 GHz CPU and Mali-400 GPU. It supports up to 2 GB of RAM, 1080p video playback at 30 FPS, VP8 hardware decoding, and up to 13 MP cameras.

HTC hasn't had the best luck with its low-end smartphone offerings because, for some reason, it always ends up more expensive than the competition sporting similar specs. Spreadtrum might help HTC reduce its overall prices for its low-end smartphones.

Earlier this year, there were some talks about a potential Spreadtrum/RDA Microelectronics merger, but this deal was met with opposition from RDA employees, who consider Spreadtrum a much less nimble company than their own.

China Turns Up the Heat

ARM’s open-license model has allowed it to become ubiquitous in the mobile market, simultaneously giving lesser-known or brand-new semiconductor companies the opportunity to use its IP to build SoCs of their own. Those chip makers can then use their hardware to compete against the well-known semiconductor giants.

Many of these companies, which don’t yet have pervasive brands, have to compete against the entry-level offerings from larger, more established competitors. This is exactly the kind of strategy Chinese companies use to excel, thanks to the low costs of manufacturing. Now, as some of those vendors cultivate more notable brands, many device manufacturers are starting to choose their wares, and not just because of low prices.

The Chinese semiconductor companies started out at the lower end of the performance spectrum, and have successively raised the bar to hit higher levels. More powerful SoCs command greater premiums and earn higher margins. Naturally, they all want to increase their profits.  

At the same time, since they've been offering aggressive pricing from the beginning, even their quicker processors are still considered affordable compared to the competition. This should allow them to steal market share from the better-known chip companies, even at the high end of the mobile chip market, earning positions in more popular flagship devices, which, in turn, will strengthen their brand.

The Chinese chip makers that seem to be doing the best right now are MediaTek, Rockchip, and Allwinner. Together, they have 75.7 percent of the tablet processor market in China, with Rockchip and Allwinner taking the lead.

MediaTek is doing much better in the phone market in China, with over 50 percent market share, thanks to the integration of its processors with baseband modems. Its main Chinese competition there is Spreadtrum, though that company’s market share is five times smaller.

Qualcomm is the only real challenge to MediaTek in the Chinese smartphone market. But even that juggernaut had to adopt stock Cortex-A5 and -A7 designs in order to become price-competitive. It had a brief advantage in the LTE market by integrating the cellular standard into its SoCs. However, Qualcomm’s market share is declining as more companies integrate baseband modems.

With the Chinese government and manufacturing customers tending to favor Chinese chip makers as well, it's going to become increasingly difficult for an outsider like Qualcomm to compete against these fast-growing Chinese chip makers, especially when they can't even beat them on price.

Hewlett Packard has quietly launched the HP 7 Plus Android tablet, packing an Allwinner A31 Cortex-A7 quad-core processor clocked at 1 GHz, Android 4.2.2 "Jelly Bean," and a mean price to boot: $99.99 USD. The tablet first went on sale in Europe and is now finally available in the United States.

According to a list of specs, the tablet provides a 7-inch IPS multi-touch screen with a 1024 x 600 resolution. The tablet also contains 1 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, 8 GB of internal storage, a microSD port for up to 32 GB of extra storage, and a 2800 mAh lithium polymer battery promising up to 5 hours and 30 minutes on a single charge.

The specs also show that the tablet provides Wireless N connectivity (Miracast compatible), an integrated microphone and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. There's also a 0.3MP fixed focus front facing camera, and a 2MP fixed focus camera on the back. The tablet measures 7.58 x 4.8 x 0.32 inches and weighs a mere 0.65 pounds.

A list of highlights include Kingsoft Office, HP Connected Photo powered by Snapfish, Box and HP ePrint, the latter of which allows users to print "from virtually anywhere." The Kingsoft Office suite lets users access, edit and share documents using Writer, Presentation and Spreadsheets applications.

To purchase the $100 tablet from HP, head here.

Can Google's Nexus 10 Beat Apple At Its Own Game?

We've had a lot of fun watching tablets evolve, starting as toys and slowly turning into devices we could actually imagine ditching our notebooks for. Interestingly, when there was only one real player in the space, Apple, we knew exactly what to do on our iPads. We'd tote them around with us as complements to the rest of our digital armada of smartphones and laptops. The tablet could keep the kids busy. It was better for Web browsing than a phone thanks to its big screen. And, for the same reason, it was great for watching video.

As the space started crowding with Android-, QNX-, webOS-, Windows RT-, and finally, Windows 8-based competition, the purpose of a tablet really started getting a lot more difficult to pin down. Today, the spectrum runs from glorified e-book reader to bona fide notebook replacement. We love having a ton of devices to choose from, without a doubt. But now more than ever, it's important to pick the right device for what you want to do, else you find yourself frustrated.

Nexus 10: Back To Basics

It was only recently that Apple deviated from its original trajectory with the iPad Mini (Apple iPad Mini Review: Our New Favorite Size, But...That Price?), shrinking its form factor in an apparent shot at Google's Nexus 7. Before that, it was making steady improvements to the iPad. The third-gen iteration introduced a 9.7" IPS screen with a resolution of 2048x1536, which works out to 264 pixels per inch. The company called its high-pixel-density display Retina.

Google's Nexus 10 returns fire with a larger 10" screen boasting an even higher 2560x1600 resolution (that's right, the same resolution we use to test high-end graphics cards on 30" panels). Its resulting pixel density (300 pixels per inch) is even higher than that of the third- and fourth-gen iPads.

Truly, the Nexus 10 is out to get Apple's incumbent tablet. It doesn't try to be the svelte little handheld at an incredible price that the Nexus 7 was. It doesn't try to be the productivity-oriented notebook alternative that the Surface attempts to pull off. Rather, the Nexus 10 gets us right back to where we started: an iPad competitor that evolves the content consumption concept by incorporating the latest internals with more screen space.

But Google doesn't just arm the Nexus 10 with better hardware. It also goes for the iPad's biggest vulnerability: its price. It costs $400 to get your foot in the door with a 16 GB Nexus 10. Meanwhile, Apple wants $500 for the same amount of memory.

If you're happy with the dimensions of a third-gen iPad, you'd be happy with the Nexus 10. Its larger screen naturally translates to more width (it's almost an inch wider, in fact), but it's also narrower and thinner, if only by a touch. Moreover, the Nexus 10 is lighter, and that's a more palpable attribute, we think.

The Nexus 10 is well-built. The plastic case features a rubberized coating that resists fingerprints, and the material is thick enough that it doesn't give when you press on it. Many folks are going to prefer Apple's more industrial feel, but we've had plenty of issues with scratched-up enclosures, so that's not necessarily a universal winner, either.

We like the all-black scheme Google goes with, giving the Nexus 10 a business presence the Nexus 7 doesn't have.

There are very few physical connectors along the Nexus 10's edges. With that said, the ones Google chooses to expose are both valuable and standardized, which we certainly appreciate.

The top of the tablet hosts a volume rocker and power button. On the bottom, you'll find what Google calls its Magnetic Pogo pin charger. Although we don't have any accessories in-house that plug into it, rumor has it that a charger is coming with the ability to get the Nexus 10 back up to 100% battery capacity quicker than the micro-USB connector.

The left side of the Nexus 10 gives you the aforementioned micro-USB interface, along with a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The right side plays host to a Type D micro-HDMI connector. Unfortunately, Android still limits you to display mirroring. So, while we appreciate the ability to output to another screen, the utility of such an output is limited by the Nexus' operating environment. We're still hoping to see Google incorporate display extension support, similar to what Windows RT enables.

Results: CPU Performance

As mentioned, Google's Nexus 10 centers on Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual SoC, formerly referred to as the 5250. The chip couples two Cortex-A15 cores running at 1.7 GHz with ARM's Mali-T604 (the number four indicating quad-core) GPU. Samsung manufacturers the Exynos 5 Dual on its 32 nm high-k metal gate process, which it says results in 30%-lower power consumption than the Exynos 4 Dual manufactured using a 45 nm node. With that said, we're curious to see how it stacks up against Qualcomm's existing S4 Plus and Nvidia's upcoming Tegra 4 SoCs, both of which benefit from a 28 nm process.

We discussed the Cortex-A15 superficially on page two of Snapdragon S4 Pro: Krait And Adreno 320, Benchmarked. Briefly, though, the -A15 employs the ARMv7 instruction set, just like ARM's Cortex-A9 design. The company claims performance up to 40% better than its prior-generation design at a given clock rate, though. Technically, a cluster of four Cortex-A15 cores supports up to 4 MB of L2 cache. But Samsung only arms its Exynos 5 Dual with 1 MB.

Geekbench doesn't reflect real-world performance; however, it's an interesting synthetic that helps demonstrate the relative performance of dissimilar platforms. According to our results, the Exynos 5 Dual's two Cortex-A15 cores deliver 80%+ more performance than the dual-core Cortex-A9s in TI's OMAP 44xx SoCs, albeit operating 500 MHz faster.

The CPU-oriented subtest helps pin down the Exynos 5 Dual's advantage in floating-point-based math (enhanced by the -A15's ability to execute 128 bits at a time), though it trails Intel's Atom Z2760 in the integer component.

But where the SoC really shines is the memory score. Samsung supports LPDDR3, DDR3, and LPDDR2 memory, but we have to imagine the Nexus 10 is armed with 2 GB of 800 MT/s LPDDR3 on its twin 32-bit channels (up to 12.8 GB/s) to post such a commanding lead over the Atom Z2760, which offers up to 6.4 GB/s of throughput via two channels of LPDDR2-800.

Results: GPU Performance

We don't have the explicit pricing data to prove it, but ARM's Mali GPUs have to be some of the most value-oriented designs available, which is why cheap SoCs like Allwinner's A10 employ the Mali-400 MP. The performance of that design isn't particularly impressive. However, the Mali-T6xx family is based on a new architecture called Midgard that promises significantly better results (up to five times higher, according to ARM).

ARM chooses not to divulge much of its architectural detail. However, the simple fact that Exynos 5 Dual offers so much memory bandwidth, seen on the previous page, suggests that a much more powerful GPU wouldn't be hamstrung by a lack of throughput, which is particularly important given the Nexus 10's native resolution. Fortunately, tests like GLBenchmark allow to dig into subsystem performance at a more granular level.

The native resolution tests are device-specific, looking at a given graphics processor rendering on a specific tablet's screen. GLBenchmark 2.1 suggests that ARM's Mali-T604 at 2560x1600 is faster than the Kindle Fire's PowerVR SGX540 at 1280x800, but it's slower than third-gen iPad's PowerVR SGX543MP4 engine at 2048x1536.

Taking the same tests off-screen removes resolution from the equation, narrowing our analysis to further emphasize the GPU. Freed from the Nexus 10's demanding native resolution, we see ARM's Mali-T604 serving up exceptional performance, second only to the quad-core PowerVR SGX543MP4 in Apple's third-gen iPad. 

Compared to other devices, the Mali delivers 25% more performance than the SGX543MP2 in Apple's iPad 2 and iPad mini, and between 80 and 130% more than Tegra 3.

Even at 2560x1600, tons of memory bandwidth helps the Nexus 10 overtake its Tegra 3-based competition at much lower resolutions when we apply higher-quality textures in GLBenchmark 2.5.

The off-screen test of this more-demanding version of GLBenchmark shows just how much ARM's Midgard architecture relies on taxing workloads in order to show off its potential. We see the Exynos 5 Dual's Mali-T604 solution top the chart, ahead of the A5X's SGX543MP4.

Results: Web-Based Performance

Web browser-based benchmarks continue to be the best way to compare devices that do not run on the same platform. Unfortunately, browser support is different for each operating system. And we know that, even on a consistent platform, performance varies between each Web browser. So, when you consider the many different tablets we're testing today, along with the permutations of software available for them all, these numbers involve a great many variables.

Futuremark's Peacekeeper and Rightware's BrowserMark 2.0 are straightforward tests designed to test HTML5 compliance and performance. Both metrics demonstrate that the Nexus 10's Exynos 5 Dual/Android combination is ~5% slower than Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T with an Atom Z2760 processor running Windows 8.

But perhaps a comparison to Nvidia's Tegra 3 is more apropos, since it drives the other Android-based tablets in our comparison. Up against Tegra 3, Samsung's SoC performs admirably.

Peacekeeper and BrowserMark are useful tools. But they're designed to measure JavaScript performance. They don't show you how fast a webpage renders in the real world. That's why we like BrowsingBench. It evaluates a browser's total performance story: page loading, processing, rendering, compositing, and so on. This helps reflect the delta between two devices you can actually feel.

Our results continue showing Google's Nexus 10 ahead of other Android-based alternatives powered by Nvidia's Tegra 3. However, the relative positioning is a little different. This time around, the Nexus 10 beats Asus' Transformer Prime by nearly 50%, which is less than what we saw in Peacekeeper and BrowserMark. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Surface trails the Nexus 10 by 5%.

LCD Performance: By The Numbers

The Nexus 10's subpixels are difficult to resolve due to the tablet's 2560x1600 resolution, even when we crank our microscope's magnification up all the way. We know that Google employs a Samsung Super Plane-to-Line Switching (PLS) panel, which we first encountered on the Galaxy Tab 10.1. Even more than a year later, it remains one of the best-looking displays we've seen, capable of delivering performance close to the third-gen iPad, which was released months later.

Although it uses the same panel technology as Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1, the Nexus 10 displays disappointing color saturation. It only renders 47% of the Adobe RGB1998 and 66% of the sRGB gamuts. Given that modest performance, it's a little more difficult to get excited about Google's high native resolution, since the Nexus 10 can't match the vividness of competition from Apple.

The Nexus 10's only clear advantage seems to be its ability to reach a high brightness setting, though contrast ratio still hovers near a mediocre 1000:1.

LCD Performance: The Subjective Analysis

Numbers can only tell you so much. Based on reader feedback, we've toyed with the idea of introducing color accuracy tests using our spectrophotometer. It's not easy to derive meaning from those results though, since they're expressed in a distance metric for color space called Delta E. Instead, we chose to set up in a pitch-black room and capture images that reflect LCD performance.

But first, a couple of caveats. A camera is able immortalize the difference between two displays. If you were to rank hardware based on its color gamut performance, you'd see cameras, wide-gamut monitors, high-quality printer, and then mainstream monitors and printers, in that order. So, depending on the device you're looking at Tom's Hardware on, you may not see the differences in what we're about to present. If you're using a decent screen, though, you should get an image representative of what we're trying to show.

Further, these pictures haven't been optimized in any way. We're simply publishing them after converting RAW files to PNG, which means all six comparisons are made under the same conditions.

We aren't labeling these pictures so that you evaluate them without the previous page's results in mind. Which tablet looks the best to you? Scroll to the bottom of the page if you want to know which is which.

At least to our eyes, the difference between these two is painfully obvious. The third-gen iPad is on the bottom, and its colors are both richer and more vivid. Google's Nexus 10, up top, doesn't look bad by any stretch, but a side-by-side comparison against a higher-quality screen makes the shortcomings we quantified on the previous page pretty easy to see.

Battery Life And Recharge Time

Normalized Brightness Benchmarks (Background Info)

The Nexus 10 employs an SoC with two Cortex-A15 cores. Its Mali-T604 drives a high-resolution display. And it weighs less than the third-gen iPad. Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that Google's tablet comes in under eight hours of battery life, despite its 33.75 Wh battery.

In our movie playback test, the Nexus 10 again trails the Nexus 7 and third-gen iPad, lasting just over nine hours. As we know, this is a completely different workload than the Web browsing metric, since only the SoC's fixed-function logic is being used to decode our H.264-encoded file.

Our gaming test requires careful analysis. Riptide GP only runs with its enhanced graphical effects on Tegra 3-based tablets under Android. The SoCs operating under iOS, Windows RT, and Windows 8 also have to contend with the more demanding visuals. Therefore, the Nexus 10 renders a simpler version of the game, helping bolster its longevity.

Recharging

The Nexus 10 takes an exceptionally long time to recharge from its micro-USB connector. In fact, this is the first tablet we've seen since Apple's third-gen iPad to take longer than five hours before hitting 90% charge.

Expect to wait more than 6.5 hours before hitting full capacity. Hopefully, Google comes out with an official charger for its Magnetic Pogo pin charger that helps rectify these results.

Platform Power

We've been working with Intel to quantify the power that CPU cores, graphics engines, memory controllers, and LCD screens consume in specific and well-defined workloads. Intel's motivation is clear: it wants to (and has, we believe) shown that its x86 ISA competes readily against ARM-based devices when it comes to efficiency. And that's on a 32 nm process, even.

Our interest is a little more general, but no less intense. We want to be able to show how much power a given platform consumes when its idle, when it's juggling content consumption, and when it's gaming to show you that the tasks you perform on your tablet greatly influence how much battery life you can expect from it.

Now, on a Windows RT- or Windows 8-based setup, we're able to extend the desktop to an external display, shut off the tablet's screen, and measure power use without the LCD's impact, isolating the platform itself. But Android doesn't give us that flexibility. So, we either have to generate our numbers for the whole tablet, display included, or completely instrument the hardware and hook up leads to the right places, which we're still exploring. For now, these results are for complete tablet solutions.

In our Web browsing benchmark, which includes MP3 playback and a 200-nit calibrated display, the Nexus 10 exhibits the highest power use, confirming suspicions that Cortex-A15 is going to be more power-hungry than the -A9s in Nvidia's Tegra 3 under load. Qualcomm's Krait-based solution is the best-looking in this test, though we have to consider that we're not just looking at the SoC's performance.

At the same time, we know from Samsung ATIV Tab Review: A Tablet To Hold Your Breath For? that the APQ8060A demonstrates crazy-low power use when we bypass the ATIV Tab's display. That makes its commanding first-place finish in the video playback workload even more impressive. In contrast, the Nexus 10 uses slightly more power than Microsoft's Surface, but less than the Atom-based ATIV Smart PC 500T.

An easier workload gives the Nexus 10 an unfair advantage in this break-out of device power consumption in Riptide GP. Really, though, the only stand-out is Microsoft's Tegra 3-powered Surface, which uses quite a bit more power while it renders an enhanced version of the game.

Nexus 10: We Want To Love It, But Don't

Really, there's a lot to like about Google's Nexus 10. Just having a 2560x1600 screen is enough to get the hardware geek in each of us excited. Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual is clearly a fast SoC backed by a capable graphics engine and copious memory bandwidth. Best of all, Google combines those parts into a platform that delivers reasonable battery life, and then asks $100 less than an iPad for it. Overall, then, the Nexus 10 is a good alternative for folks who like the Nexus 7's value, but want the larger form factor. 

Unfortunately, it's hard to look at the Nexus 10 only as the 7's big brother. The 10 is clearly a shot across Apple's bow as Google tries to take the tablet back to its roots, so the third- and fourth-gen iPads are its most natural enemies. Both Apple devices offer stellar screens, and it's really easy to see how much better they look in a side-by-side comparison. The trade-offs are that you end up paying more to go with an iPad, and of course, you're in the App Store ecosystem rather than Google's Play.

We like that the Nexus 10 boasts a higher resolution than any iPad you can buy, but that doesn't hand it a win. We like that it costs less than the iPad, but that's not a reason for a victory dance, either. Had this thing served up more decisive advantages and matched the iPad's display, it would have curried far more favor. As it stands today, though, if you're already surrounded by Apple hardware, the Nexus 10 isn't going to convince you to defect. If you're staunchly anti-Apple, the Nexus 10's shortcomings won't deter you. And so we're faced with perhaps the closest attempt at what makes the iPad as popular as it is, only for the Android space. For that, Google deserves props. The Nexus 10 doesn't get a recommendation, though.

At least with the Nexus 7, we were able to embrace what it can and can't do. It's a seven-inch tablet. You're not going to use it for writing school papers or editing images. It works for the consumption-oriented tasks that tablets do so well, though. Hence, the only award we've ever given to any tablet in The Nexus 7 Review: Google's First Tablet Gets Benchmarked. It starts at $199, too? Heck yeah. Love it.

There still is no tablet out there that does everything we want well, though. We're used to making compromises. We accepted that input on a tablet is challenging, until Microsoft's Surface came along. Then we had to live with the fact that Windows RT limits your potential to access the software you need. We looked to Samsung's ATIV Smart PC 500T running Windows 8 as a solution, and were saddened by its overall form factor.

Hopefully Google is able to nail down its hardware niggles in the Nexus 10's successor. A so-so display, modest battery life, long charging times, no extended display support, and graphics performance that merely catches the third-gen iPad all weigh on us this time around. When quad-core Atoms start showing up toward the end of this year, combining the flexibility of x86 with the energy efficiency enabled by advanced manufacturing, I predict it'll be increasingly difficult to compete in the 10" tablet space.

CNXSoft has stumbled across a USB-shaped mini-PC featuring Android 4.0 and an AllWinner A10 SoC clocked at 1.5 GHz. The device, called the Rikomagic MK802, also includes a mini-HDMI jack to output 1080p video to an HDTV, a microSD slot for adding up to 32 GB of storage, a microUSB port for power and a USB 2.0 Host port.

"Connect a wireless mouse and keyboard to the device, the power supply, and an HDMI cable to your TV, and you’ve got yourself a cheap PC running Android 4.0. Since this is based on AllWinner A10, you could also insert a microSD card with Ubuntu, Debian or your other favorite Linux distribution and have yourself a Linux PC," CNXSoft reports.

The actual size of the mini-Pc is 8.8 x 3.5 x 1.2 centimeters, and it weighs 200g. Other specs include a Mali 400 GPU, 512 MB of RAM, 4 GB of internal storage, 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi connectivity, and support for wireless peripherals. The power input is 5V/2A.

The device can be purchased on Aliexpress for 74 USD which includes shipping.

The mini PC arrives before FXI Tech's Cotton Candy which is expected to ship sometime this month. This USB stick-shaped mini PC is a bit pricier, as it includes an actual HDMI connector so that users can plug it directly into an HDTV without the need for a cable. The device will also feature a Samsung Exynos 4210 dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 SoC clocked at 1.2 GHz, a quad-core 200 MHz Mali 400MP GPU, and 1 GB of RAM.

"The Cotton Candy is a USB stick sized compute device allows users a single, secure point of access to all personal cloud services and apps through their favorite operating system, while delivering a consistent experience on any screen," reads the product description. "The device will serve as a companion to smartphones, tablets, and notebook PC and Macs, as well add smart capabilities to existing displays, TVs, set top boxes and other media that supports USB mass storage."

Additional tech specs include a microSD card slot for adding up to 64 GB of storage, a micro USB port for connecting peripherals, a USB 2.0 male form factor for power and connection to devices that supports USB mass storage, 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR connectivity. The PC-on-a-stick can run Android 4.0 or the latest Ubuntu, and will support Windows 8 when it arrives later this year. Users can even plug this device into their current PC and boot up into the installed OS.

Cotton Candy will be priced under $200 when it finally arrives on the market. Earlier this week the company said that development units have been delayed due to hardware modifications and extended software testing. "Scandanavian pre-orders start shipping this month, with the balance of the pre-orders shipping throughout the Summer," FXI said in a blog. "At this time, pre-orders are closed as we have gone beyond our expected volume of orders."