UP Squared Is A Very Capable Intel SBC For Makers & IoT

[phoronix]

Phoronix: UP Squared Is A Very Capable Intel SBC For Makers & IoT

After learning of the UP-Squared SBC maker board this summer when this Intel Apollolake single board computer was added to Coreboot, the company sent over a review sample and for the past number of weeks have been putting this mini board through its paces and performance tests.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=28198

[yokem55]

The PCEngines APU[2|3|4] would be a good one to compare this board to. With case, power supply, and SSD, shipped from Switzerland it comes in roughly at the same price. But, that gets you a quad core AMD jaguar at 1ghz and 4gb of ram. I'd test my own, but it's on router duty for my home and running OpenBSD at the moment, so I don't think that will run the test suite...

[edwaleni]

I have had the UP Atom x5 version of this board since it first came out. I like the flexibility the Intel CPU provides versus the ARM SBC's. But you pay more for that too.

But this device does get hot, especially when running Windows 10. That larger heat sink is justified as mine has the smaller one and its not enough when running Windows.

If you run a lightweight Linux, it does not get as hot.

Mine uses that microUSB based 3.0 UTG cable, which I cannot stand as those microUSB connectors for USB 3 are extremely cheap and tend to bend on the PCB, especially with that UTG cable. Looks like they ditched that for the A-Type ports.

[AndyChow]

This shows how advanced x86 is compared to ARM. A pathetic two-core N3350 released in 2016 beats virtually all ARM offerings. And look at that WAV to FLAC encoding!

[ChamPro]

The PCEngines APU[2|3|4] would be a good one to compare this board to. With case, power supply, and SSD, shipped from Switzerland it comes in roughly at the same price. But, that gets you a quad core AMD jaguar at 1ghz and 4gb of ram. I'd test my own, but it's on router duty for my home and running OpenBSD at the moment, so I don't think that will run the test suite...

I really like the PCEngines boards, but they are a different orientation than the UP. PCEngines make a great embedded firewall (OPNsense, PFsense, etc). They don't make a good general purpose desktop or TV front-end given the age of the GPU (2014). UP has Intel Gen9, which gives a decode of HEVC/h265. UP would also probably make a decent 2 port firewall.

Both PCEngines and UP are way above the RaspberryPi cost, being over $200 before you have a functional system and the RaspberryPi being about $50.

[schmidtbag]

This shows how advanced x86 is compared to ARM. A pathetic two-core N3350 released in 2016 beats virtually all ARM offerings. And look at that WAV to FLAC encoding!

Yeah, but it also can run at twice the frequency, it has a higher wattage, higher cost, and has a slew of instruction sets to its disposal. It's like comparing an economy car from the 80s to one made today.
That's not to say Up² is a bad platform, because of course it's good. But you're either stating the obvious or missing some key differences.

[M@GOid]

At 150 dollars you really need a good justification for a board like this compared to, say, a 12V powered embedded Atom board on ITX form factor. I'm not saying is unjustifiable, but being flexible on the size requirements of your project can save you a lot of money.

[Toggleton]

This shows how advanced x86 is compared to ARM. A pathetic two-core N3350 released in 2016 beats virtually all ARM offerings. And look at that WAV to FLAC encoding!

I think something like the Odroid N2(under 100Euro) will be a better Comparison(Will make a run once it is done Downloading)

And if you look at the Flac source code there is no Optimization for Arm(Neon).
There is only for x86 (SSE SSE2 SSE4.1 AVX, AVX2) and for Power(VSX)

[Guest]

Considering how much a low-end device like a tablet with an Itel Atom costs, this SBC is quite overpriced.

[tildearrow]

Considering how much a low-end device like a tablet with an Itel Atom costs, this SBC is quite overpriced.

Sorry but if I remember my Atom tablet costed ~$200, and actually had less RAM (1GB) and storage (16GB). Yeah, they somehow managed to fit Windows 10 in 16GB.