A20 or A10 ?

[Tele]

I'm gonna buy a sunxi board.

Till now I couldn't decide which one, Cubieboard A10/A20 or Hacberry A10 or Marsboard A10/A20 or Olimex ?
I had an Olimex A13 Wifi before, I liked it, it was a correct steady card.
I'm not interested in Android, I would have bought a chinese cheap tablet long ago, if I were.
I want a stable running linux, HW accelerated graphics, and SATA.
Cubie and Mars have had an A10 version earlier, and when Alwinner released A20, they replaced the chip, now they have A20 as well.
Olimex never had A10, (only A10s), he started with A20.

I think it would be an option to release OLimeXino A10. No I'm not stupid.
Of course I know that A20 is much better, almost 2 times faster chip, and its worth that 10EUR difference.

But. A10 software support is much better, its got stable kernel and HW accelerated graphics, long ago. An oldie but goldie card.

A20 is a baby yet, even its kernel is in staging branch. I would like A20, but I cant be sure when will get a regular stable kernel, and working stable accelerated graphics, maybe in a month, maybe in a year maybe never. Allwinner and Chinese chip manufacturers (like Rockchip) pushes the Android line much harder. They don't care about the linux so much.
The sure thing is only the A10 linux kernel. And A10 is even somewhat cheaper. This is why its an option for a customer.

In term of manufacturing its nothing for Olimex, because he would use the A10 chip instead of A20, thats all. Its exactly the same card anyway.

I could be wrong. I'm just thinking loudly as a potential customer. What do you think Olimex?

[olimex]

A10 cost same as A20 :-) this makes A10 a bit doomed, every one will prefer 2 cores instead 1 for same price
the tradeoff is that two cores usually require more RAM
and what you say for A10 is true the software support for A10 is mature, but A20 is developing with good speed and I guess by the end of the year there will be more mature support for A20 than for A10

we are going to release A10 board with 512MB RAM which will allow us to reduce the price per board,
also for this new board we think for custom plastic box right from the start, so there will be pocket linux computer in nice looking enclosure
probably the prototypes will be ready in October and I will blog then about it, right now it's too early

[Tele]

A10 cost same as A20 :-)

wow! I didn't know that.

...but A20 is developing with good speed and I guess by the end of the year there will be more mature support for A20 than for A10

Thx so much, you convinced me.
Almost.
I have to be more optimistic about A20's future, its a great SoC.
Yes.
Its gonna be A20, I think so.

Its so hard to chose, when I wanna be wise.
Maybe A31 ? Do you plan something to design with that? Should I wait? Sould I be more patient ?
Hmmm....

[olimex]

A31 uses PowerVR which means it will never have proper linux support
we decided to skip A31 board in favour of RK3188 which uses Mali400

[Tele]

Yeah but RK3188 has neither SATA nor PCI support. USB (480Mbit/s) is the fastest bus to communicate with devices.
Its a very powerful SoC ruined by that huge deficiency. SD card or NAND (with few MB/sec write speed) simply don't conform to that very strong quad core 1.6GHz processor, its about 6-7 times faster than an A13 or A10 ! A beast.

And its SW support is even worse, than Allwinner's. There is no official kernel support at all, only android.
I think RK3188 is very good for a usb TV stick, to play with, but not for a developer card. Although this is my opinion only, because I'm not interested in android.

A31 seems much more sympathetic for me. Are you sure it's video never gets supported ? So annoying, it makes me angry.

[olimex]

A31 have no SATA nor PCI either
these devices A31 and RK3188 are made for tablets
RK3188 even have no HDMI but uses converter

you an ask Luc (libv) about PowerVR at Linux-Sunxi irc channel

there is Picuntu (Ubuntu) for RK3188 and I read few days ago it uses GPU already

[Tele]

Wow its interesting. You walk a few steps ahead of me.
Ok, RK3188 seems better, indeed.
But you have just said :

these devices A31 and RK3188 are made for tablets

and you are perfectly right, I think.
These devices are not optimal for building a developer card.
Without a fast interface, these chips are only for hype. They made for artificially pushing the toy-tablet market. The sticker looks soooo good on your brand new tablet "Powered by the new A91, 16 x 10 GHz cores"
And poor SoC communicates with the world via usb 2.0, that's the maximum throughput.
Its a monster indeed, but a freak one.

A31 have no SATA nor PCI either...

Freescale i.MX6 supports both, and it has a good selection range (from solo core to quad) also.
Have you been thinking about i.MX6 ? Is it too expensive?
It supports an old kernel though (3.0.35), and android jellybean 4.2.2

Thanks for the report by the way. It wasn't my intention, but I've have made a feature article with you. Its ok, people have the right to know what is in your mind, what will be future, and the next Olimex.

I think I'm gonna buy an A20. That's the existing reality, for now.