More SBCs On Their Way - BOINC

Hello All,

I really liked the work done by @jimbo88 on his post here. I actully did a follow-up post to it a while ago where I compared the Odroid XU4 to the Raspberry Pi 3. Since then, I have been scouring the web for efficient Single Board Computers (SBC) that could crunch BOINC work units.

Up until the new year, I was running Linux on both the XU4 and RPi3. I was crunching work units for Universe@Home and DrugDiscovery@home. I chose these two projects as they had ARM work units available and I was not competing against GPUs. The purpose of this approach was to maximize magnitude. Since the new year, ARM work units (or any work units for that matter) have been scarce or otherwise unavailable. As a result, I moved over to an Android operating system for my XU4, went back to my roots and started crunching work units for the World Community Grid. For whatever reason, I cannot get Android to work well on my RPi3. If anyone has a good guide for this, please feel free to share in the comments.

So, as you can see above, one of the items that I was looking for was an SBC that could easily run Android, especially with an image supported by the manufacturer. This is where my travels led me to FriendlyElec / FriendlyARM. They produce the Nano series of SBCs, specifically the NanoPi and NanoPC. @jimbo88's post had a few FriendlyARM devices on it, but since then, some new boards have been released.

I recently ordered a NanoPC-T3 Plus and a NanoPi Fire3. Both of these SBCs sport a Samsung S5P6818 64-Bit Octa-Core chip which runs at 1.4 GHz. Other than the obvious differences in physical size and price, the other key differences (that were of concern to me) are that the NanoPC has 1 more GB of RAM on board as well as built-in Wi-Fi. However, the NanoPC is rated at 15 Watts to the NanoPi's 10 Watts. To their credit though, they both run off of a MicroUSB connection and not a custom adapter like the XU4. In the XU4's defense, it does have a faster processor with 4 of its 8 cores running a 2 GHz.

According to FriendlyElec's website, these two boards will do triple the hash rate of a RPi3. This is quite interesting as the NanoPi Fire3 is pretty much the same price as a RPi3.

Unless the performance increase of having the extra 1 GB of RAM is that much better, my gut feeling is that the NanoPi Fire3 presents a much better value at $35 USD. Once I actually receive them from China, I'll prepare a follow-up post for your reading pleasure!

Cheers!

NanoPC T3-Plus (image courtesy of FriendlyElec)

Nano Pi Fire 3 (image courtesy of FriendlyElec)