Single Board Computers

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A community for the discussion of all single board computers. Raspberry Pi is ok, but there are so many other boards now that get looked over that deserve attention.

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minnix@lemux.minnix.dev

The Differences Between Single-Board Computers vs. Microcontrollers (www.okdo.com)

submitted 11 months ago by minnix@lemux.minnix.dev to c/sbcs@lemux.minnix.dev

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[–] ttmrichter@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I've never seen anything I'd call an MCU that has more than 2MB of SRAM (though a lot of them have the ability to address external buses for Flash and SRAM both semi-transparently, so there may be some dev boards that give more).

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

In case you missed the sibling comment: I just found the iMX RT500, a 249-pin BGA 'Microcontroller" with 5MB of SRAM.

https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-microcontrollers/i-mx-rt-crossover-mcus/i-mx-rt500-crossover-mcu-with-arm-cortex-m33-dsp-and-gpu-cores:i.MX-RT500

Which is absolutely the largest "microcontroller" I've ever heard of. But you're right in that 2MB is already an absurdly huge size in most cases.

[–] ttmrichter@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wow. At that point my reaction is ... it would be better to have an SoC. I mean I'm working with kit that typically has 64KB to 128KB of SRAM and thinking that I'm blessed with resources! 🤣

[–] dragontamer@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah, there's entire MPU platforms that are cheaper than the iMX RT500.

And the 0.40mm and/or 0.35mm pitch BGAs just confuse me even further. (Seriously, who is getting like 2.5mil trace/space and like 6 layers PCB for a microcontroller? But cannot afford the MPUs?)

I'm guessing iMX RT500 has some power-benefits. But... it just seems absurd all together to me. But good luck on NXP on finding customers for that thing.

[–] ttmrichter@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

I think its sole use case would be for that very, very, very narrow point of intersection between "extreme power management needs" and "extreme processing requirements".

And it seems a bit quirky to make ... that ... chip for it.

But hey! At least it isn't the STM32MP1! 🤣