Single board computers are not just about running Windows or Linux.
Some of them are built to do specific jobs…. Like computer graphics.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/04/new_hobbyist_board_focuses_on_graphics/
Imagination Technologies, the MIPS chipper firm behind PowerVR, has a new hobbyist board. For fifty quid you can do some techie tinkering.
The idea is to build a community similar to that surrounding Arduino, Beagle or Raspberry Pi, which will create applications and devices which then use MIPS processors.
The Ci20 has an emphasis on video. There is a four-pipe PowerVR SGX540 graphics offering full support for OpenGL 2.1 and OpenGL ES 2.0 and dedicated video hardware for low power 1080p decoding at 30 fps and resolutions up to 2K.
Behind this there is a 1.2 GHz dual-core, MIPS32-based Ingenic JZ4780 SoC, 32kB L1 I- and D-cache, 512kB L2 cache processor and fast Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. It’s packed with 1GB DDR3 memory, 4GB flash and an SD card expansion slot, and, as you might expect, loads of ports: 2 x UART, 25 x GPIO, 2 x SPI, I2C, ADC, expansion headers and a 14-pin ETAG connector, so you could interface it to a Raspberry Pi.
Just a heads up. Nothing more.
Its a small computer. It’s been built for graphics.
If you have a graphics problem, this is the solution.
