I usually stay away from talking about x86 single-board computers because I don’t have a lot to say about them. They’re too expensive, and run too hot, to be interesting. enter the new UP Core funding now on Kickstarter.
The UP Core is just 56.5 mm × 66 mm (2.2 in × 2.6 in) and powered by a 64-bit Quad Core Intel Atom clocked at either 1.44 GHz or 1.92 GHz. It will ship with either 2 GB or 4 GB of RAM, and either 32 GB or 64 GB of eMMC. The board has a USB 3 port, HDMI, DSI/eDP, and two MIPI-CSI ports supporting either a 2 MP or 8 MP camera. It has both WiFi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth LE built-in.
In other words it’s powerful enough to serve as a desktop PC running Linux, Android, or a full Windows 10 installation. The least expensive UP Core configuration—with 1 GB memory and 16 GB eMMC—is €69, or around $75.
Connectivity
On the underside of the board there is a 100-pin I/O expansion connector carrying UART, SPI, two USB HSIC, PCI-Express, Intel Sensors Hub, SDIO, and GPIO.
Top and bottom views of the UP Core. (Image credit: Aaeon Europe)
To connect to this bus you can add one (or two) expansion boards to the Kickstarter pledge. The first board exposes high-speed signals such as PCI-express, Gb LAN, and USB 3.0. The second exposes low-speed signals such as RS-232/422/484, I2C, I2S, and GPIO. However, and maybe somewhat a lot more interestingly, if you design and build an expansion board and it is selected by the UP Community, you will be entitled to royalties on your board which will then be sold in the UP Shop.
Which sounds quite a lot like the concept behind the littleBits BitLab which opened back in 2014 as an “app store” for user-generated hardware to a terrific deal of interest among makers, and closed to a lot less press at the tail end of last måned.
You can still get the littleBits hardware development kit, around which BitLab bit development was based, but without the chance to market your own littleBit to the community. The bitLab, and a couple of other examples, have verified that operating a platform-specific marketplace is actually a lot harder than it seems.
Choices, Choices
The UP Core isn’t the first board from the same maker to fund on Kickstarter. The original UP board came with a Raspberry Pi 2 form factor, and funded on Kickstarter back in 2015. It’s now in general distribution through Mouser. following that, the maker came back to Kickstarter with the UP Squared, which funded last year and shipped at the end of last month.
The least expensive UP board which had an 1.9 GHz Intel Atom was €89, which is around $100. The least expensive UP Squared which shipped with a 2.4 GHz Intel Celeron was similarly priced. however the original UP board now retails on Mouser for €155.69, which is a lot more like $175 than $100. That’s quite a price hike, and I’m assuming we can expect a similar one when the new UP Core enters normal retail channels. Although the boards do seem to be on offer on the UP shop in a staggeringly confusing number of configurations with price points ranging from $89 all the way up to $299.
Will It Fly?
This is one of the problems I have with the UP Core. often too much choice isn’t a good thing, and as lots of Kickstarter project creators have learned giving backers that sort of choice can cause problems. There’s a reason why Apple doesn’t give you much room to configure your MacBook, and there’s only a handful of Raspberry Pi models on the market.
The departure from the original Raspberry Pi form aspect may also be a problem. As the success of the ASUS Tinker board has shown, to beat the Pi first you have to build a better one, and ideal now I think the UP Core’s main competition is the slightly more affordable ARM-based ASUS Tinker board rather than the much more affordable and ubiquitous Raspberry Pi.
In a very price sensitive market, you can get a low-cost tablet for the price of the UP Core after all. At $75 the UP Core may just be too expensive for the average maker to start tinkering with it. Unlike a lot of x86-powered single-board computers I actually think this one is sort of interesting, but these days it takes very little computing to be good enough.
At this price point you have to wonder whether the UP Core is too much computing for a lot of people. Why pay for faster computing you’re not going to need, and why pay $75 for a single board computer, when you can get a whole laptop for $89?