F&S Elektronik Systeme GmbH, a German company, has announced the armStoneA8 , a Single Board Computer (SBC) based on an ARM Cortex A8 that will be available by the first day of the Embedded World 2012 Conference. The great part is that for a limited period (27 February 2012 to 4 March 2012) you’ll be able to buy the board for 49 Euros on their (yet to be launched) online shop.
The board, that comes in PicoITX form factor (100 x 72mm), is powered by a Cortex A8 CPU running at 1GHz and the company provides support for Linux, WinCE 6.0 and Windows Embedded Compact 7.
The company says the bootloader, SDK, BSP and kernels are already available with support for DirectX, OpenGL and hardware accelerated GStreamer.
The company plans to release the detailed specifications before Embedded World 2012, but in the meantime, I found some PDF about the board showing the followings technical specifications:
- ARM Cortex A8 800 Mhz (But in Embedded World they say 1GHz)
- 256 / 512 MB DDR2 RAM
- 128 MB Flash
- LVDS/DVI (HDMI)/LCD Interface-bis XGA / 1080p
- Ethernet 10/100 MB
- 3x UART
- USB 2.0 Host
- USB 2.0 Device
- I2C Interface
- SD Card slot
- Audio In/Out
- Touch Panel interface
- I/O Ports
This PDF also shows the regular price (119 Euros) you’d have to pay after the 4th of March.
The company says the board can control two independent displays. The (undisclosed) CPU also embed a GPU with 2D/3D, 5 Window Layer and MPEG4/ H264 Decoder up to 1080@30fps.
That makes it somewhat similar to the Raspberry Pi Model B. However, the board size is bigger and it’s twice as expensive, but comes with a faster processor and some extra ports.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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