When Cubietech announced the availability of the Cubieboard2 last week, some people seemed disappointed it only came with 1GB RAM and no Gigabit Ethernet. We already knew a board called Cubietruck was in the work with those features, but work has gone faster than I expected as pictures of the Cubietruck board are already available.
Instead of simply listing the specifications, I’ll show a comparison table of the specifications against Cubieboard2.
| Cubietruck | Cubieboard2 | |
| SoC | AllWinner A20 Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A7 with Mali400 MP2 | AllWinner A20 Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A7 with Mali400 MP2 |
| System Memory | 1GB or 2GB DDR3@480MHz | 1GB DDR3@480MHz |
| Storage | SATA 2.0 interface + NAND + Micro SD slot (or 2x micro Sd slot) | SATA 2.0 interface + 4GB NAND flash + micro SD slot, |
| Video Output Connectors | HDMI & VGA | HDMI |
| Audio I/O | 1x TOSLINK (Optical SPDIF), 1x headphone jack | 1x headphone jack, 1x line in |
| Connectivity | 10M/100M/1G Ethernet | 10M/100M Ethernet |
| On-board Wifi+BT wireless module with antenna | ||
| USB | 2x USB HOST, 1x OTG | 2x USB HOST, 1x OTG |
| Misc | 1x IR, 4x LEDs, 3x Keys | 1x IR |
| Power | DC5V @ 2.5A with HDD, supports Li-battery & RTC | 5V/2A power supply or USB OTG input |
| Expansion | 54 extended pins including I2S, I2C, SPI, CVBS, LRADC x2,UART, PS2, PWMx2, TS/CSI, IRDA, LINEIN&FMIN&MICIN, TVINx4 with 2.0 pitch connectors | 96 pins including I2C, SPI, RGB/LVDS, CSI/TS, FM-IN, ADC, CVBS, VGA, SPDIF-OUT, R-TP, and more |
| PCB Dimensions | 11cm x 8cm x 1.4mm | 10cm x 6cm x 1.5mm |
Beside the extra RAM and Gigabit Ethernet, you also get built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, support for Li-battery, a VGA connector (instead of requiring an external board), but you apparently lose the line in connector, and have less I/O pins available which may be explained by the extra features. The Cubietruck is slightly larger than the Cubieboard(2).
The good news is the board seems to run Android fine, or at least boot to Android.
As for the Cubieboard2, you can also expect several Linux distributions to run on the device. Nevertheless the board is still under development, and availability and pricing information are not available, but I’d expect something like $79 for the 2GB version of this board.
Thanks Peter!
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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