Online Labs, a subsidiary of Iliad (free), recently launched hosting services with dedicated ARM servers based on Marvell processor with modules they call C1. The company has decided to design a baseboard (pBox) for C1 module, and, as I understand it, plans to sell it to the public. It’s an exciting development for those who are looking for affordable and tiny purpose built Linux ARM servers.
Preliminary C1 Node / pBox mini server specifications (based on C1 specs and bits of information gathered online):
- SoC – Marvell Armada 370/XP quad core ARMv7 processor @ up to 1.2 GHz
- System Memory – 2GB RAM
- Storage – 256 MB NAND flash + mSATA slot + eSATA port + micro SD slot
- Connectivity – 4x Gigabit Ethernet ports
- USB – 1x micro USB port
- Expansion – mini PCie, 1x 20-pin header for expansion (no details yet)
- Debugging – 20-pin JTAG connector
- Power Supply – Power barrel (5V?)
Supported operating systems should be the same as on the hosted instances including Ubuntu 14.04 or 14.10, Debian Wheezy, Gentoo, Fedora 20, and so on. You can watch the 3D render video of the board below to check out the mSATA and mPCIe slots under the board.
Availability has not been announced yet, except it’s expected shortly. The company also teased us with the message “time to upgrade your #RaspberryPi”, so it should be competitively priced too.
Via Vik and Sebastien BENOIT.
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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“time to upgrade your #RaspberryPi” seems weird, if 4x gigabit ethernet are obligatory… (Maybe there’ll be a different baseboard?)
Finally there will be server/cluster ready ARM platforms…
Armada sucks though, but hey, it’s a very nice first step (I intentionally exclude those already established server ARM chip makers for a reason 😉 ), now we need decent server/cluster like SoCs that have real performance ports for the Ethernet/SATA/NVMe etc… So PCI-based on-chip peripheral blocks (with an point-to-point PCIe switch, no ring-bus nonsense).
And performance memory, as 2*32-bit doesn’t cut it at that stage, AArch64 with 2*64-bit (72-bit) would suit the need.
This sounds great, I can’t wait. Is there anything like this now?
It’s using Allwinner A80. How did you implement the SATA connection, via USB?
This looks like it’d make a heck of a router, if it ran OpenWRT or something similar. Upgradeable wifi, so I can move it to wireless ag or whatever comes next after ac, msata and esata for NAS use, even micro-USB that I can use to share a printer (with an adapter).
@Raffi Manoian
Pretty cool, an Gumstix Stagecoach on steroids.
Just the stuff I was wondering (a while back) why nobody were not doing already.
I received an invitation from online labs month ago, and it’s really nice to have out-of-box gentoo(I have to install it on most of my VPS). But they seems to have only Paris as location and the ping to my home is high.What a shame.
@Riaqn
The good news is that you’ll soon be able to host it at home / in your office.
@Riaqn
The specs are similar to the Online.net machine, same SOC, same RAM.