pcDuino3 development board features Allwinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 SoC with support for SATA, HDMI, LVDS, Wi-Fi, Fast Ethernet, and Arduino compatible headers. Linksprite has now an updated version of the board that adds Gigabit Ethernet, while leaving the rest of the specs unmodified.
pcDuino3B (aka pcDuino V3B) specifications:
- SoC – AllWinner A20 dual core ARM Cortex A7 @ 1.0 GHz, with Mali 400MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 1GB DRAM
- Storage – 4GB NAND Flash, SATA connector, and microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
- Video Output – HDMI 1.4 with HDCP support, LVDS header
- Audio Out – 3.5mm analog audio interface, I2S stereo digital audio interface
- Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi
- USB – 1x USB host, 1x USB OTG
- Expansion Headers – Arduino UNO extension interface with 14xGPIO, 2xPWM, 6xADC, 1xUART, 1xSPI, 1xI2C.
- Camera – MIPI camera support
- Misc – IR receiver
- Power – 5V, 2000mA, support for Li-Po Battery
- Dimensions – 121mm x 65mm
The board can run Ubuntu 12.04 / 14.04, Fedora, or Android 4.2 with the images available on pcDuino3 Nano / pcDuino3B download page. Documentation, and tutorials are available on pcDuino3 page.
pcDuino3B sells for $59.99 on Linksprite store plus shipping, except if your order exceeds $99 in which case shipping is included. How you also find it on Ebay for $55 including shipping (Title refers to pcDuino3B, but description is for the 10/100M version, so better ask first). If you are based in Europe, you could consider order from EmbeddedComputer.NL or LDLC for a little over 60 Euros including VAT in order to avoid potentially nasty surprises from your local customs office.
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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It would be very interesting to know if these boards also show the unexpectedly high difference in transfer speed of sata disk reading and writing?
With a disk that performs at 120MB/s reading and writing to a x86 board, with A20 cpu’s I always measure 120MB/s for reading (which is excellent) and only 30MB/s for writing (which is very slow!!).
@LinAdmin
I got about 180MB/s read speed, and 36MB/s write speed with CubieTruck.
http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/12/21/cubietruck-metal-case-kit-getting-started-guide-and-review/
So I suppose it would be the same for pcDuino3 boards.
Well, kernel support of all these arm boards sucks.. except the raspberrypi.
@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)
Your measurements show an even bigger discrepancy: 180/36 = 5 times faster reading.
Has anybody an educated guess what does slow down writing 4-5 times???
@LinAdmin
I’ve seen you’ve asked that question before for your Banana Pi, so maybe it’s related to Allwinner A20 only.
I’ve seen one person do optimized on Marvell hardware (Pogoplug), and his 2TB HDD can achieve 85MB/s write speeds, so it might be something to look into: https://linuxengineering.wordpress.com/2014/08/03/performance-tuning-with-pogoplug-v4/.
@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)
Many thanks for guiding me towards that single publication of linuxengineering. It is very interesting what he obtained with a rather limited hardware.
I will have to understand the technical details and then try to apply it to A20 on my BananaPI and pcArduino nano. I still hope that it is not hardware because I have bougth too many A20 and spent a lot of time learning to build mainline kernel, uboot’s and so on….