by OLIMEX Ltd in Intel, olinuxino, OSHW Tags: intel, oshw, x5-z8300

We have been so focused on ARM that somehow we have missed the Intel latest development.

Yesterday browsing the net I saw $100 tablet with X5-Z8300 and check the datasheet. It looks good!

Quad Core 1.84Ghz 64-bit data bus “Cherry Trial” Atom with support for up to 4GB DDR Ram, USB 3.0 (!) we guess working as on A80 USB3 is one of the broken peripherials. PICe, MIPI camera, display etc.

All this come in handy BGA 17×17 mm 0.65 package not quite different than Allwinner A64 part.

And of course it comes with first class documentation you can see product page and documentation.

Intel write recommended price for tray $20 in their site, but brief check shows that it could be sourced from China at less than $15. Much better deal than the obsolete iMX6 quad core SoC for instance! Still x3 times more expensive than Allwinner A64 but probably x10 times more powerful.

Pro:

first class SOC vendor 14 nm process;

well documented;

nice features;

removes the cumbersome ARM obsolete Android Linux Kernels problems;

you can work with the latest vanilla Linux Kernel;

we guess Graphics and Video drivers are also mainlined;

can run Linux, Windows, Android whatever you want;

can be build to work with standard 64bit computer memory modules, so you can put whatever amount of RAM you want up to 4GB;

Con:

probably more power hungry than ARM, but maybe not, the tablet I was looking at was with 4000mAh battery