Asus is planning its own feature-packed computer the size of credit card. The computer is called the 90MB0QY1-M0EAY0 Tinker Board and it will be taking on the likes of the Raspberry Pi and Intel Edison.
The 90MB0QY1-M0EAY0 Tinker Board. Called just Tinker Board for short, the credit-card-sized computer will feature a quadcore Arm Cortex A17 CPU running at 1.8 GHz, ARM Mali-T764 graphics processing unit. It also sports 2 gigabytes of DDR3 memory.
The Asus Tinker Board is said to take on the fairly new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B which sports a Cortex A53 quad core processor. Although the Pi 3 supports 64-bit instructions versus the Tinker Board's 32-bit, the Mali-T764 GPU on the small computer is much more powerful than the Pi 3's Broadcom VideoCoreIV.
The mini computer will support H.265 4K decoding instead of the lesser 1080p. This means that the Tinker Board will be able to provide a better 3D experience. Other features of the Tinker Board include gigabit Ethernet, swappable antennas for its 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi module, and support for SDIO 3.0.
One can watch downloaded or home-made 4K videos thanks to the Tinker Board's H.264 and H.265 encoding. However, users will not be able to stream NetFlix as only Intel Kaby Lake and Windows 10-based PCs have the needed DRM-encoding hardware and software to do so. Video streamers like Nvidia Shield and Chromecast Ultra will have to step in to help.
The Tinker Board will run on an OS which is Asus' own. The OS is based upon the Debian distribution as the Raspberry Pi OS.
The Taiwanese tech firm has claimed that the small computer will be able to support Ubuntu and Kodi. It is also claimed to support OpenSUSE.
Raspberry Pi has maintained an engaging appeal due to its wide software support and community. That support and community are expected to get stronger with the release of the PIXEL Linux desktop for x86 PCs. The company has yet to start its own community to support the Tinker Board.
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