Raspberry Pi

[DiaboliK.]

Raspberry Pi's continued success has proven that itty-bitty computers aren't just a fad. That success has attracted a long list of competitors too, and that list grew this week with the official release of Hardkernel's new Odroid-N2 single board computer.

Hardkernel announced the Odroid-N2 in February. The device comes in two variants: one with 2GB of RAM that costs $63 and one with 4GB that costs $79. Those versions are otherwise identical, so unless someone's looking to minimize costs as much as possible, we suspect most people will spend the extra $16 to double the memory.

The Odroid-N2 features a big.Little configuration comprised of a quad-core Arm Cortex-A73 CPU locked at 1.8GHz and a dual-core Cortex-A53 clocked at 1.9GHz. Those processors work in conjunction with a Mali-G52 GPU with six execution engines clocked at 846MHz, as well as the DDR4 memory running at 1,320MHz.

Hardkernel said in its announcement that the Odroid-N2 offers 20 percent faster multi-core CPU and 35 percent faster memory performance than its aptly named Odroid-N1 predecessor. The company also provided a veritable smorgasbord of benchmarks for the Odroid-N2's CPU, GPU, memory, networking and storage performance.

The Odroid-N2 currently supports two Ubuntu 18.04 LTS images with the 4.9.162 LTS kernel that will be officially supported until January 2023. It also supports Android 9 (codenamed Pie) but with a few caveats: the kernel is 64-bit but the user land is only 32-bit, and the GUI's resolution is set to 2K but videos can output at 4K.

Hardkernel said it "will eventually try to support a 64-bit Android system with Vulkan capable GPU driver in a few months." It's also "intensively working on" a Linux Wayland, (which you can learn more about on its website) driver with Arm and Amlogic; you can follow progress on that driver's development in the Odroid forums.

Odroid-N2 is available now from Hardkernel. The company offers bulk order discounts that start at 5 percent off orders of 20 units and reach 7 percent off orders of 300 units. Both Odroid-N2 models' final prices also jump by a few bucks when you select a power supply under the "Option" section. Orders are set to ship April 3.