False advertising ?

[daveculp]

The "Supercomputer" claim is clearly hyperbole. The Pine64 -- a single one, by itself -- has zero potential to be a modern supercomputer. Everyone knows that, or should have. It might beat a Cray-1 from the mid-1970s. Definitely the Pine64 CPU would beat earlier supercomputers. And the Mali GPU would require another comparison.

I also cringe when I hear the Pine 64 referred to as a "supercomputer the size of an index card". In reality it is just another ARM based SBC. Granted it has a very low price point and is one of the first 64 bit ARM SBC's to hit the market. Calling it a "supercomputer" is a stretch.

The ARM and Linux based SBC market has absolutely exploded. I can no longer keep track of the number of different boards and manufacturers there are. It seems every time I think I know them all or most of them I discover another. I own the following:

Every iteration of the RPi
Beaglebone Black
An Odroid XU3, C1 and C2
C.H.I.P
Creator CI20
Omega Onion
Banana Pi
Orange Pi
Minnowboard Turbot
Cubietruck
Pine A64
Udoo Neo and Quad

I think the market is a bubble and going to crash leaving many companies out of business. What most companies fail to realize is that it isn't really about the hardware. Yes, to a certain extent it is; better, faster hardware is good. However, what matters most and the hardest to build is the software and the community. Most users want to open their board and be able to do something with it almost immediately. Whether that is making a media center, building a robot, or a weather station. Users want the hardware to work and software that makes interfacing into the hardware easy. Most people do not want to dig around in kernel code trying to figure out how to activate PWM and i2c on their board. I am in the same boat, I am capable of doing it but I dont want to. I'm 47 with a wife, kid, job and things to get done, I want my hardware and software to just work or at least work reasonably well with only a little headache.

Companies that build a good community and good software interfaces into their hardware stand a good chance of staying around. The RPi is not the most powerful board on the market but it is the single best supported and best documented board around. The support from the RPi foundation and the community is second to none. If you need help with something on an RPi chaces are someone has already answered the questions, has a web page, blog post or YoiuTube video about it.