SATA?

[Groupers]

Any chance there will be a SATA version at some point or a SATA add-on board? Even 1.5Gbps would be acceptable.

[tkaiser]

Any chance there will be a SATA version at some point or a SATA add-on board? Even 1.5Gbps would be acceptable.

Nope.

[hazerty]

you can use USB/SATA adpater, but I don't know if will boot.

[tkaiser]

you can use USB/SATA adpater, but I don't know if will boot.

It's an Allwinner tablet SoC. These boot from NAND/eMMC when available or SD card or via USB through FEL mode (great since you really can not brick any Allwinner device. It will boot again).

That means in the Pine64's case: You can boot from SD card (u-boot's task) and then have the rootfs on USB (every single USB enclosure contains just an USB-to-SATA bridge). But that won't help with performance. It's always just USB 2.0.

And if sometimes mainline kernel support for the A64 will be available then this means we might use UASP and can reach up to 40 MB/s. But I doubt that will happen anytime soon so better expect ~30-35 MB/s. In case you use a really crappy USB-to-SATA bridge you'll end up with 15/30 MB/s (that happened to other sunxi based SBCs: the Orange Pi Plus and Banana Pi M3 that both use an ultra-slow GL830 bridge to be advertised as being "SATA capable":

http://linux-sunxi.org/USB/UAS

In other words: No, still no SATA support. It's impossible with A64. If you need I/O bandwidth choose a SoC that supports SATA or at least a few independent USB busses (unlike the A64 used on Pine64/64+)

[Groupers]

According to the datasheet, the SoC has eight DMA channels.
DMA
• Up to 8-channel DMA
• Interrupt generated for each DMA channel
• Flexible data width of 8/16/32/64-bits
• Support linear and IO address modes
• Support data transfer types with memory-to-memory, memory-to-peripheral, peripheral-to-memory

[tkaiser]

According to the datasheet, the SoC has eight DMA channels.

Great. And if the SoC would also include a SATA controller (c'mon: if you already had a look into the datasheet then it's easy to search for 'SATA' there) then this would be a good candidate to use DMA instead of PIO. But since there's no SATA controller and no other highspeed bus like PCIe there's no SATA.

The best choice is a good USB-to-SATA bridge and this won't exceed 35MB/s under best conditions. If maybe 2017 mainline kernel support for the A64 is ready this might increase up to 40 MB/s: http://linux-sunxi.org/USB/UAS

But again: No real SATA and just one single USB 2.0 host port on the A64. Therefore not that much I/O bandwidth available.

[Groupers]

Meh I'm not really interested in that little bandwidth. It's too bad there's no way to add more storage on a decent bandwidth interface.

[Ketsa]

Meh I'm not really interested in that little bandwidth. It's too bad there's no way to add more storage on a decent bandwidth interface.

Look at orange pi plus / orange pi plus2 - they have a sata port.

[tllim]

Meh I'm not really interested in that little bandwidth. It's too bad there's no way to add more storage on a decent bandwidth interface.

Look at orange pi plus / orange pi plus2 - they have a sata port.

The Orang Pi using Allwinner H3 SOC which doesn't have the native Sata port. Their Sata port is derive out from USB port, which means similar bandwidth as Pine A64.

[Galileo]

Meh I'm not really interested in that little bandwidth. It's too bad there's no way to add more storage on a decent bandwidth interface.

Look at orange pi plus / orange pi plus2 - they have a sata port.

The Orang Pi using Allwinner H3 SOC which doesn't have the native Sata port. Their Sata port is derive out from USB port, which means similar bandwidth as Pine A64.

Wrong. Orange Pi and Orange Pi Mini have native SATA, 2 USB2 host and 1 USB2 OTG port (based on Allwinner A20). All other currently available Orange Pi's are based on the H3 and there it's true: The H3 features just 3 USB2 host ports and 1 USB2 OTG port and SATA is the result of using an USB bridge chip.

But there's the upcoming Orange Pi 3 based on Allwinner's H64. This Soc suffers from the same problems as the A64 you use. Only one single USB2 host port and one USB2 OTG. Since you take $12 for shipping and $29 for the version with Gigabit Ethernet and 2 GB RAM I would suspect Orange Pi 3 will be less expensive in the end (they also ship from Shenzhen like you. But for less than $4 worldwide)