Tiny $45 Cubic Mini-PC Supports Android and Linux

DeviceGuru writes "SolidRun refreshed its line of tiny 2 x 2 x 2-inch mini-PCs with four new community-backed models based on 1.2GHz multi-core Freescale i.MX6 SoCs. The CuBox-i devices support Android 4.2.2 and Linux, offer HDMI, S/PDIF, IR, eSATA, GbE, USB, WiFi, and Bluetooth interfaces (depending on model). All the models offer 1.2GHz clock speeds, OpenGL/ES 2.0 3D support, and video acceleration for 1080p video, while the two higher-end ones supply more robust GPUs that add OpenCL 1.1 support."

Which GPU? Which GPU drivers?

[coder111]

All these ARM SOCs are nice but they all have weird closed up GPUs that have crap close sourced drivers that barely work.

There are projects to reverse engineer Adreno (Qualcomm) and Mali (ARM) GPUs and implement drivers for them, but these projects are nowhere near production ready. And as far as I know Qualcomm has other issues with openness- they are denying release of hackable Android for their devices because it contains some secret proprietary BLOBs, without which it won't work.

So when it comes to Linux hardware support on ARM, it feels like 90s all over again... I'd rather buy a small x86, it will be larger, more expensive, it will consume much more power, but at least open-source hardware support is going to be nice and I won't need any BLOBs.

--Coder