There are five similar "Altoids tin-sized" single board processors I'm aware of.  The Raspberry Pi , The Orange Pi, The Banana Pi, The ODROID, and the ASUS Tinkerboard. The Tinkerboard is sometimes referred to as the Maker Board.

Processor:
All of the Orange Pis, All The Banana Pis, The ODROID C1, The Raspberry Pi 2B use a Cortex A7 processor. The Raspberry Pi zero uses an ARM1132F-S (Don't even ask me how they can sell a computer for $5 retail!)The Raspberry Pi 3B and the ODROID C2 use a Cortex A53. The ODROID XU4 uses a Cortex A15/A7
The Tinkerboard uses a Cortex A17

Cores:
The Raspberry Pi Zero is a single core.All the others are quad core.

Memory ranges from 500 meg to 2GB depending on model.

Instruction Set:
The Raspberry Pi Zero uses an ARM V6 instruction set.Raspberry Pi 2b, 3b; Banana Pi M2, M3; Orange Pi One, PC, Plus, Plus 2; ODROID C1 Plus, XU4 all use the ARM V7 instruction set. The Raspberry Pi 3B and the ODROID C2 use the ARM V8 Instruction set. I could not get a solid answer for the Tinkerboard but some people believe it's an ARM v7 instruction set.

In theory any of these that use the ARM V7 instruction set should be equivalent to the Raspberry Pi 2B and in theory if they have a Linux operating system with the same modules it requires then the version of Lazarus/Free Pascal for Raspberry Pi should work on them. The operating words here are "in theory." There can be subtle differences in the associated hardware on the board beyond the processor.  Probably you just have to try running apt-get or whichever installer it supports for the version of Linux it uses and find out.

I've ordered a Tinkerboard myself to play around with. Amazon says it's been delayed until April.

Paul Paul Robinson - http://paul-robinson.us (My blog) "The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that no one learns the lessons that history teaches us."

Paul, this is very usefull information. Thank you.

Nice information Paul.

Simply to complete the list of information....

Paul Robinson wrote

Cores: The Raspberry Pi Zero is a single core.All the others are quad core.

In addition, the first generation Raspberry Pi v1 (which I still use) was also a single core CPU.

Memory ranges from 500 meg to 2GB depending on model.

The 1st gen Raspberry Pi had 256MB shared RAM (128MB for GPU and 128MB for CPU). Later a 512MB model RPi v1 was also released.

Instruction Set: The Raspberry Pi Zero uses an ARM V6 instruction set.Raspberry Pi 2b, 3b; Banana Pi M2, M3; Orange Pi One, PC, Plus, Plus 2; ODROID C1 Plus, XU4 all use the ARM V7 instruction set. The Raspberry Pi 3B and the ODROID C2 use the ARM V8 Instruction set.

The 1st gen Raspberry Pi also uses a ARM V6 instruction set, like the Pi Zero.

Regards,
Graeme

In our previous episode, Graeme Geldenhuys said:

The 1st gen Raspberry Pi had 256MB shared RAM (128MB for GPU and 128MB for CPU). Later a 512MB model RPi v1 was also released.

The 512MB model was called B+ iirc. The partitioning of the memory was a firmware setting and could be configured IIRC in 32MB block steps.

Hi,

Paul Robinson wrote

Instruction Set: The Raspberry Pi Zero uses an ARM V6 instruction set.

And as Graeme wrote, all versions of the original RPi 1 also use the v6 instruction set, and are single core. I think the new Zero W (with Wifi) is also the same.

Raspberry Pi 2b, 3b; Banana Pi M2, M3; Orange Pi One, PC, Plus, Plus 2; ODROID C1 Plus, XU4 all use the ARM V7 instruction set. The Raspberry Pi 3B and the ODROID C2 use the ARM V8 Instruction set.

Although, the default Raspbian only uses the RPi 3B as a 32bit platform, which means it runs with the ARMv7 instruction set in the user space, if you run Linux. I don't know about the ODROID C2.

But it is also important to note from a Free Pascal point of view, that if someone still goes experimental, and tries 64bit on an RPi or ODROID C2, they will need the AArch64 version of Free Pascal, not the ARM one, to use the 64bit features of the chip (which the ARMv8 instruction set is all about) natively.

(AArch64 relates to ARM like x86_64 relates to i386. Sort of... :P)

I could not get a solid answer for the Tinkerboard but some people believe it's an ARM v7 instruction set.

It is. It is based on the: Rockchip RK3288 SoC:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockchip_RK3288

which has a Cortex-A17 CPU core, which has the ARMv7A instruction set: https://www.arm.com/products/processors/cortex-a/cortex-a17-processor.php

I think by now the ARMv7 chips' userspace code support is fairly consistent with themselves and should work. Remember, most of these chips originate from the mobile world, where they have to run Android binaries, and a lot of them contain native libs, not only Java.

Charlie

Marco van de Voort wrote the following on 03/03/17 10:38:20:

No, all the RPi 1Bs had 512MB (except for the very early ones), as well as the B+ RPi2 and 3 had 1GB.

There are also more open source based ones like BeagleBone.

There is also the $9 "chip" computer

Not sure if these count as altoids, never heard that before :-)

Beagle bone is more expensive, but more open sourced

And there are more than this even, just forgot the names of some

American brand :-)
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/15/piminimint-altoids-rpi-zero-computer/

Beagle bone is more expensive, but more open sourced

Particularly notable due to a couple of DSP-like processors which make it good for high-speed stuff. However unlike the main processor I believe these have to be programmed in assembler.

On Mar 8, 2017 5:14 AM, "Mark Morgan Lloyd" <

wrote:

Beagle bone is more expensive, but more open sourced

Particularly notable due to a couple of DSP-like processors which make it good for high-speed stuff. However unlike the main processor I believe these have to be programmed in assembler.

I believe the two I/O processors are Cortex M0 and can be programmed in just about anything, probably even FPC with a little work. Nice in that realtime tasks can be handled with dedicated CPUs while user interfaces can be done in non realtime code.

Jeff

Didn't first (single-core) series of RasPI had similar 'theme' ?

with its 'small' ARM processor runs the OS and programs, and the 'massive' 'Vision' (hence I think, graphics centered) one is just idling (actually kickstarting the ARM core at boot time only) ?

-L.

Lukasz Sokol wrote

On 08/03/17 10:14, Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:> On 07/03/17 19:30, wrote:>>> On 02/03/2017 23:54, Paul Robinson wrote:> >> There are five>>> similar "Altoids tin-sized" single board processors>> I'm aware>>> of.>> >> The Raspberry Pi , The Orange Pi, The Banana Pi, The>>> ODROID, and the>> ASUS Tinkerboard. The Tinkerboard is sometimes>>> referred to as the>> Maker Board.>> There are also more open source based ones like BeagleBone. There>> is also the $9 "chip" computer Not sure if these count as altoids,>> never heard that before :-)> > American brand :-)> http://hackaday.com/2017/02/15/piminimint-altoids-rpi-zero-computer/> > >> Beagle bone is more expensive, but more open sourced> > Particularly notable due to a couple of DSP-like processors which> make it good for high-speed stuff. However unlike the main processor> I believe these have to be programmed in assembler.> Didn't first (single-core) series of RasPI had similar 'theme' ? with its 'small' ARM processor runs the OS and programs, and the 'massive''Vision' (hence I think, graphics centered) one is just idling(actually kickstarting the ARM core at boot time only) ?

My recollection is that the processors in the RPi are both ARM variants, although the one dedicated to graphics has got a lot of extra stuff bolted on. What the RPi is doing is an interesting alternative to e.g. writing a loader in Verilog to run in an FPGA, with the objective of having no ROM-based loader intruding on the address space. It's now at least semi-open, and I think I've read of interesting stuff being done with it.

The DSPs in the BB's OMAP chip are general purpose (i.e. rather than relying on bolted-on special hardware) and are fast enough to do things like emulating an MFM disc drive in real time (i.e. as a drop-in replacement for obsolete hardware) or a 100MHz logic analyser https://hackaday.io/project/4395-beaglelogic or an inline USB sniffer http://elinux.org/BeagleBoard/GSoC/2010_Projects/USBSniffer