$89 ODROID-U2 dev board with 1.7GHz quad-core Exynos now shipping

When it was announced back in December of 2012, the ODROID-U2 looked like a pretty impressive little developer board for just $89. Now that it’s shipping to Hardkernel customers around the globe, early reports from some users seem to indicate that the Exynos-powered ODROID is indeed a very solid performer.

The ODROID boards probably won’t ever attain the same kind of success as the Raspberry Pi. At more than three times the price, the ODROID-U2 is aimed at users that want a little bit more than an inexpensive board for building DIY electronics projects. The RasPi is capable of much more than taking home automation requests from Siri or playing Minecraft, of course, but it obviously can’t match the ODROID-U2 in terms of sheer processing power.

Its 1.7GHz quad-core Exynos chip is still on par with what you’ll find in today’s high-end smartphones and tablets. Android runs quite smoothly on the board, and according to developer Rui Carmo the ODROID-U2 “blows [his] Raspberry Pi setup out of the water in terms of speed and flexibility.” Carmo has a full suite of apps running on his ODROID, including all the top Android web browsers, remote desktop tools, and even the AIDE for building his own Android apps right inside Android (how meta).

Android is, however, designed primarily for touchscreen devices. Certain actions are difficult to pull off using only a mouse and keyboard — like zooming in and out. However, the extra “oomph” provided by the 1.7GHz Exynos and 2GB of RAM means the ODROID -U2 is also quite capable of running Ubuntu or another ARM-based desktop Linux distribution.

For just over $120 when it’s all said and done (you’ll probably want to purchase the AC adapter and an eMMC module), the ODROID-U2 is well worth investigating for kiosk-type setups, media centers, or even for a secondary workstation on your desk. Just make sure the tiny, black heatsink doesn’t get lost in the shuffle.

iPad 4 has processing power to spare; benchmarks show plenty of speed; beats Google Nexus 7, Microsoft Surface

“Apple surprised us by announcing it was launching a fourth-generation iPad just seven months after it rolled out the Retina display-equipped third-generation iPad in March,” Chris Foresman reports for Ars Technica. “Though externally it remains almost identical to the third-gen iPad-save its new Lightning connector, which replaces the 30-pin Dock connector-internally Apple has revved up its processor.”

“We spent the weekend with an iPad 4 and iPad 3 in the Orbiting HQ, benchmarking the new processor and spending time in various apps to see if Apple’s performance claims held up,” Foresman reports. “Overall, it seems as though we can take Apple at their word. But depending on the apps you use, you may not notice a tons of improvement until developers learn to better exploit the A6X processor’s power.”

Foresman reports, “What’s perhaps a bit surprising is the dual-core A6X can more than keep up with the ARM-based quad-core Tegra3 (such as found in the Google Nexus 7 or Microsoft Surface). The ‘Swift’ core is using a slightly revised design similar in some respects to the Cortex A9 in the A5X and Tegra3. It uses an optimized memory architecture that moves data in, out, and around the cores much faster than most ARM-based mobile processors. The end result is that Apple’s processors seem to be getting more performance from two slightly faster clocked cores than other devices running four cores.”

Much more in the full article here.