Subj : Re: Raspberry Pi alternatives
To   : Oli
From : tenser
Date : Thu Feb 16 2023 07:42:29

On 14 Feb 2023 at 11:36a, Oli pondered and said...
 
 Ol> Nightfox wrote (2023-02-13):
 Ol> 
 Ol>  N> With the shortage of Raspberry Pi boards the past few years, I've been
 Ol>  N> keeping an eye out on where to buy one for not too much money.  Today 
 Ol>  N> saw this video about Raspberry Pi alternatives, and some of these look
 Ol>  N> interesting.  There are a few that are drop-in replacements for the
 Ol>  N> Rasperry Pi, too.
 Ol> 
 Ol>  N> https://youtu.be/uJvCVw1yONQ
 Ol> 
 Ol> Are there any with (multiple) PCIe, SATA, NVMe ports?

Many.  For instance, the Radxa RockPi 4 has PCIe.

NVMe is really just a standard for attaching SSD devices
directly to a PCIe bus; if you can find the right form
factors it should just "work" (the storage device is just
another device in the PCIe topology).  With the right
firmware blobs versions, you can boot from NVMe as well.

SATA is a little more complex, but there are SBCs with SATA
connectors in an M.2 form factor. Gigabyte ethernet PHYs
connecting directly to e.g. a PCIe fabric as well, instead
of using a USB bridge.

The actual Raspberry Pi isn't all that impressive, to be
honest.

Some SBCs based on the higher-end Rockchip SoCs probably
support multiple PCIe/NVMe devices.  Some even have ethernet
switch chips baked in, giving you either multiple ethernet
ports or an actual switch fabric directly connected to the
SoC's root complex.

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