AMD Gizmo Explorer: Taking a piece of Raspberry’s Pi?

For the longest time everybody was talking and the word was Raspberry Pi, not the fruit variety mind you, but a small 4X4 very small computer that was selling at a very low price as to entice the masses into buying into its mantra. Due to the widely successful launch of that product others have been jumping on the bandwagon trying to cash-in so to speak on the popularity it has gained. Via-Technologies in recent weeks has announced their strangely named “ Rock and Paper” that was based off ARM technologies, and in another turn of the page we see AMD launching it’s own platform in cooperation with Sage Electronic Engineering.

A new idea and another new concept name this one has been crowned: The Gizmo Explorer, which sound a lot like Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The new Gizmo is said to sport a dual-core AMD G-Series embedded APU that runs at 1GHz, the APU also contains a Radeon GPU clocked at 280Mhz. Power for the entire 4X4 motherboard is rated at sub-10W. Here is where things get really different though as the new Gizmo is slated for a $199 price tag that is well out of range of the Raspberry, but it also offers a lot more features as well. You get 1920X1080 graphics including a 16-Pin VGA output, 10/100 Ethernet, 1 SATA Port, and 1GB of DDR3 RAM running at 1066Mhz. Below you can see what comes in the new kit.

• 1x Gizmo Explorer board
• 1x Explorer “Companion Board” — an expansion card that plugs into the GE’s low speed interface and offers an LCD microdisplay, DC motor and stepper motor capabilities, a GPIO header for alphanumeric keypad attachment, and a prototyping area
• 1x Sage SmartProbe JTAG development tool for low-level debugging (only comes with 20 hours of operating time)
• 30-day trial of the Sage EDK Graphical Interface
• Ethernet and USB cables
• Power supply

Although not exactly in the same range as the Raspberry due to its much higher $199 price tag and is not the same ultra-cheap hobbyist dream product. It is also not the lowest of the of the low-power solutions that are being offered in the current time frame as there are both cheaper and lower power consumption ARM based solutions.  The thing about the Gizmo though is its OpenCL capabilities, something that the other so-called enthusiast alternatives are lacking. Having both SATA ports and Windows support are really cool and having the 30-Day trail option of Sage’s JTAG probe and their EDK.

Plus the fact that you get all the connectivity options along with a dual-core 1GHz APU and AMD’s H.264/VC-1 hardware decode engine in combination with 1GB of 1066Mhz DDR3 memory that all make up a much more robust and powerful unit that can handle much more complex tasks than others of its kind. Although the GE is not the apple-to-apple competitor for the Raspberry Pi it has the same goals in mind and the GE just takes it to the next level. Products of this nature were not available at this price point just a short whiles ago as anything touching the capabilities of the new GE were enormous. Depending on how well the Gizmo Explorer is received and welcomed to the market we could see an AMD refresh in the very bear future. AMD also has both their Temash and Kabini products that are being developed and offer a lower 5-7W power range than the Brazo’s so we will have to wait and see what happens. All in all though its pretty exciting stuff for the hobby or tinker user who wants to built their-own personal thing.

Source: Hexus.net