BeagleBone Black brings Cortex-A8 processing capability for $45

Called BeagleBone Black, the credit card sized device is powered by an ARM Cortex-A8 based TI Sitara AM335x processor running at 1GHz and is being sold for $45 – the lowest priced board yet offered by the organisation. Arnaud van den Bosche, TI's ARM mpu business development manager for Europe, said the main improvement over the previous offering is the improvement in performance. "Moving from 800MHz to 1GHz brings a 25% boost in processing power." He said that, while the move to a 1GHz processor had been driven by engineering users, the organisation had borne cost in mind in order to reach a wider audience. "The board comes with everything you need to start development," he continued. "You don't need to add anything else." Because the board is made available as an open source project, all hardware and software details are available. "This is very important," van den Bosche claimed. A range of 'capes' is available to expand functionality.