The Rise of Single Board Computer

If you are paying close attention to the computing world, you may have noticed that number of important and interesting things are happening. The rise of AI, growing popularity of SBC (Single Board Computer) among fairly large number of computer enthusiasts and perhaps the most important one is the move towards the quantum computing. No so surprisingly, larger corporations like IBM, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Amazon they all are leading the way towards this movement.

Although the AI and the Quantum computing both are fairly new concept to many of us, same can not be said about SBCs. The usage of SBCs are not new at all but I think it was Raspberry Pi that introduced these tiny computers to many of us. Perhaps the most fascinating part of an SBC is the tiny processors that powers the entire board and performs tasks that otherwise be done by the x86 processors.

If I really got to be honest with you all, I firmly believe ARM processors are the future and most probably our future average household computers will be powered by them. If we get to live long enough, we will see x86 processors are being replaced by them. Pretty much all the hardware manufacturer already developed some sort of chip that follows the core of ARM architecture. Apple, Broadcom, NXP, Huawei, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung, Texas Instruments, you name it they already did it.

There's a growing market of these computers and it is being expected to grow in upcoming years. Based on the statistics, it was market worth over $2.94 billion in the year 2022 and by 2031 it will reach $4.37 billion US dollar according Straits Research report.

These tiny computers are already being used on wide range of electronic devices that we use on day to day basis. Quite interestingly, these seemingly small computer can run a wide range of operating system which are mostly based on Linux or customized version of Linux OS. Heck, even Microsoft is trying out their Windows OS on ARM architecture which is widely known as Project Volterra. This is perhaps one of the most important indicator for many of us who wants to understand why Microsoft is focusing on ARM platform.

Please do not get fooled by their size. Majority of these boards are quite capable and they can perform most of our day to day tasks quite easily. I am talking about average computer users who would interested to watch movies or online videos, checking their mails, doing some work online things of that sort. I am definitely not talking about high-end users or gamer yet. These boards are not optimized for gaming and quite frankly there were not intended to do such work to begin with. That's why you have x86 platform to mess around with.

On a personal level, I am thinking of building a custom router and NAS for quite sometime now. I am spending a big chunk of my time every now and then to check out some of the SBCs that is arriving on regular interval. Among all other brands, Banana Pi and their hardware are particularly seems quite interesting to me. Though I am not quite sure but it's just a matter of time when I will get one of their board.