CuBox is a sexy, ice cube-sized ARM computer

The tiny, geeky Raspberry Pi may finally be shipping (at least in a developer-friendly beta form), but if you’re looking for something with a little more spit-and-polish you might want to take a look at CuBox.

No, that’s not an incredibly large 1 Euro coin and giant human hand pictured above — Cubox measures just two inches in all directions. Inside that diminutive plastic shell you’ll find an 800Mhz Marvell Armada 510 processor (ARM7 versus the ARM11 chip in Raspberry Pi), 1GB of DDR3 RAM, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI output, a pair of USB 2.0 ports, an eSata connector, a microSD slot for your operating system flash card (a 2GB card is included), and a microUSB port for debugging and recovery purposes.

The CuBox’s GPU is fully OpenGL ES 2.0 compatible and can handle full 1080P HD video decoding. It’s ready to rock any ARM-compatible OS you can throw at it — including Android, Ubuntu, and Debian. When in use, CuBox sips just three watts of power from its 5V power supply and its fanless, infra red remote-ready chassis would be a snap to fit into even the most cramped home theater setups.

CuBox doesn’t compare with the Raspberry Pi when it comes to sticker prices. At around $129, you could buy five Raspberry Pi kits for the same price. In the early goings, Solid-Run is shipping platform samples to CuBox purchasers which it will back with a three-month warranty. They’re proposing the usual SFF computer uses for CuBox: network attached storage, digital signage controller, thin client device, or HD media player.

More at Solid-Run, via OMG!Ubuntu

Source: http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/cubox-is-a-sexy-ice-cube-sized-arm-computer-20111221/

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