Canonical have just released the Beta 2 (final Beta) release of 17.10 Ubuntu including builds of the various official Ubuntu flavors.
I've respun the official Ubuntu ISO creating ISOs suitable for booting on both Intel Atom-based and Intel Apollo-based mini PCs as this is the first official testing milestone that the regular version of Ubuntu desktop has taken part in during the ‘Artful Aardvark’ development cycle.
The ISOs can be downloaded from:
Atom (-i ubuntu-17.10-beta2-desktop-amd64.iso --atom)
Apollo (-i ubuntu-17.10-beta2-desktop-amd64.iso --apollo)
Previously I covered the product details of the new Intel Compute Cards and Dock so this post looks at the physical devices and their actual operation and performance which is possible thanks to Intel who kindly provided me with a Compute Card (CD1M3128MK) and Dock (DK132EPJ).
The Dock comes with a small power brick with international plug adaptors similar in size to the power brick supplied with the Intel Core Compute Sticks and can be used with any of the Compute Cards. The Card slides into the Dock and requires a firm push to ensure connectivity and can't be retrieved unless the power is connected and the eject button is pressed.
Depending on the BIOS setting the Card will either boot immediately or after the power buttom is pressed.
The BIOS can be accessed by pressing F2 immediately:
Alternatively F10 can be pressed for the Boot Menu which is how to install an Operating System.
Both legacy and UEFI enabled OS are supported so a USB with an Ubuntu ISO will show two entries.
The specification of the CD1M3128MK Compute Card includes:
and the DK132EPJ Dock includes:
I first installed Windows 10 Enterprise Evaluation to look at performance under Windows.
The performance is very good in part because the SSD storage is attached via NVMe:
and the Core m3 Compute Card performance improves on the Core m3 Compute Stick:
The m3-7Y30 CPU makes watching 8K video possible:
Next I created a 20 GB partition so I could install and dual boot Ubuntu:
I used a standard Ubuntu 17.04 desktop ISO however whilst the installation completed sucessfully the Ubuntu NVRAM entry was incorrect and needed to be fixed by entering: efibootmgr -b 4 -B efibootmgr -c -d /dev/nvme0n1 -p 2 -l \\EFI\\ubuntu\\shimx64.efi -L ubuntu
This resulted in a F10 Boot Menu only showing Ubuntu:
which of course is not an issue as Windows can be booted from the GRUB menu:
as can Ubuntu:
Looking at the hardware in more detail for the Core m3 Card and Dock the CPU is a dual core m3-7Y30: root@CD1M3128MK:~# lshw -C cpu *-cpu description: CPU product: Intel(R) Core(TM) m3-7Y30 CPU @ 1.00GHz vendor: Intel Corp. physical id: 46 bus info: cpu@0 version: Intel(R) Core(TM) m3-7Y30 CPU @ 1.00GHz serial: To Be Filled By O.E.M. slot: U3E1 size: 2599MHz capacity: 4005MHz width: 64 bits clock: 100MHz capabilities: x86-64 fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx pdpe1gb rdtscp constant_tsc art arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf tsc_known_freq pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 sdbg fma cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic movbe popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand lahf_lm abm 3dnowprefetch epb intel_pt tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid fsgsbase tsc_adjust bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 erms invpcid mpx rdseed adx smap clflushopt xsaveopt xsavec xgetbv1 xsaves dtherm ida arat pln pts hwp hwp_notify hwp_act_window hwp_epp cpufreq configuration: cores=2 enabledcores=2 threads=4 root@CD1M3128MK:~#
Running my usual suite of Phoronix tests shows a similar performance improvement of the Core m3 Card over the Core m3 Stick in Ubuntu:
with Ubuntu's Octane result being slightly better than in Windows:
No problems were encountered using Kodi to plays videos:
The Card itself is similar in size to a credit card and not really comparable to the earlier 'stick' form-factor:
The Dock is obviously bigger than a Stick:
and is also slightly larger than a NUC:
The Dock contains a fan as well as providing the additional ports. The fan is effective in keeping the temperature under control and with a resting temperature of around 30°C:
the temperature under load max'ed at just over 70°C:
However the fan does run all the time and is noticeably noisy when under load:
The external temperature of the Dock didn't exceed 30°C:
One issue I've encountered is when removing a Sandisk Ultra Fit USB from the front port. Because the USB is small it is very easy to accidentally press 'eject' or catch the 'power' button resulting in the Card shutting down.
The lack of a USB Type-C port on the Dock is also a noticeable omission given a DisplayPort is provided. Neither is there an SD or micro SD card slot.
Overall the Card and Dock combination works well and the Card is a great innovation for computing. Whether the Card will be popular as a retail product will be dependent on how useful it is seen together with its adoption by both manufacturers and the public alike.
The original 'stick' form factor initially succeeded as a consumer mini PC because early versions targeted both the portable computing goal and the concept of making TVs 'smart'. To a certain extent though the ongoing success of the 'stick' has been limited by its own form factor and 'boxes' have gained traction due to their provision of USB ports, inclusion of ethernet and better including fanless cooling. But whilst 'sticks' have remained popular for their portability and small size their commercial continuance is under threat. With market segments including digital signage seeing the potential their business requirements have heavily influenced the evolution of design.
A Card and Dock still fulfills the basic requirements of a mini PC. Portability is certainly addressed by the design with the ability to swap out Cards from a Dock. And if alternatives to the 'dock' such as a Card based laptop or a Card based all-in-one materialize then subject to cost popularity should follow. However whilst the Card may be well suited to the commercial market the Card and Dock face challenges in the consumer mini PC market given the size, fan, configurability and price as there are alternatives to using a Card and Dock as a mini PC.
Several Apollo Lake 'boxes' are already available in the market including fanless devices. For the Apollo Lake Cards if a fanless 'dock' creating a solution similar to the Zotac ZBOX PI225 was offered by Intel or their collaborating partners it would make the Apollo Lake Cards more attractive as an alternative 'next generation' Stick.
Equally for the Core m3 Card the price and configurability offered by Intel's own NUC NUC7i3BNK or similar will probably undermine the need for a second generation Core m3 Stick and is likely preferable to a Core m3 Card and Dock combination although this will still be attractive to those who want a prebuilt solution.
However these points should not detract from what is a very good pair of product offerings. With Intel cancelling its next generation of 'stick' products the Card and Dock proposition must be seen as an alternative to fill that void. It is just that the market has changed and the future of Intel based 'stick' mini PCs is very much dependent on whether manufacturers can offer new products at price competitive points. Unless the Card becomes ubiquitous then 'boxes' are likely to remain as the de facto successor.
Occasionally I've see the following error reported: Extracting ISO ... Parallel unsquashfs: Using 4 processors 183918 inodes (199170 blocks) to write [=========================================================/] 199170/199170 100% created 129699 files created 17994 directories created 54184 symlinks created 7 devices created 0 fifos Extracting isorespin files ... Updating bootloader/bootmanager ... cp: cannot stat 'grub/boot': No such file or directory cp: cannot stat 'iso-directory-structure/boot/grub/grub.cfg': No such file or directory sed: can't read iso-refind/grub/grub.cfg: No such file or directory cp: cannot stat '/refind/icons': No such file or directory cp: cannot stat '/refind/refind_x64.efi': No such file or directory cp: cannot stat '/refind/drivers_x64': No such file or directory sed: can't read /refind/refind.conf-sample: No such file or directory tee: iso-refind/refind.conf: No such file or directory sed: can't read iso-refind/refind.conf: No such file or directory cp: cannot stat '/mkrlconf': No such file or directory tee: iso-directory-structure/preseed/ubuntu.seed: No such file or directory Fetching mainline kernel packages ... ./isorespin.sh: line 2131: cd: /usr/src/linuxium/isorespin/test/7.3.3/isorespin: No such file or directory
./isorespin.sh: Cannot fetch mainline kernel index ... check your internet connection and try again. however I've not been able to reproduce until now. It turns out it occurs when trying to download the rEFInd boot manager from 'SourceForge' as when that site experiences issues it is temporarily placed in static offline mode meaning downloads require the use of javascript to function. Unfortunately rather than recognizing this and exiting gracefully my script simply continued before erroring.
I've now updated my script to try an alternate download if this situation is encountered and a new version (7.3.4) of 'isorespin.sh' is now available for download.
Any issues or improvement suggestions are welcome.
Please donate if you find the script useful using the following link http://goo.gl/nXWSGf.
Whilst Intel's Compute Stick can certainly be considered a success as a mini 'stick' PC the next generation is now on hold and in place is an evolution called the Intel Compute Card which has a different form factor and extended target use. It is expected to be available any time soon and there is already available a wealth of information in terms of specifications and costs.
Basically the compute card takes the compute stick but factors it as a module meaning that it is no longer standalone but dependent on a dock or host device.
Four compute cards are initially planned with three launched this quarter and one for mid-late Q4.
Looking at the specification of the cards in detail
we see the amount of storage and memory has been increased for the cards with faster processors. Why? Because there is no limitation from Microsoft as none of the cards come with a pre-installed OS. According to the technical specifications they will
support the following Operating Systems (64-bit only). · Windows 10 Home · Windows 10 Pro · Windows 10 Enterprise · Windows 10 Education · Windows 10 IoT Enterprise · Some Linux operating systems may be supported. Check with the specific Linux distribution to make sure that support is available for this platform
The card itself is relatively small with a footprint slightly larger than a standard credit card.
The card includes a connector which is separated into two sections: a Type C-compliant portion and an extended portion. The Type C portion supports Type C-compliant connections including video with audio and USB. The extended portion supports video with audio, USB, and PCIe. Power is supplied to the card from the device the Compute Card is plugged into using the Type C portion of the connector.
So you can simply plug in a USB Type C cable and be up and running? No. As mentioned you will need a dock or host device and not just any device as the card uses bidirectional authentication to attempt to authenticate the compatible device and the compatible device will attempt to authenticate the card. The authentication uses digital keys which are provisioned by default during manufacturing for every card and compatible device ensuring they only work with correctly provisioned card and devices.
There is a reason for this other than the obvious commercial 'manufacturer tie-in'. The card will get hot and it totally relies on the host device for cooling because it is designed so that direct conductive contact with the card surfaces provide the best overall heat dissipation. That means because the card is capable of operating within all critical component temperature specifications it will produce surface skin temperatures that may violate typical safety guidelines or requirements. To stop you being the cooling device for the card when you touch it the device must delay the card being ejected if additional cooling is needed to reduce the skin temperature to the recommendation of no more than 55 °C.
Given that the market of Intel compute card is now very much orientated to OEMs, manufacturers, distributors and channel partners it is fortunate that Intel have also launched a commercially available Intel Compute Card Dock.
Essentially you insert your compute card and effectively have a mini PC
that also comes with a VESA mount.
Looking at the specifications of the dock
it comes with a power adapter with a range of interchangeable international plugs together with a two metre/six foot long power cable.
When looking at the cost for each card a key factor to take into consideration is that the card comes with a three (3) year warranty. Given the support that Intel offers including regular BIOS updates and RMA for defective devices under warranty then this obviously comes at a cost which is not unreasonable. Added to the card cost is the dock which only comes with a one (1) year warranty (no doubt limited because of the internal fan). And then there is the OS which for Linux users isn't an issue but for Windows users loosing out on an included OEM provided license for a small supplement might be off putting.
The modular format is certainly going to be advantageous in certain circumstances. From a commercial viewpoint the support aspects of simply being able to swap out a faulty card is fantastic. I can also see a use as a 'Chromecard'. In schools where Chromebooks have been adopted the simplicity of a card and ease of portability for the student seems highly attractive.
As Ubuntu does not 'opt-in' to the beta ISO releases of Artful Aardvark (17.10) I thought it would be interesting to respin the latest daily release (10th September) together with the rolling 'unstable' kernel of v4.13.0-9 and produce ISOs for both Atom-based and Apollo-based mini PCs to see what the current progress is.
The ISOs can be downloaded from:
Atom (-i artful-desktop-amd64.iso --rolling-unstable --atom)
Apollo (-i artful-desktop-amd64.iso --rolling-unstable --apollo)
The first beta ISOs of Artful Aardvark (17.10) have now been released and so has the v4.13 mainline kernel so I've decided to combine both by taking Lubuntu Beta 1 and updating with the rolling 'unstable' kernel of v4.13.0-9 and produces ISOs for both Atom-based and Apollo-based mini PCs.
The ISOs can be downloaded from:
Atom (-i lubuntu-17.10-beta1-desktop-amd64.iso --rolling-unstable --atom)
Apollo (-i lubuntu-17.10-beta1-desktop-amd64.iso --rolling-unstable --apollo)
Now that my script supports updates to rolling kernels and target processors I've improved the naming of the respun ISO to better reflect how it was created. The key change is to include the kernel version in the name of the respun ISO when respinning upgrades the original version together with the name of the target processor if respun using that option.
