[time-nuts] single board PCs

[Jim Lux]

On 1/6/13 6:09 PM, Bob Camp wrote:
> Hi
>
> Ummm, errrrr you want to run Matlab and you are likely paying $100 an
> hour to whom ever is waiting on the machine. My *guess* is that a
> micro board of what ever flavor will do an arbitrary Matlab run in
> maybe 30 days.
Yes.
But any of a zillion PC clones will do it "fast enough".  Think of all 
those Tek and Agilent boxes with a embedded PC.. what do they have inside?

That same run would take something large about 30
> minutes.

Nahh.. seconds on slow laptop, seconds on a desktop PC. Matlab isn't all 
that slow.

  That of course assumes you can even get Matlab to load on
> something small.

It doesn't have to be "small".. except physically. That's really what 
I'm looking for. Physically small (mini ITX sort of form factor, or, for 
that matter, laptop formfactor), but able to procured as an OEM sort of 
widget (e.g. I assume Tek and Agilent aren't designing their own mobos 
to stick in the back of an oscilloscope or VNA.. so what ARE they 
shoving in there)



>
> An Ivy Bridge based PC with multiple cores can be built up for less
> than $800 in a fairly small package. It won't be single board, but it
> will be small. Not the fastest system on the planet, but pretty fast.
> You'll be paying a significant chunk of that for the Windows license.
> The cost of the Matlab license will be well above the cost of the
> entire system (unless you have some sort of crazy deal going).

yep.. but a kilobuck for a Matlab license is just a couple day's time 
for an engineer using it.

Think of that nice Agilent PNA.. clearly it has some sort of small form 
factor PC mobo inside... so what are they using?

>
> Put another way, you'll pay for the more expensive hardware in the
> first week of use - why cheap out?


Precisely.. but I'd just as soon not be in the PC integration business, 
finding boards to plug into a mobo, etc. I was wondering what folks have 
used (or seen used) in this sort of usage model.

>