Analysis of different manufacturers of embedded computing

Author: John. Lee 　　Date: 2014-05-27

It is important for ARM embedded Beginner/ Designer to choose a right development board. As an engineer worked for several years at a company in China that provided ARM core based Single Board Computer, John is very familiar with the embedded market.
In China, Boardcon, Friendlyarm, Embedsky, Realarm and Forlinx occupy 80% Share of ARM development board.
The Boardcon mainly business is providing embedded computing solutions for the OEM market.
Powerful pertinence, efficient R & D, rich products and low cost are the highlights of Boardcon. Most of products are modular in design, the baseboard and core board are separated. It makes hardware upgrades become very easy. The disadvantage is that the document is not detailed enough. The main business of Boardcon is corporate customer.
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Friendlyarm should be the largest shipments in China. It's really quite cost-effective. Its disadvantage is that bootloader very strange, some sources are not open, and the operation is complicated, it will take a long time for a beginner to learn. However, due to low price, Friendlyarm products are very popular in the student market.
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Due to the Cost-effective and fully open source, Embedsky keeps large market share in embedded market, and the baseboard and core board are separated also. However, Embedsky is poor in the board process, it is similar to Friendlyarm.
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The Realarm design style is the nearest to the product, many modules are integrated directly on the board, perfect datasheets, and powerful CD-ROM which provides all the schematics of development board (except the original PCB diagram), allowing customers to develop new products easily, but the price is very expensive.
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Forlinx development board is good quality, high stability, but the messy document and complicated operation, often confuse beginners. Compared to Friendlyarm, it did not do well on the detailed. Forlinx is slow in updating Linux, but better than Friendlyarm and Embedsky in WinCE.
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Source: http://blog.csdn.net/