User Manual
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© 2014 Premier Farnell plc. All Rights Reserved
4.1 BeagleBone Compatibility
The board is intended to be compatible with the original BeagleBone as much as
possible. There are several areas where there are differences between the two designs.
These differences are listed below, along with the reasons for the differences.
•
Sitara AM3358BZCZ100, 1GHZ, processor.
o
Sorry, we just had to make it faster.
•
512MB DDR3L
o
Cost reduction
o
Performance boost
o
Memory size increase
o
Lower power
•
No Serial port by default.
o
Cost reduction
o
Can be added by buying a TTL to USB Cable that is widely available
o
Single largest cost reduction action taken
•
No JTAG emulation over USB.
o
Cost reduction. JTAG header is not populated, but can easily be
mounted.
•
EEPROM Reduced from 32KB to 4KB
o
Cost Reduction
•
Onboard Managed NAND (eMMC)
o
4GB
o
Cost reduction
o
Performance boost x8 vs. x4 bits
o
Performance boost due to deterministic properties vs. microSD card
•
GPMC bus may not be accessible from the expansion headers in some cases
o
Result of eMMC on the main board
o
Signals are still routed to the expansion connector
o
If eMMC is not used, signals can be used via expansion if eMMC is held
in reset
•
There may be 10 less GPIO pins available
o
Result of eMMC
o
If eMMC is not used, could still be used
•
The power expansion header, for battery and backlight, has been removed
o
Cost reduction, space reduction
o
Four pins were added to provide access to the battery charger function.
•
HDMI interface onboard
o
Feature addition
o
Audio and video capable
o
Micro HDMI
•
No three function USB cable
o
Cost reduction