When comparing The Parallella Board vs Rock64 (4GB), the Slant community recommends Rock64 (4GB) for most people. In the question“What are the best single-board computers?” Rock64 (4GB) is ranked 2nd while The Parallella Board is ranked 18th.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Amazing performance because of the Epiphany coprocessor
The Parallella Board makes use of the Epiphany III coprocessor which is invisible to the OS unless directly addressed through its APIs. It currently boasts 32 gigaflops from its 16-core variant with a promise of 100 gigaflops for a 64-core model which will be available in the future.
Pro Low cost Xilinx Zynq FPGA development
Although not a beefy FPGA, the price is right
Pro Excellent many-core RISC architecture
High performance, energy-efficient floating point capable, general purpose RISC cores
Pro Great board for programmers to experiment on different platforms
The Parallella is a great board for programmers to experiment programmin on ARM, FPGA and the Epiphany architecture in one compact package.
Pro Completely open source
Parallella uses open source hardware. The drivers are released as open source as well. All the details about the board designs and schematics can be found on GitHub.
Pro Ships with open source development tools geared towards Epiphany development
Parallella ships with several open source tools geared towards developing for the Epiphany architecture. Some of these tools include a C compiler, Eclipse, OpenCL SDK/compiler and runtime libraries.
Pro Gigabyte ethernet
Pro USB 3 Bus support
Pro Can have up to 4gb of low power RAM
Pro eMMC
Pro Beats Raspberry Pi on price and performance
Pro Main header Pi 3 pin layout
Can use Pi shields.
Pro Runs Dietpi Debian loads well - MUST use the PINE64 Installer for software loading
Pro Barrel power connector
More rugged connection. Less likely to be damaged.
Pro 4K/60h hdmi 2a
Pro Extra Gpio pins
Cons
Con Not great for media streaming
The Parallella board was built to give everyone access to a mini-supercomputer. It's strength lies in the Epiphany which makes it great for parallel computing and image processing, unfortunately it's not good with media (audio and video) streaming.
Con Requires dedicated software development
Since it uses a different architecture than most boards, out-of-the-box software is not compatible with it. Instead, there's a huge GitHub repository with official ports of popular software compatible with the Parallella Board.
Con Power connector is not MicroUSB or MiniUSB
Can't use power banks as a power source because of that.
Con No on-board Wi-Fi or Bluetooth
Con Lack of support, Unstable USB 3,
Only Android with TV UI is available. It is almost unusable with a touchscreen display.
Community is somewhat helpful but is very small. The board developers do not participate in community discussions. No regular Android build available. Lack of accessories and project guidelines.
Con Lack of accessories
