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Add to SafariWhen comparing The Parallella Board vs Intel NUC boards, the Slant community recommends Intel NUC boards for most people. In the question“What are the best single-board computers?” Intel NUC boards is ranked 12th while The Parallella Board is ranked 18th. The most important reason people chose Intel NUC boards is:
You can have 16GB GSkill DDR4 Memory + 500gb SSD and 10TB external HDD. Go with the kit so you can be assured that it runs Linux and only Linux (or whatever your preference) out of the box and isn't subjected to any unnecessary use/abuse at the hand of Doors.
Specs
Question 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 On paper the J5005 maxes out at 8gb DDR4 RAM however it can accommodate at lease double that
You can have 16GB GSkill DDR4 Memory + 500gb SSD and 10TB external HDD. Go with the kit so you can be assured that it runs Linux and only Linux (or whatever your preference) out of the box and isn't subjected to any unnecessary use/abuse at the hand of Doors.
Pro Has at least one SATA port
Pro DRAM is not soldered
DRAM modules are not soldered to the board so they can be changed, upgraded or replaced.
Pro x86-based
Can run all IBM-PC compatible software.
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 Cost as much as other Barebones
Price is almost the same as a full Intel/Zotac barebone, which can also be dismantled.
Con No GPIO
So it is not really useful for DIY projects.
Con No DRAM included
DRAM modules must be bought separately.
