Raspberry Pi and

Sharks CoveWhy They Aren’t Competitors

or Rivals

Sharks CoveLogo

Coming…uh…

Soon

Microsoft recently released the Sharks Cove development board.

Almost instantly people started calling it a Raspberry Pi alternative/competitor

CHALLENGES

“LOOK OUT”

SIMILAR

ALTERNATIVE

RIVAL

A few people sensed something wrong with the comparison

WTF?

So how similar/different are they?

Ok, both are green boards with electronic-y stuff on them

That’s about where the similarities end

Size

56 x 85 mm 102 x 152 mm

The Sharks Cove is

3.2 times bigger

Processor

1 core 700 MHz 4 core 1.33 GHz

The Cove is almost

2xfaster

RAM

512 MB SDRAM 1GB DDR3

The Cove has

TWICEas much memory

(and it’s faster)

GPIO

17 GPIO pins*SPI and I2C

UART

? GPIO pinsSPI and I2C

UART

* The Model B+ has 26

We could go through all ofthe hardware differences

But what are the REAL reasons these two aren’t competing?

First of all, because Microsoft said so...

“Sharks Cove is a development board that you

can use to develop hardware and drivers for

Windows and Android.”

“The primary target usage of the Sharks Cove

board is for development of subsystems for

Intel® Atom™ processors based Tablets and

Mobile devices”

Drivers, Tablets and Mobile, OH MY!

Let’s compare that to the Raspberry Pi

“We want to see it being used by KIDS all over

the world to learn how computers work, how to manipulate the electronic world around

them, and how to program.”

The Raspberry Pi has a different purpose. And therefore a different market.

And it’s plain as day to see

Oh, and let’s not forget the price

$35 vs $300

One is an expensive platform development tool

meant for designingWindows and Android-based devices

with a non-existent community

The other is an affordable learning platform with a thriving worldwide

community aimed at teaching kids programming and electronics.

So can we please stop pretending that this is some sort of

development board matchup

Because it isn’t