Single-board computer

A single-board computer (SBC) is a complete computer built on a single circuit board, with microprocessor(s), memory, input/output (I/O) and other features required of a functional computer. Single-board computers are commonly made as demonstration or development systems, for educational systems, or for use as embedded computer controllers. Many types of home computers or portable computers integrate all their functions onto a single printed circuit board. Unlike a desktop personal computer, single-board computers often do not rely on expansion slots for peripheral functions or expansion. Single-board computers have been built using a wide range of microprocessors. Simple designs, such as those built by computer hobbyists, often use static RAM and low-cost 32- or 64-bit processors like ARM. Other types, such as blade servers, would perform similar to a server computer, only in a more compact format. A computer-on-module is a type of single-board computer made to plug into a carrier board, baseboard, or backplane for system expansion.

History

Early SBCs The first single-board computers were introduced shortly after the first microprocessors arrived on the market. In 1971 and 1972 respectively, Intel came out with the SIM4-01 and SIM8-01 development boards. The SIM8-01 board is based on the Intel 8008 and contains a CPU, RAM, ROM, and a TTY terminal interface. The same interface was common in the Intel 8080-based MYCRO-1, released in December 1974, and the Intel SDK-80 and the Motorola MEK6800D1, released in 1975. A cheaper and subsequently more popular single-board computer, the KIM-1 based on the MOS 6502, would be announced later in 1975 and released in 1976. Early SBCs featured heavily in the early history of home computers, such as the Acorn Electron, BBC Micro, the Ferguson Big Board, the Ampro Little Board, and the Nascom. Other typical early single-board computers like the KIM-1 were often shipped without enclosure, which had to be added by the owner. Many home computers in the 1980s were single-board computers, with some even encouraging owners to solder upgraded components directly to pre-marked points on the board. In the 1990s, the PC became more prevalent due to the standardisation of the PCI bus and the adoption of IBM's standards for peripherals , which made motherboards, compatible components, and peripherals cheap and ubiquitous. The development of multimedia platforms such as the CD-ROM and Sound Blaster cards had also begun to fast outpace the rate at which users needed to replace their personal computers. These two trends disincentivized single-board computers, and encouraged the proliferation of motherboards, which typically housed the CPU and other core components, with peripheral components such as hard disk drive controllers and graphics processors, and even some core components such as RAM modules, located on daughterboards. Computers began to move back towards fewer boards in the 2000s. As new standards like USB reduced the variety of peripheral standards motherboards were expected to support, advances in integrated circuit manufacturing provided new chipsets which could provide the functionality of many daughterboards, particularly I/O, in a single chip. By the end of the decade, PC motherboards offered on-board support for disk drives including IDE, SATA, NVMe, RAID, integrated GPU, Ethernet, and traditional I/O such as serial port and parallel port, USB, and keyboard/mouse support. Single-board computers saw rapid growth during the 2010s due to advances in integrated circuit production that allowed most or all motherboard components to be placed on a single die. The Raspberry Pi, built around a custom Broadcom SoC with open-source drivers, was originally designed for education, but included features such as Linux support and programmable GPIO pins that were used by hobbyists for projects including home automation, video game emulation, and streaming. In industry, the growth of smartphones and other small devices led manufacturers to adopt SoCs more widely and shrink motherboards, while the spread of Internet-connected devices increased demand for small, inexpensive components. By the end of the 2010s and into the 2020s, smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other smart devices commonly used single-board computers built around SoCs.

Applications

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