Cubieboard: A Chinese product renowned in overseas Linux circles

We have been saying that "domestic products should be self-reliant," but it is difficult to find more companies that have successfully entered the international market. Perhaps this is due to information asymmetry, because those companies that already have a certain reputation in an international circle may focus more of their energy on the international market. After all, where there is a market, there is marketing.

Recently, I discovered a team in Zhuhai that is recognized internationally but remains relatively unknown domestically. They are called Cubieboard, and their product is a development board based on Linux. Don't underestimate this development board; mainstream Linux distributions internationally have all launched versions compatible with it. For example, Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, OpenSUSE, ArchLinux, and others. This indicates that, at least within the Linux community, Cubieboard has received significant attention and recognition.

The Cubieboard rivals the "Raspberry Pi".

When talking about Cubieboard, it's easy to think of another famous product, the Raspberry Pi, affectionately known as "树莓派" (Raspberry Pi). At first glance, the two products seem similar, both integrating processors and memory on a PCB board with rich interfaces for connecting hard drives, SD cards, monitors, speakers/headphones, etc. In other words, Cubieboard and Raspberry Pi are both card-sized ultra-small computers, and both leave many rich expansion interfaces on their hardware, making it convenient for users to add desired functions by themselves.

So, what are the differences between Cubieboard and Raspberry Pi? The former follows the path of product innovation, while the latter follows the path of channel innovation. From the beginning to the end of this year, Cubieboard has iterated three generations of products. The team launched Cubieboard 2 in the middle of the year, and just recently introduced CubieTruck. On the other hand, Raspberry Pi relies on media coverage to penetrate various markets across countries. According to Huang Zuben, co-founder of Cubieboard, they have already contacted domestic educational institutions. However, Raspberry Pi remains largely unchanged from its original product.

Besides the different values emphasized by the companies, there are also performance differences between the two products. The first-generation Cubieboard outperforms Raspberry Pi in various aspects. Here is a detailed performance comparison, evaluating items such as CPU performance, disk read/write performance, memory performance tests, GPU graphics performance tests, etc. In other words, Cubieboard can handle heavier computational tasks — which is why most major Linux distributions have launched versions compatible with Cubieboard.

Products of open-source hardware often depend heavily on the community. If there is a robust enough community, then its prospects for development will look better. The Raspberry Pi community is more robust than Cubieboard's, not only because you frequently see reports of someone using Raspberry Pi to do something interesting, but also because the number of posts on the Raspberry Pi forum is several times that of Cubieboard's.

However, the development speed of Cubieboard's community, which started this year, has been very fast. To date, the cumulative traffic on the official forum has nearly reached 2 million visits, and the traffic on the Chinese forum surpassed 10,000 visits for the first time in the third quarter. Additionally, the discussion atmosphere in the community has become increasingly vibrant. For example, users in the community actively provide comprehensive solutions for building servers with Cubieboard, and these solutions are based on Hadoop. Apart from common user practices like servers and home audio-video servers, some people have even developed high-fidelity audio conversion expansion cards for Cubieboard — in other words, Cubieboard can be used as a high-fidelity audio system.

Half-pushed, half-drawn into entrepreneurship.

In June this year, Li Dawei from Xin Workshop recommended the Zhuhai-based team, Cubieboard, to me. He told me that unlike other domestic teams working on open-source hardware who voluntarily start businesses, Cubieboard only branched out from their original company due to user demand. He felt that Cubieboard's story was closer to reality. After all, not everyone starts off thinking about entrepreneurship, and it's more likely that one ends up on the entrepreneurial path due to personal or environmental factors.

Huang Zuben told me that Cubieboard was a rather unexpected product. Being active in the Linux open-source community, he saw that people in the community needed a cost-effective development board that could be compatible with various Linux distributions. Thus, he thought, "Why don't I try to make one?" Then, he gathered a team to develop loosely in his spare time. When the prototype was completed and shared with the community, it unexpectedly received a warm welcome from community users. Huang Zuben said, "We were doing it for fun and never expected the board to be so popular."

Later, through the active recommendations of community members, Cubieboard began to gain its own users and product reputation, with increasing user demand. With a relatively mature product already available, Huang Zuben and other team members began discussing whether they should establish a company. Now, although Fangtang Technology has been established, only Huang Zuben from the original five-person team remains committed.

In fact, Huang Zuben joined Zhuhai Allwinner last year, and by the end of the year, he had already conceived the idea of starting his own business. He and Li Zuoting both felt that "the electronics industry is too exhausting" — taking Huang Zuben's personal experience as an example, when he worked at Xingbangwei Electronics, to ensure project progress, the company moved him and the project team from Shenzhen to Zhuhai for semi-military closed development, allowing each person to sleep only 4-5 hours per day, continuously for 8-9 months. Due to the intense competition in the electronics industry, companies have to squeeze human resources to ensure new products appear on schedule. Working in such an atmosphere makes one feel like a wound-up robot with no freedom.

Huang Zuben is proud of the students from Beijing Institute of Technology Zhuhai Campus who work on Cubieboard. He believes that these college students can learn things in the team that their teachers cannot teach in class, whether it's technology, interpersonal skills, or other aspects. Students participating in the work have made great progress. In this sense, Cubieboard has done some meaningful work in education. Huang Zuben also hopes that more students will understand and recognize the product. He believes that this development board can better stimulate students' active thinking and improve their hands-on ability.

In October this year, Huang Zuben traveled along the Sichuan-Tibet line into Tibet, far from the hustle and bustle of the city, spending his days accompanied by cliffs and steep slopes. Just under such circumstances, he watched a program discussing how humans grow old and die, which touched his heart deeply. He said, "Later, I realized, what's the point of living and earning so much money? In the end, it's just a cup of yellow earth. Life should be about doing more valuable things." I think this is the reason why he has persisted.

The Future of Mini PC and Cubieboard

From the beginning of this year until now, Cubieboard products have developed through three generations, and the products have been sold to more than 100 countries abroad. What do Huang Zuben and Li Zuoting think about the future?

They believe that the performance gap between ARM and x86 has narrowed significantly compared to before, and can meet ordinary usage needs, such as playing movies, listening to music, browsing the web, etc. There was once a customer who hoped to order dozens of Cubieboards to replace Raspberry Pis serving as thin clients in his company — he felt that Cubieboard's performance was better, and the system ran smoother, helping to improve employees' office efficiency while saving company costs.

In the future, when Cubieboard adopts an eight-core processor and 2GB of memory, the performance gap with desktop machines will be even smaller. This means it can run desktop environments better — a low-cost, functionally similar mini PC. Whether for validating ideas or replacing PCs, mini PCs can provide more flexible solutions.

However, due to the lack of a thriving domestic open-source community, Huang Zuben holds a relatively pessimistic view of the domestic market. Moreover, domestic users tend to be stricter with new products, unable to shake off the mindset of "the moon is always rounder on the other side" or "finding fault in eggs." Entrepreneurs often exert themselves without receiving appreciation. Huang Zuben feels that the challenges faced in doing development board business domestically are much greater than internationally. But as a valuable cause, he and his team will persist.

Regarding the future, Huang Zuben hopes to launch a community similar to柴火in Shenzhen, allowing more students and enthusiasts to experience the culture and atmosphere of open-source hardware and open-source communities, exchanging ideas and honing skills. In addition, he has some product plans that are still in the planning stages. He said, as long as the Cubieboard team maintains strong combativeness, he fears nothing.

Note: A chip company producing ARM chips widely used in tablets.