A stick PC or PC on a stick is a single-board computer in a small elongated casing resembling a stick, that can usually be plugged directly (without an HDMI cable) into an HDMI video port. A stick PC is a device which has independent CPUs or processing chips and which does not rely on another computer. It should not be confused with passive storage devices such as thumb drives .
7-536: The MK802 is a PC-on-a-stick produced by Rikomagic , a Chinese company using mostly two series of systems on a chip architectures : The thumb sized MK802, which was first brought into market in May 2012, can turn a display with a HDMI or DVI-D port into an Android computer, or several Ubuntu derived Linux distribution for LE (Linux Edition) versions. Since the original design was introduced, five other similar models have been released. 4G All models appear similar to
14-555: A somewhat enlarged USB flash drive housing a processor, RAM, storage and I/O ports. Equipped with a keyboard, mouse and display, the device can perform the functions of an Android-based computer. Linux distributions Ubuntu or PicUntu can also be installed on these devices that offer a windowed desktop environment. The MK802's success and design has generated a host of similar devices with similar specifications, many of which have similar model numbers , but are not manufactured by Rikomagic. Also, these devices share many characteristics with
21-689: The ARM architecture system on a chip (SoC) and the Linux 2.6 kernel . Windows CE can be installed on this stick. It was based on the idea of making a PC similar in size to that of an average stick of chewing gum . As the popularity of smart TVs and set-top boxes to view streaming services (such as the Roku ) grew, companies started looking at making these small computers even smaller and easier to use. Several stick PCs using ARM architecture SoCs were introduced around 2012, made of sticks pluggable in an HDMI port, including
28-532: The Android Mini PC MK802 series from Rikomagic, using Android or Linux distributions, both based on Linux and Allwinner Technology or Rockchip SoC and Cotton Candy , using Samsung Exynos SoC. 2013-2014 saw several manufacturers come out with stick PCs. MeeGoPad released the first x86 based stick PC, featuring the Intel Atom Z3735F Processor. In April 2013, Tronsmart released
35-497: The Raspberry Pi computer. PC-on-a-stick A stick PC can be connected to a peripheral device such as a monitor , TV , or kiosk display to produce visual or audio output. Stick PCs generally have limited computing power and are not suited for intensive tasks, but can be suitable in other applications that do not require such power. The stick PC was first introduced in 2003. The Gumstix , which came out that same year, used
42-824: The Rockchip RK3288 SoC and running Google's ChromeOS . In 2016, Intel introduced the Intel Compute Stick . It was discontinued in June 2020. In July 2017, Intel released the Movidius Neural Compute Stick which included a Vision Processing Unit for vision-specific AI workload. In January 2018, the Laceli AI Compute Stick came out, including a neural network processor unit for AI workload called Lightspeeur 2801S Neural Processor , and claiming to be more powerful and more energy-efficient than
49-745: The MK908, using the Rockchip RK3188 (featuring the quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 and ARM Mali-400MP GPU). On July 24, 2013, Google introduced the Google Chromecast , a streaming device similar in function and design to a stick PC. On November 19, 2014, Amazon released a smaller version of the Amazon Fire TV called the Fire TV Stick. In March 2015, ASUS and Google introduced the Chromebit , a stick PC based on
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