Single-board computers (SBCs) are becoming increasingly popular in both industrial and home use. It’s fitting, since SBCs drove some of the earliest home computers, like the Acorn Electron and the BBC Micro. Today’s SBC is much different than that of yesteryear, offering portability, versatility, and power efficiency not seen in the early days.
Whether you’re working with a Raspberry Pi, BeagleBoard, or an SBC based on the Intel N100 Alder Lake CPU, power efficiency is a common denominator. There are a few things that make these tiny computers so power efficient.
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3 Components are carefully chosen to sip, rather than gulp, power
Embedded and DIY uses for SBCs rely on great power efficiency
To begin with, today's SBC is designed with power efficiency in mind. Whether it's used in an embedded capacity in an industrial application or as the brains behind a DIY project, an SBC often needs to be powered by battery rather than plugged into an electrical outlet. Much like a laptop computer, the SBC ideally needs to be able to run for a considerable time between battery charges.
So, while the engineers developing our single-board computers are taking performance into account, they're also working to make the computers as power-efficient as possible. This is reflected in the chip design, the choice of which components to use, the layout of those components on the PCB, and the compact size.
For example, the Intel N100 CPU used in the Radxa X4 has a TDP of 6W, compared to the 55W TDP found in most modern laptops using Raptor Lake mobile CPUs. Even the Raspberry Pi 5's 12W TDP is much better in terms of power efficiency than the average modern laptop CPU. Similarly, SBCs typically use eMMC flash memory for storage, or a storage connector like microSD or M.2. These options consume very little electricity, allowing the SBC to remain as energy-efficient as possible given their workloads.
TDP, or Thermal Design Power, generally refers to the maximum amount of heat, measured in watts, a computer component can generate under its maximum theoretical load. The actual power consumption of the component will usually be less than its TDP.
Tradeoffs are often inevitable, so an SBC may not offer performance as strong as a desktop PC. On the other hand, SBCs are small enough that several of them can be incorporated into the same amount of physical space a single desktop computer occupies.
2 SBCs tightly integrate fewer components
Proximity keeps these small computers efficient
One of the reasons an SBC can be so power-efficient is that the designers keep nearly all the essential components tightly integrated. In traditional computers, the motherboard, CPU, memory, storage devices, and more are usually separate components. All of these components are typically integrated onto a single board for an SBC, hence the name "single-board computer." Often, you'll find that the CPU and GPU are even integrated within the same chip.
This integration means lower energy requirements. More components and connectors almost always mean higher energy requirements. Each connector adds at least a slight amount of resistance to the circuit, so integrating all the components into a single board helps decrease power consumption.
1 The lack of moving parts and heat generation
Keeping things cool means better power efficiency
Your average SBC has almost no moving parts, other than the fans which are used to increase airflow and cool the chips. Of course, traditional PCs are less reliant on rotational hard drives than they used to be, but an SBC's lack of moving parts combines with its small size to greatly reduce heat generation. Since heat can be a death knell for computer components, computers use electricity to run the fans or liquid cooling systems to keep everything running smoothly.
An SBC often uses active cooling like fans, yes, but at a much smaller scale. The power requirement for a Raspberry Pi's cooling fan is almost negligible, helping maintain the energy efficiency of the SBC.
Tiny, versatile, and energy-friendly
While there are a few computing devices that offer better power efficiency than the SBC, they usually lack the power and versatility needed for many applications. Fortunately, the single-board computer can provide strong computing performance, a compact size, and lower energy requirements, all in one small package.