With the rise of technology and the Internet of Things, single board computers are becoming more powerful and more popular because they can perform many tasks that a normal computer could for a lot less cost in both price and power consumption. The first and most popular single-board computer that first went public was the Raspberry Pi. When the Raspberry Pi foundation first introduced the smallest computer, many tinkers and tech-savvy begin to buy the computer to find out what kind of software or things they can run with the computer. After several years other companies started to invent their single-board computer, but back in those days companies were only able to create the single-board computer with a single-core processors and as more and more demand for these small computers rises, companies around the world are competing to see who can make the first Quad-Core Intel Single Board Computer. Today almost every single-board computer is capable of running an Intel quad-core processor and with the Quad-Core Intel Single Board Computer , tech-savvy and geeks around the world can develop powerful apps and software that mimic the desktop and laptop but this time they are capable of running on the single board computer instead. According to Basauri P. (n.d) today single board computer are almost everywhere because they are easy to implement and can run most software that a traditional desktop or laptop can run. Single-board computers can be found in places like airplanes, rocket ship, toys, and even high-performance athletic shoes. Since these computers are capable of running a Linux operating system, all one need to install is Python and they should be able to utilize the single board computer for many things.
The most popular use for Quad-Core Intel Single Board Computer today is as an entertainment system because today software like Kodi (also known as XBMC) can transform a single-board computer into an entertainment system that is capable of running things like a browser, watch movies and TV shows, listening to music, and many more. Single board computer can also be used as a server because a server does not require a lot of resources since they are only there to direct traffic and allow people to share things so making a server out of a single board computer is a great idea for those who either want a personal server at their house or in a business environment where a small group of people wants to share resources with each other.
Single board computer is so popular today that even Microsoft has joined in the game and created their quad-core single-board computer that runs an x86 Intel Atom processor. With an x86 processor, one can install and run Microsoft Windows 10 on the single-board computer. Since these embedded devices also run at least 2GB of DDR3 RAM or Random Access Memory they can install and run a browser like the Chrome browser that is slightly a resource hog browser without much problem. As long as the user of these machines understand how to conserve resource they should be able to run many software and applications without the needs to upgrade to a higher amount of memory.
The only disadvantage of running embedded devices whether in a personal or business environment is security. The embedded device does not have a lot of space to install extra layers of security so they tend to be very vulnerable to hacking and with the rise of embedded devices, hackers are more aware their vulnerability so they tend to target these systems much more than the traditional system that has extra layers of security installed.