A stick PC or PC on a stick is a

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 demonst ...

in a small elongated casing resembling a stick, that can usually be plugged directly (without an HDMI cable) into an

HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) is a proprietary digital interface used to transmit high-quality video and audio signals between devices. It is commonly used to connect devices such as televisions, computer monitors, projectors, gam ...

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. A stick PC can be connected to a peripheral device such as a

monitor Monitor or monitor may refer to: Places * Monitor, Alberta * Monitor, Indiana, town in the United States * Monitor, Kentucky * Monitor, Oregon, unincorporated community in the United States * Monitor, Washington * Monitor, Logan County, Wes ...

, 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.

History

The stick PC was first introduced in 2003. The Gumstix, which came out that same year, used the

ARM architecture ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer, RISC instruction set architectures (ISAs) for central processing unit, com ...

system on a chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or Electronics, electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with computer memory, ...

(SoC) and the

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

2.6 kernel.

Windows CE Windows CE, later known as Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the software foun ...

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 Roku ( ) is a brand of consumer electronics that includes streaming players, smart TVs (and their operating systems), as well as a free TV streaming service. The brand is owned by Roku, Inc., an American company. As of 2024, Roku is the U ...

) 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

port, including the Android Mini PC MK802 series from Rikomagic, using Android or

distributions, both based on Linux and Allwinner Technology or

Rockchip Rockchip (Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Fuzhou, Fujian province. It has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. It designs system on a chip (SoC) products, usi ...

SoC and

Cotton Candy Cotton candy, also known as candy floss (candyfloss) and fairy floss, is a spun sugar confection that resembles cotton. It is made by heating and liquefying sugar, and spinning it centrifugally through minute holes, causing it to rapidly cool ...

, 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 the MK908, using the Rockchip RK3188 (featuring the quad-core

ARM Cortex-A9 The ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore is a 32-bit multi-core processor that provides up to 4 cache-coherent cores, each implementing the ARM v7 architecture instruction set. It was introduced in 2007. Features Key features of the Cortex-A9 core are: * ou ...

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 the Rockchip RK3288 SoC and running Google's

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is an operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source operating system and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user ...

. In 2016, Intel introduced the Intel Compute Stick. It was discontinued in June 2020.

Neural compute sticks

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 the Movidius. In November 2018, the Orange Pi AI Stick 2801 came out, also featuring the ''Lightspeeur 2801S Neural Processor''.

References

{{Computer sizes Digital media players Networking hardware Streaming media systems

History

Neural compute sticks

See also

References