element14 to manufacture BeagleBone Black open source platform

element14 has been approved as an official manufacturer of the original BeagleBone Black, an open-hardware, community-supported embedded computer for developers and hobbyists.

Featuring 1 GHz performance with a Sitara ARM Cortex-A8 processor, the product gives the user the ability to boot Linux in under 10 s and get started on development in less than 5 min with just a single USB cable. It will be manufactured by Premier Farnell’s wholly owned subsidiary Embest Technology, which has extensive experience in the design and manufacturing of single-board computers and will provide volume manufacturing capacity for the device.

“We are proud to partner with BeagleBoard.org to produce one of the most popular single-board computers,” said David Shen, group chief technical officer at element14. “This partnership shows our continuing commitment to providing engineers with the latest development tools as well as providing world-class design and manufacturing services.”

“We are delighted to further strengthen the partnership with element14 by approving them as an official manufacturer for the BeagleBone Black,” added Christine Long, executive director at BeagleBoard.org. “This agreement reflects the relationship that BeagleBoard.org and element14 have built to date and we look forward to working together more closely.”

The BeagleBone Black is available from Farnell element14 in Europe, Newark element14 in North America and element14 in Asia-Pacific.