10 Feb
2013
10 Feb
'13
5:18 p.m.
On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 07:40:14PM -0500, Dave McGuire wrote:
On 02/10/2013 06:57 PM, Alexander Schreiber wrote:
I'm quite aware; I pay pretty close attention to the processor
market...but I always THINK of them as microcontrollers, because I use
them in that capacity every day.
Now, that Enynos board of yours...I had NOT heard of that. I think I
need to get my paws on one of those. Unf!
Hehe.
I'm currently working on a talk labelled "Raspberry Pi & Friends" for a
Linux
conference in Germany in march where I'm going to talk about, yes, the
ubiquituous Raspbery Pi[0] - and also about a bunch of _other_ interesting
ARM boards providing quite a bit of bang for small bucks, including the
ODROID machines, Hackberry, ... so I'm looking rather closely at what is in
the market right now. And let me tell you, it looks damn impressive. Even the
Hackberry: 1.2 GHz single core ARM, 1 GB of RAM, Ethernet & WiFi for $65.
The amount of machine one can get for very little money these days .. also
they are _quiet_ (no fans) and suck down very little power. So you can just
stuff them quietly in some corner ...
Kind regards,
Alex.
[0] It definitely needs a set of slides called "The good, the bad, the ugly"
because there is plenty of all three there. One shouldn't look to closely
at the details of the Raspberri Pi after a good meal.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
I
don't think anyone views ARM as a dark hors contender at this point,
but I think a lot of people are going to be surprised when they move
into the server market. I know I was surprised to hear of the
server-class support chipsets being developed...While I love ARM (I work
with ARM every day) I'd never in a million years considered it for a
server platform. For no good reason, mind you, it's just that, in my
world, they're microcontrollers and barely anything more. (in my world)
Microcontrollers? Aye, there are plenty (untold billions by now, I'd guess)
of ARM chips out there whose specs qualify them as microcontrollers and
not much more.
There are also _other_ things ARM out there, such as this:
http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G13534…
Exynos4412 Prime, giving you 4 ARM cores clocked at 1.7 GHz and 2 GByte of
memory. In a board half the size of a credit card. I've got one sitting right
next to me, running Linux (Debian wheezy) just fine. Impressive little machine.
The power brick is specced at 10 Watts, and that has to cover USB as well.
The _massive_ proliferation of high spec ARM CPUs for smartphones seems to be
doing wonders for fueling advancement of the high end of the ARM platform.