On Mon, Dec 23, 2013 at 4:43 PM, Jerry Stuckle <[email protected]> wrote: > On 12/23/2013 2:24 AM, Luc Verhaegen wrote: >> >> On Sun, Dec 22, 2013 at 11:09:39PM -0500, Jerry Stuckle wrote: >>> >>> >>> Let's try this again. I'm still looking for a good ARM board for >>> Debian. I thought the Olinuxino A10s board would work until I found out >>> recently that Allwinner has stopped making the SDK as of last February. >>> No more updates for Linux, and it looks like this chip is going by the >>> wayside. We need one which will be around for a while. >> >> >> Wow, what world do you live in? >> >> A world where cheap chinese manufacturers actually support their >> hardware? Where they make full software available for many years? What >> world is that? >> > > Luc, > > I live in a world with commercial products where costs must be controlled to > remain competitive. This includes not only the cost of parts now, but the > cost of having to redesign when something you are using becomes unavailable.
unfortunately, what luc is pointing out is that the requirements that you've set, whilst being extremely common, are in fact mutually exclusively incompatible. the people who make low-cost SoCs that you're expecting to buy don't make them for you - or in fact any of us here on debian-arm - they make those $5 to $7 SoCs to sell *immense* numbers of tablets, tablets, tablets and yet more tablets... in china. the rest of the world - which is 1/10th the size as a market - is almost an afterthought. the hilarious thing is that not even the chinese fabless SoC companies themselves realise this. allwinner made the A31 a year ago, it was quad-core, it had MIPI, it had DisplayPort, it had all the fantastic bells and whistles, had faster graphics (PowerVR 545MP), ticked all the boxes... but because it was $19 and targetted at SuperTablets (with 2560x1800whatever displays) that is *automatically* outside of mainstream chinese markets.... Rockchip did pretty much at the same time a 28nm quad-core $12 lower-cost SoC with slower graphics (still MALI 400), and wiped the floor with them. but even rockchip are not immune to the "supernova SoC" effect. that amazing 28nm $12 quad-core SoC - which is only sold to clients with good engineering resources (of whom there are extremely few - tom cubie's team is one of them) or it's sold with "full support" services to a handful of chinese tablet-tablet-tablet-tablet makers who have proven that they can shift 100k units - will be viewed with increasing unease by potential ODMs because of its age [under 9 months!]. there *will* be something better coming out... always... and the moment it does, you're screwed. but there *is no other way* to get access to these low-cost SoCs! ... except with EOMA68. the exact scenario that you face, jerry, is why i designed EOMA68. it's there to provide people like you [1] with access to the latest low-cost SoCs, yet using only a subset of functionality of each SoC, such that the base-board *has* to be designed to accommodate a long-term strategy where the SoC *does not matter*. does that make any sense? l. [1] the situation is compounded by software license violations. i have a friend who has an engineering firm in australia. he wants to do a low-cost WIFI product. you'd think that it would be possible to buy a tablet, strip it down and put the PCB into a great wall-mounted product, make a lot of money, right? wrong. he has a stack a METRE HIGH of rejected tablets - all of them low-cost - which tells him before he's even started that he's out of business. why? because *every single one* of them is GPL-violating and the factories don't even have the source code. i'll say that again: NOT EVEN THE FACTORIES have the source code: they were supplied with GPL-violating binary-only images by a 3rd party intermediary design house. by contrast, because i am a software libre advocate, no EOMA68 CPU Card will receive Certification, no SoC will even be *considered* unless the GPL and all other software licenses are properly respected. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/capweedyc1plbdwfvhvhfoqa3rzirzvtowntombsxdoh_cjz...@mail.gmail.com
