I have been looking into what processor to use, IF the BeagleBone tests go well I would like to keep it with the TI processor line I have been looking at, they have really good support systems behind it, much better than many of the other manufacturers, which will make getting a board out much quicker. In particular they have spent a lot of effort optimizing their ball layout to make it easier to layout these large BGAs, which makes my task much easier to do than if we used another companies competing products.
If things turn out I have a dilema, whichprocessor to use, the AM3358 or the AM3874. The AM3358 is $20 cheaper, has a much smaller package which is easier to route. Mostly because it does not have a display subsystem so there are much fewer pins. It also hassome limitations on what memory chips it can take. The max speed is 720MHz. The AM3874 has a max speed of 1GHz, has a full blown display subsystem with HDMI, VGA, component video etc all built in to the chip. It's memory interface is more flexible so it can support the larger single chip memories. This is the chip I was thinking of using for Gen2. So what do we use for Gen1? The max memory in one chip you can use for the 3358 is 256MB, but you can get up to 512GB with the 3874 but it costs $20 more to do that. I looked carefully at the 3874 pinout and found that TI has done a really good job making it easy to route, so that part is not as bad as I thought originaly. I'm leaning on just going with the 3874 for Gen1 so it is the same as Gen2, just not the display subsystem etc. Just doing that increases the cost by about $35, so we are now up to $205, if we go with the 512MB that adds another $25 or so, so we are now up to $230, $60 more than I originally predicted. What do you all think? John S. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ JohnSwenson's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=5974 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97881 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
