On Apr 5, 2014, at 12:48 PM, Ugo Bellavance <u...@lubik.ca> wrote: > http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/03/intel-releases-99-minnowboard-max-an-open-source-single-board-computer/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb > > An interesting platform for pfSense? > > It looks like it only has 1 NIC though.
I looked at this earlier in the week when it was released. It’s interesting, (AES-NI and VT-x support! http://ark.intel.com/products/78475/Intel-Atom-Processor-E3845-2M-Cache-1_91-GHz) and Circuitco is just up the highway in Richardson, TX. I’ve considered driving up and seeing what it would take to take the schematics (when they are available) and have a board built with 2 Ethernets (rather than one), and maybe a miniPCIe socket (for an 802.11 NIC, as pfSense 2.2 should make a lot more of these work, or possibly an m-sata drive), in addition to pulling the expansion header off, and connectorizing the serial ‘debug’ header for a proper console. We would need a simple enclosure as well. Painted (or powder-coated) steel is less expensive than anodized aluminum, but I think the anodized aluminum looks nicer, and it can be laser engraved. The other issue is single or dual core and 1GB or 2GB ram (4GB?)? How interesting is the m-sata / miniPCIe option? How you can help: Indicate your level of interest. This board would without a doubt cost more than the minnow board. I don’t know how much more, but we’re not going to hit the same volumes as the minnow board. (I could be wrong.) The minnow board could be subsidized by Intel. (I could be wrong.) It’s going to require a significant investment (up-front NRE), an investment in getting a run of these made, and some return on those investments (profit). How important is form-factor? Larger PCBs cost more, but can sometimes relax routing enough to not need additional layers (fewer layers tend to cost less). - miniPCIe is going to require a connector (these cost money to both buy and place) - m-sata also requires a switch, such that if the m-sata drive is in-place it is connected to the SATA controller - RAM costs. At these densities, 2GB of ram costs twice as much as 1GB of ram. 4GB of ram costs 4X as much as 1GB of ram. making lots of different variants of the boards costs extra to both manufacture (stop the line, load the new parts, run the new SKU) and inventory. - dual core or single core? Remember that pfSense 2.2 (which is based on FreeBSD 10) supports a pf capable of multi-threading. Jim _______________________________________________ List mailing list List@lists.pfsense.org https://lists.pfsense.org/mailman/listinfo/list
