On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 01:15:43PM -0800, Konstantin Olchanski wrote: > ... > Upgrading to new hardware depends on the depth of your pockets of course, > but we also see technical problems - some new 2GHz+ 64-bit SBCs overwhelm > power supplies originally built to run 0.1GHz motorola 68020 SBCs. > ...
No low power 64 bit SBCs? This sounds like a market opportunity! Modern deep-submicron processes permit both very fast (Intel i7) and very low power (Atom) processors, the latter preferable when power and cooling is limited. I am preparing a Zotac ZBOX small computer with SL7 for my wife's office; 64 bit dual core Atom, 5600 "bogomips", two displays, terabyte HD, 8 GB RAM ... all drawing 9 to 14 watts. $220 for ZBOX and addons from newegg. It has a cheap low-speed fan, but I can't hear it running. Noctua.at makes the lowest noise fans. I don't know if an FPGA can drive a VME backplane, but those have evolved towards lower power per gate-MHz, too. With all those extra gates, and live reconfiguration, a VME board could have BIST (built in self test) capabilities for on-line failure detection and debug. If there is sufficient demand for a quiet low-power VME SBC replacement, I know consultants who can design one. Bringing this back on topic, if it can be further optimized by kernel modules, I can think of a distro that could support them... Keith -- Keith Lofstrom [email protected]
