[Arm-netbook] uh-oh....

Gordan Bobic gordan at bobich.net
Wed Dec 28 22:24:13 GMT 2011


On 12/28/2011 09:42 PM, Michelle Konzack wrote:
> Hello Gordan Bobic,
>
> Am 2011-12-28 20:55:30, hacktest Du folgendes herunter:
>> Not to answer Michelle's question, but you cannot be serious in asking
>> that, right? I believe he mentioned something like 12W with 2 Gbit
>> ethernet ports.
>>
>> For comparison, I have a couple of Atom N450 machines - the best that
>> Intel has at the moment when it comes to low-power. They are pulling 22W
>> idle, and they trip the 30W PoE Class 4 limit when everything is going
>> at full tilt. So we are talking at least 2.5x lower max power usage,
>> probably better.
>
> But there are soe things to considder:
>
> For the MV78x00:
>
> 1) Two PCIe 4x ports (each can seperately splited into four PCIe 1x) the
>     1x does not support the fullspeed (~75%) which could give problems if
>     someone want to use USB 3.0. Currently there is no USB 3.0 Controller
>     with PCIe 4x available
>
> 2) SO-DIMM and direct memory interface
> 3) NAND and SDXC support  (both bootable)
> 4) two SATA Ports
>
> 5) Two versions of the MV78x00
>     a) MV78100      Singel-Core
>                     800-1200MHz
>                     one 1 Giga Ethernet
>     b) MV78200      Dual-Core
>                     800-1200MHz
>                     two 1 Giga Ethernet
>
> So, if you need a Router or a Server, this machine could  be  a  killer,
> because you can attach two 8port SAS Hardware Raid controller to the two
> PCIe 4x ports and then attach in total sixteen 2"5 SAS/SATA  drives  and
> with two GE interfaces youc an beat any servers from  IBM,  HP,  Compaq,
> Sun in price and energy consuming
>
> I have customers which have seen the DevKit in action and the perforance
> is several times better then my "AMD Athlon XP 3000+"  with  3 GByte  of
> memory and an 3Ware 12ch SAS controller...

As I mentioned before, if the devkit motherboards were available at a 
reasonable price (Compulab make some Armada 510 boards for an almost 
acceptable $350 (I personally find an extra $100 on top of a D2Plug 
price tag to be worth it for ATX form factor, extra PCI/PCIe slots and 
an extra gigabit ethernst port), but you first have to have a $900 dev 
kit (which includes a mobo and a year's worth of support). Having a 
higher speed dual core processor would be great.

> I will build the SAS/SATA controller as mPCe card which  mean,  you  can
> use the same board as Router with MANY real 10/100/1000 Mbit ports
>
> Want more?  OK, use one SATA port for an DVD-Writer, the second  with  a
> 2"5 SATA drive.  Then attach to one PCIe 4x port  a  Graphic  controller
> and the second PCIe 4x split into four PCIe  1x  and  attach  a  USB 3.0
> controller with 2 ports... then there are 3 PCIe 1x left...

Won't the GPU suck up an unreasonable amount of power? What are you 
planning to use?

Gordan



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