[Arm-netbook] Anyone here made a "TV computer"?

[Baybal Ni]

Tada -> http://www.allwinnertech.com/index.html

On 7 November 2011 09:20, Bari Ari <bari at onelabs.com> wrote:
> Am I missing something here or is the Allwinner A10 ARM SOC just another
> ARM SOC design that has no public docs, and with just another board
> design that green engineers are learning from?
>
> What are the problems with doing a respin of the Freescale IMX53QSB?
> http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB
>
> or the BeagleBone?
> http://beagleboard.org/bone
>> The BeagleBone uses a TI AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8-based microprocessor.
>> Announced on Oct 31, 2011, the main processor is available for as
>> little as $5, uses a 0.8mm ball-grid array and standard DDR2 memory,
>> making this board easier to clone than other BeagleBoard designs.
> TI AM3358 ARM Cortex-A8
> http://www.ti.com/product/am3358
>
> Are the docs not publicly available? Are the devices priced to high or
> not readily available? Open software support also appears to be
> available except for the GPU. Is this not the case?
>
> I'm just trying to find out what is actually missing from all these ARM
> SOC's.
>
> I enjoy science fiction as much as the next guy but I'm trying to stick
> with science facts here so less time is wasted on supporting future open
> ARM efforts.
>
> -Bari
>
> On 11/07/2011 06:47 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>> On Mon, Nov 7, 2011 at 2:16 AM, Bari Ari<bari at onelabs.com>  wrote:
>>> What exactly is the reference design? A tablet or??
>>   don't know - usually they have "everything including the kitchen
>> sink".  i know that the little factory in china have obtained the
>> reference design, but they are incredibly busy.  also it doesn't help
>> that the "Great Firewall of China" is in the way (looovely).
>>
>>> Why don't we get the hardware specs and provide better CAD files to the
>>> companies making boards with them.
>>   because they're only available under NDA from the SoC manufacturers,
>> who are at first somewhat shocked at the factory's complete lack of
>> software expertise and then "resigned" to dealing with the situation
>> by entirely developing a complete design - all on their own and
>> *including* the complete software package.
>>
>>   this is the situation i'm working to break them free from, by putting
>> them in touch with Free Software Developers.
>>
>>   this is the situation i'm working to break them free from, by putting
>> them in touch with Free Software Developers.
>>
>>
>>
>>   exactly why, when this situation only *prevents* the SoC
>> manufacturers from selling their own SoCs, isn't clear.  i _have_ been
>> explaining this to them, but even the CEOs of these SoC companies in
>> China aren't actually allowed to make .. y'know... something called
>> "decisions"!
>>
>>   they are effectively puppets, answering to their "superiors" (the
>> money people), who flatly refuse to let them do anything other than
>> what they have been dictated and authorised to do.
>>
>>   so it is a cultural thing.
>>
>>   we just have to work with the system as it is, for now, and show them
>> a better way, later.
>>
>>
>>> Part of the problem is inexperienced
>>> hardware 'engineers' generating some pretty awful boards that almost
>>> work.
>>   yes.  that's usually the smaller factories, and they usually succeed
>> only with things under 400mhz.  that's why that Skytone Alpha 400 took
>> off so well: Ingenic sold something like 25 million jz4740 CPUs before
>> MIPs caught up with them and went "oi! license! naoooww, sunshine" :)
>>
>>
>>    luckily, these guys in the little factory i have access to aren't
>> inexperienced [they just don't have any software expertise].  my
>> friend adam however can tell you some interesting stories about the
>> continuous cycle of experimentation he's witnessed :)
>>
>>
>>> Why put all this software effort into buggy hardware when we could
>>> also provide board stuffers with solid design files?
>>   there is more than one way to skin a cat, bari.  there is
>> "experienced design" and then there is "rapid incremental design".
>> there's a beautiful description in "A Young Lady's Illustrated
>> Primer", aka "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson, in which
>> nanotechnology is used to seek out the missing copy of the Primer
>> (ultra-high-grade nanotechnology book).
>>
>>   Dr X's nanotes are varied, often fail, but are so numerous that it is
>> obvious that they are designed by genetic algorithms and by
>> trial-and-error.
>>
>>   the Neo-Victorians nanotes are clearly "engineered".  clinical,
>> calculated - and yet also fixed and rigid.
>>
>>   we _know_ that evolution works, and we know that when evolutionary
>> algorithms are put into a fast spin cycle, the results are staggering.
>>
>> read Ian Macleod's sci-fi books for references to the "Fast Folk",
>> where people are run inside "nanotech soup computers" that run 1000s
>> to 10s of 1000s of times faster than "real time".  eventually, they
>> evolve into a civilisation that discovers how to manipulate the
>> universe so that they can break out of the box.  the scientists,
>> knowing when roughly this will happen, nuke the box each time
>> destroying the nanotech computer "soup" before the civilisation within
>> it can reach that point (singularity).  civilisation genocide,
>> described casually "in passing" in this way, in later books, because
>> an entire book was dedicated to the subject some years ago (when they
>> _didn't_ nuke the nanotech civilisation and it broke free), earlier in
>> the series.
>>
>>   and, in china, the factory PCB costs are cheap.  they can operate on
>> a fast spin-cycle.
>>
>>   it's messy but _one_ of them - like brownian motion - occasionally
>> pops to the surface.  the point of keeping an eye on all these
>> factories is to catch the one that actually does a decent job,
>> snapshot their designs and put them into mass-production *before*
>> brownian motion sucks them back down, randomly, into the genetic soup.
>>
>>   l.
>>
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