[Arm-netbook] 9nov11: progress on allwinner A10

[Gordan Bobic]

On 11/11/2011 12:09 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 11:36 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
> <luke.leighton at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> On Fri, Nov 11, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Gordan Bobic<gordan at bobich.net>  wrote:
>>> On 11/11/2011 10:50 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>>>>
>>>> oh my goodness me.  our little factory said they couldn't do 32gb NAND
>>>> for $100, but would 16gb be ok?  hum i've asked them to do a quick
>>>> breakdown so we can work out options :)
>>>
>>> Is that for the whole board or just for the NAND?
>>>
>>> A 32GB SD card is less than half the $100, so I'm guessing for the whole
>>> board.
>>
>>   *lol*
>>
>>> What kind of write IOPS performance could one expect from it on LogFS
>>> or UBIFS? What is the write-endurance of the chips?
>>
>>   let me find out what they can get hold of, at a reasonable cost,
>> first, ok?  remember that there's a bunch of bargain-basement ICs
>> flooded the market.
>
>   achh, whoops, i forgot that thailand is underwater.
>
>   ok i meant: you remember those industrial flea-markets i mentioned 8
> months back (ok, allow me to recap: these buildings are 7 storeys
> high, about the size of a football pitch per floor, stuffed on each
> level with different components.  you want 5,000 NAND ICs? noo
> problem, buy them cash, there and then, even go round bargaining one
> person against another if you really want to and have the time - very
> much like an antiques market in the UK, only 100x bigger).
>
>   add to that the crash in prices caused by the allwinner itself
> resulting in mass-cancellation of orders and there's an opportunity to
> get ultra-low prices with, it has to be said, a quite random selection
> of kit.
>
>   the alternative is that we have someone go over there who has an
> edietic memory and can memorise like a hundred datasheets.
>
>   so, bottom line is: can we please go with what they can get hold of,
> easily and cheaply for the first lot, and see what happens?
> alternatively, if someone knows a simple way for them to identify
> correctly really good stuff, please do speak up, so that i can pass it
> on.  they _should_ know, but it's worth checking.

I still think that putting NAND on for the sake of putting NAND on just 
because it's cheap is a false economy. Given it isn't replaceable, it 
would have to, IMO, offer very substantial performance benefits compared 
to the easily replaceable alternatives (i.e. SD/uSD card).

Gordan