[Arm-netbook] NuSmartTM 2816

[Gordan Bobic]

lkcl luke wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 4:50 PM, Gordan Bobic <gordan at bobich.net> wrote:
>> Bari Ari wrote:
>>> Any idea of availability and GPL compliance for these, now that they are
>>> showing them off at CES?
>>>
>>>
>>> http://www.nufront.com/en/cpzx/eed31e97-d916-4441-8aa1-6f6413a692f9155.html
>>>
>>> NuSmartTM 2816 is the world’s first chip to integrate a 2GHz dual-core
>>> ARM Cortex-A9 processor, multi-core 2D/3D graphics processor, 64bit
>>> DDR2/3-1066 memory controller, 1080p multi-format video engine, SATA2
>>> controller, USB2, Ethernet, together with general I/O controllers. By
>>> leveraging the multi-layer hybrid interconnection technology,
>>> multi-level fine grain power management technology and advanced 40nm
>>> manufacture process, NuSmartTM 2816 is very energy efficient consuming
>>> less than two watts when running at 1.6GHz.
>>  From what I have seen from these guys so far, they are good at making
>> noise but not very good with coming up with an actual product. They've
>> been showing off laptop prototypes based on these chips for ages, yet
>> you can't actually buy one. By the time they pull their finger out it'll
>> likely be too little too late.
> 
>  pretty much. yeah.  we've offered assistance with software
> development, which is their major holdup, and have been declined.
> they just don't have the expertise, and haven't been able to get it,
> either.
> 
> as it's a chinese company, the structure is that God Says You WILL
> DELIVER, and there is absolutely no arguing.  you CANNOT tell God "i
> failed" or "i need outside help" or "i cannot do what i said i was
> going to do".  you just... can't.
> 
> so, they just have to keep their heads down whilst everyone else
> catches up and produces chips that are becoming better or as good as,
> and definitely price-competitive, with what they had TWO years ago.

Well, that's what happens when you don't have ready-to-ship dev kits and 
you don't open the specs.

Frankly, the whole paradigm is retarded - as OSS developers we are in 
the really monty-pythonesque situation where we are begging the hardware 
vendors to open up the specs so that we could write software for them 
for free (which would save the industry millions).

BTW - anybody know what the situation with spec openness is for MIMO USB 
monitors?

On a conceptually related note, my Compulab SBC-A510 boards arrived. 
Once I have them working I'm going to try to find one of those mini-PCIe 
Volari cards and see how well they work.

For possible future relevance - what SoCs are available that don't have 
a GPU at all? Off the top of my head I can only think of Marvell 
Kirkwood, but there must be more. Perhaps it might be worthwhile 
investigating GPU-less SoCs that have either PCIe (for Volari) or USB 
(for MIMO if that has open specs - but being USB, MIMO should be pretty 
easy to reverse engineer the spec for).

>> I'm also not aware of a single consumer grade product using their chips.
> 
>  hey gordan, you notice they can take standard DIMMs? :)  that's
> because they have a version of the CPU which has a 64-bit-wide data
> bus, which is an acceptable width for standard DIMMs.

Yes, I did notice that. But if the choice is between a great product 
that doesn't exist and a mediocre product that I can buy today I'll 
chose the latter every time.

Gordan