[Arm-netbook] Selecting the right Soc for out ARM Notebook

[Gordan Bobic]

On 05/05/2012 21:16, moo cow wrote:
> Hi,
>
> If it helps :
>
> Originally I was looking at a nifty little $40 imx53 board genesi was
> bringing out mid-year 2011 .. but they pulled it towards the end of last
> year I’m guessing because both of the rapid pace of SOC developments and
> the smell in the wind of things such as the raspi :

They just finally twigged that an upgrade from iMX51 to iMX53 was going 
to be far too little far too late considering that anybody who knows 
what they are actually getting will also be savvy enough to get an AC100 
instead for less money and twice the CPU.

> But it’s interesting to note the price differential between their
> product lines then (and still now as they are supposedly releasing soon
> iMX6 based updates)
>
> Smarttop - USD 129
> Netbook -USD 199
>
> As I say from recollection it is basically the same board inside both so
> the delta (without considering closeouts, discounts, loss leading etc)
> presumably reflects in some way the incremental cost (for small number
> of sales) of the netbook (10.1” 1024x600, no HD and the usual netbook stuff)

$70 for a keyboard and TFT panel is pretty much spot on. These machines 
use on-board flash for storage. Annoyingly, even though it is based on a 
CF controller, the NAND is soldered on. It would have been much nicer 
(but also a few $ more expensive) to have an actual CF slot.

A big problem I have with devices that have on-board flash that isn't 
removable is that they have built in shelf life because that flash is 
going to wear out most likely before the device outlives it's 
usefulness, especially if it is based on cheap MMC with questionable 
wear leveling and massive write amplification.

Gordan