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

[Bari Ari]

On 05/05/2012 12:58 AM, krasi gichev wrote:
> Why don't you check out some other SoCs from this market? Like
> Rockchip RK3066 - it is dual core A9, higher clock, and better GPU. At
> the end, A10 is single core, 1GHz - as you say 13" display, this
> probably will be 1366 x 768 resolution. It will put a lot of load on
> the GPU too. Multicore (4x) in RK30xx will be better suited to this
> task. As far as I remember, it must be around $15 USD.
>
> About availability - I think that "for mass production" you can get
> any chip you like. But it will be hard to obtain some chips if you
> want to take 10 or 50 pcs only.
One problem with the Rockchip is the NDA only sharing of the GPL Linux 
support. It's clearly in violation of the GPL but thats what has been 
going on for quite a while. Has anyone posted an open kernel tree lately?

Is there anything other than this?
http://gitorious.org/rockchip-android

>
> Going up in the price range, you can check the OMAPs from TI -
> OMAP4430/4460 are pretty powerful chips, perfect open source support,
> used in several consumer products already using it (Archos, Kindle,
> PandaBoard, etc.). Good think about it is that it comes in
> Package-on-package variant where DRAM is "glued" on top of the CPU and
> you get them both in one package. Older OMAP3530 also had PoP variant,
> and it was even designed with greater pitch between balls of the
> package so it was easy to make pcb with it. But this new one are
> targeted as ultra mobile devices and the goal of TI was to make the
> chip as tiny as possible.
Last time I checked the OMAP4430/446 were rather pricey and just not 
available as discrete POP parts. I was referred to a module maker by the 
TI product manager and the modules were over $100 (closer to $200) each 
in high volume and were really clumsy to work with. What's the point of 
a POP device if you can't buy them and the modules are 10x the footprint 
of the POP device. It made no sense to me and I never found out why they 
just didn't want to exchange money for parts.
>
> Samsung and TI doesn't have Ethernet MAC inside. But it is in the
> range of 1-2 USD to get RTL8150 for example - it is USB Ethernet chip,
> and it contains a PHY inside. For Allwinner (and all other that have
> inbuilt MAC) you still have to add external PHY. Of course, you can
> expect better performance from inbuilt Ethernet, but for this type of
> CPU it does not matter too much. Also, in case of netbook, you will
> almost surely want to include USB hub too - the Allwinner has 1 USB
> host and 1 OTG controller, so totally you get maximum of 2 USB hosts.
> If you place WiFi module over USB (like all current tablets with this
> chip), you end up with only one USB HOST port... If you decide to
> include USB HUB chip, that you can get a combo - USB HUB + USB
> Ethernet (SMSC has some).
The only parts readily available from Samsung are the older arm11 and 
arm9 devices that make for awfully slow netbook. The newer arm cortex-a9 
devices only appear to be available to customers that are interested in 
other than just trading money for parts. Does anyone have a contact at 
Samsung that is the decision maker on who gets shipped parts in exchange 
for money?
>
> Freescale iMX53 is highly integrated too - it has Ethernet. But it is
> still not well supported for Android ICS, and the chip itself is
> limited to 1GHz (and is single core). GPU is probably not so powerful
> too, but it supports dual output very well. Linux (Ubuntu) runs very
> fine with this chip too.
> Newer iMX6 are tempting but too early to know much about them. I know
> that they offer pin-compatilble single, dual and quad core variants. I
> think I read somewhere that GPU was Vivante like in older Rockchips.
>
>
Freescale imx53 is a bit dated. Vivante is in the imx6. Performance is 
subjective but most people seem to want a bit faster device than the 
imx53 in a netbook.

-Bari