[Arm-netbook] I Have An Possible Chance To Meet An ARM Senior Manager

[luke.leighton]

On Sun, Oct 7, 2012 at 10:31 AM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross
<arm-netbook at aross.me> wrote:
> Sorry, It won't be this week. More like in the next 3 weeks.

 ahh plenty of time to spare getting clued-up in a relaxed, easy-going
fashion then :)

 ok, so... what could keep someone occupied for several hours yet
still engaged at the same time.... well, the experience we had with
Great Wall is a good lead, here.  what happened there was that an
associate of ours - someone who was technically aware but also who
"got" the whole concept much more than just the technical or hardware
aspects - explained a bit about it and then just let them work out
some of the implications for themselves.

 he started off for example by explaining that the CPU Card contains
RAM and NAND and also has interfaces, showed them a mock-up (any
PCMCIA card will do), and then explained that it could go into e.g. a
laptop.  he probably also mentioned the bits about how the CPU Card
can be upgraded at any time, giving the laptop a new lease of life.
and he also mentioned about LCD Monitor products, and also about TV
Cards.

 at which point, the GW people went, "hang on... you said these CPU
Cards are interchangeable, right?  so... we could... take a CPU Card
for a laptop and put it into an LCD product and... turn it into a full
computer, but the users need no expertise to do that?? that's
amazing!"

 if you can get him to "engage" with you, and get him to come up with
ideas and possibilities for himself, that would be the absolute best
result.

 one key point to get across which should get his attention is that
this isn't about doing a few tens or hundreds of thousands of units,
it's about doing tens and hundreds of *millions* of units. i.e. at
some point i fully expect apple - perhaps kicking and screaming - to
be forced by sheer market forces to come out with an EOMA-68 CPU Card
with MacOSX preinstalled on it.

 another point is this: rather than just a tiny computer on an SO-DIMM
which can only be installed (safely) by a technician and so really
only must be sold by specialist computer shops, and that CPU Card only
ever gets swapped out (if ever) say in 3 years time - that's if the
person who buys the product even *knows* that the CPU is replaceable
and upgradeable - this is about people - ordinary people - being able
to walk into hypermarkets and them being able to exchange CPU Cards
**EVERY DAY, SEVERAL TIMES A DAY** across a wide range of mass-volume
electronics products.

 then perhaps if he's technically-aware (software-wise) you could
describe a bit about the problems that the linux kernel developers
face because of SoCs being hard-wired into products, and that by
splitting things down so that on one side is "I/O" and on the other is
"CPUs", the amount of work needed to be done in the software space is
drastically reduced.

 it's just... so deceptively simple.  yep, sure - throw a few
interfaces together, so what, right? :)  but the more you explore it,
the more profound the implications are, the more you can see that
quite literally at every step of the way, everybody's lives are made
so much easier.  just by doing something as simple as splitting the
CPU Card out from the product and calling it a standard.

 i wish i could explain this better!

l.