[Arm-netbook] ARM system with a mini-PCIe slot

[luke.leighton]

On Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 4:06 PM, Stefan Monnier
<monnier at iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> Are there ARM systems that come with a mini-PCIe slot?

 look for an iMX6 (iMX6QSB), some boards using the Tegra3, lots of the
marvell SoCs have one (OpenRD Ultimate), the Exynos5 (arndaleboard,
armbrix) - there's quite a few.

 oh, and yes, arokux noticed that AM3874-based system (the TI Sitara).
 that was designed by TI as a full 1080p Video-Conferencing system, so
it can handle both HD compression *and* playback, simultaneously.

 it's a MONSTER basically :)  but, weirdly, its main CPU is a 1.2ghz
ARM Cortex A8, but it's surrounded by *two* 32-bit DDR3 1666mhz RAM
interfaces (!!!), SATA-II, PCI-Express and god knows what else.

 all in all it's a pretty odd, very powerful chip that would make a
_fantastic_ EOMA68 CPU Card (yeeeees, i have a 95%-completed set of
schematics and PCB layouuut) but the cost of the SoC is just....
phenomenally high.  pricing for 1k units of an EOMA68-AM3874 would be
close to $250, basically.

 oh, and the bloody annoying thing about it is: the HDMI interface
requires firmware (proprietary firmware) in order to function.  i
think basically it was designed (or commissioned) for operating in
secure environments.

l.