[Arm-netbook] [status] eoma68-ic1t

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 9:36 PM, Ken Phillis Jr <kphillisjr at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is an interesting idea, but some more details are needed on the
> SoC. The reason for this is that the IC3118 is missing important
> features like USB OTG, Nand, HDMI/DVI, and Image Decoder.

 it's entirely software-based: that's what it is: it's a hybrid of a
GPU, VPU and CPU.  there are actually two separate threaded parallel
engines with hard-macro-configurable choices on the number of threads
in each engine.

 they also had to cut it down dramatically to get it into the
available space for a 55nm die with only 210 QFP pins.  so it was more
a matter of "can we fit this hard macro for a NAND controller in?  no,
so it's out".  they do however have two MMC interfaces, one is SD 2.0
eMMC compliant and 8-bit which is great.

so it is basically suited to being a high-speed embedded
micro-controller, and as a low-end android option.

> ( There is
> also mention that this chip can only decode 480p via software ).

 ah thank you for catching that.

> There
> is another chip that features all of this and more, but I do not see
> as much details and that is the IC3228.

 yes - the IC3118 is a precursor which with enough sales allows them
to jump-start the next chip.

> Also as a note, I do note that both chips use the same cores ( A
> custom RISC core with 150 instructions )

as i understand it, it's more than that (ok if you add the VPU
extensions and GPU extensions)

> On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 8:34 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
> <lkcl at lkcl.net> wrote:
>> cpu cards being like buses, you wait for ages then 3 come along at
>> once.  i have been in touch with icubecorp, they have that awesome
>> hybrid VPU/GPU/CPU core, and they decided to do a sub-$2.50 55nm
>> 210-pin QFP out of it, running at 400mhz but quad-threaded.  it's
>> capable (on its own) of 720p video decode and 3D graphics *entirely*
>> in software.  the down-side is that this revision was designed as a
>> low-entry android or embedded controller IC, so can only do up to
>> 512mb RAM.  they can do a respin but only with a large enough order.
>>
>> this will be one of the very first FSF-Endorseable CPU Cards and it
>> will be the precursor to a more powerful version which we will do
>> later.  the BOM is something staggering like only $12 and that's
>> including a SMC9514 USB-Ethernet Hub.  it is juuuust about EOMA68
>> compliant and the only extra interface will be an SD/MMC card.  it
>> will boot from SPI NOR Flash so that will be deliberately very small
>> (enough to hold a bootloader).
>>
>> l.
>>
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