[Arm-netbook] The future of EOMA-68

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sat, May 2, 2015 at 5:01 PM, Christopher Havel <laserhawk64 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Luke, I just want to poke in here and thank you for mentioning something --
> I myself was thinking of poking you on the subject of Intel's Bay Trail
> stuff -- now I know :) things are never as simple as one wishes they were...
>
> Oh well, maybe someday we'll get x86 stuff into EOMA68... that *would* be
> huge, IMO -- basically every standard PC (and Mac, now) runs x86... but I
> think I understand why it's not in the cards, yet.

 it'll get there.

> (I hate to ask, because of how dead-dog-slow their stuff is -- but what
> about VIA? Their Esther-core Eden ULV CPU is 3.5w @ 1GHz... of course then
> you stuff in the chipset and the RAM and the everything else, and you're
> probably way over budget, but I thought I'd mention it.)

 correct.  it's not just about the processor: you have to take into
account the support ICs, in this case the southbridge IC (another 2
watts at least), then the 64-bit-wide DDR3 RAM (maybe even
128-bit-wide, i'd have to check) but just the CPU and the southbridge
chip takes you over 5.5 watts... 0.5 watts beyond the external hard
cut-off limit of 5.0 watts.

 it really really is incredibly challenging to pick qualifying SoCs.

l.