[Arm-netbook] t-firefly RK3399 in crowdfunding

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On 12/5/16, Mike Leimon <leimon at gmail.com> wrote:
> Since as I understand it, the people at t-firefly have been pretty helpful
> towards getting the RK3288 EOMA board put together, I figured I would point
> out that they have just launched a crowdfunding campaign to build a RK3399
> development board.

 yeah i saw that

> I'm not sure if that rk3399 processor would be able to work for a future
> EOMA68 design however, if it did, it would bring some cool advantages. It
> looks like it supports USB 3.0, it is a 64-bit processor, and like the
> RK3288, it can support 4 GB of memory.

 yes.  here's the key advantage of the RK3288 over the RK3399 right
now: it's been around longer.  i'm just writing up an update at the
moment, but basically the fact that the RK3288 has been around for
nearly two years means that there's such a stupid amount of "metoo
HOWTOs" out there it's actually decreasing the informational
signal-to-noise ratio on setting up an RK3288-based system.

 it's got mainline u-boot support, it's got mainline linux kernel
support, it's got nearly a dozen different products out there, it's
got PCB CAD files that have "accidentally" made their way onto the
internet and can be picked up for a whopping $24 on taobao.com, it's
got the Technical Reference Manual available online... all without an
NDA.

 now, whilst it would be *really nice* to do an RK3399 board, although
USB3 would be a nice-to-have, the performance/watt figures for the
arm64 cores are a whopping FIFTEEN PERCENT lower than for the 32-bit
ones right now.

 so my feeling is, it would be a good idea to wait a year, see how
things progress with the RK3399, see if it becomes as popular, and in
the meantime keep a lookout for both entirely libre processors as well
as some that can handle 8GB of RAM.

l.