[Arm-netbook] Genesi lowered the prices!

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Alain Williams <addw at phcomp.co.uk> wrote:

> I'd happily pay another $10 for an extra 512MB RAM - firefox tends to be hungry.

they designed it as a one-shot deal, single motherboard.  you're SOOL:
you'd have to place a special order for 10k units in order to get
reasonable pricing.  (or perhaps pay the NREs yourself.  or, worse,
pay someone to lift the existing DDR with a hot iron and put down new
ones. _if_ the board can take them.)

 this type of design limitation is extremely common, and it's why i've
been advocating a "common standard" interface (conceptually similar to
PCI cards but for actual processors+memory) where you'd quite
literally be able to buy off-the-shelf processor cards (with more
memory, perhaps, or even a completely different processor) and just...
shove it into any compliant chassis.

 specialist (high-end) manufacturers could then focus on producing
volume processor cards, buyers could get the bulk purchasing power
from much more specialist requests (1gb RAM with a 500mhz CPU for
example!), and the chassis manufacturers, many of whom cannot cope
with BGA grid ICs below 0.8mm, can focus on design of great products
_without_ having to incur $20k to $100k 6 to 12 layer CPU board costs.

 l.