[Arm-dev] List of 64-bit hardware for testing?

[Robert Moskowitz]

The features that have attracted me to ARMv7 are:

1) Power consumption

My ROI on power savings was 15 mo. with the Cubieboards over my current 
Intel SFF boxes.  And along with that is lower UPS requirements and 
heating.  I have 5 boards, plus drives powered from one USB power supply.

2) Board size

With boards the same or smaller than a 25" drive, I truly have an 
appliance that can be placed anywhere.

Now there are few ARMv7 boards that meet my exacting requirements: 1 or 
2 MB ram (depending on appl), 2+ core, and SATA interface.

If all I have is USB, then I get the USB/SATA adapter cost and powering 
thrown into the equation.  Also a board that has been moved into the 
mainline kernel and distro support.  RPi stands out as being a pain.  
4-port LAN features require kernel customization.

I was talking with one manufacture that was meeting my main req at 
$15/board.  But they went for a mass-market target and dropped the DIY 
one.  I will be talking to them again next month. But their board is not 
in the general sunxi effort.  Yet.

On 12/25/2015 01:33 AM, Gordan Bobic wrote:
> The big problems I have with the majority of the development boards are:
>
> 1) Memory
> On 32-bit ARM, the RAM was always limited to 4GB, which would be find 
> if there were a significant number of devices available that ship with 
> 4GB of RAM (minus the various necessary memory holes). But that simply 
> isn't the case. I can think of hundreds of devices with <= 1GB of RAM. 
> I can think of only about 4 with 3-4GB of RAM (of which at least 2 are 
> deprecated and unavailable), including ARMv8 which is not limited to 
> 4GB. And two of those four are laptops.
>
> 2) Memory Type
> We've been being told since forever that the main reason why ARM 
> devices don't come with DIMM sockets is because they are 32-bit and 
> DIMMs have 64 data lines. Well, with ARMv8 we have those 64 data 
> lines, and yet there are precious few devices available featuring DIMM 
> sockets for memory. There are in fact probably more dev boards in 
> SODIMM form factor than there are those featuring DIMM memory sockets.
>
> 3) Board Form Factor
> There are painfully few ARM boards in *TX form factor. Off the top of 
> my head I can think of a total of 5, of which one is positively 
> ancient and probably no longer available (Atmel, IIRC), one is 
> deprecated, the manufacturer of the 3rd appears to have gone bust, one 
> is on the underpowered side (VIA APC) and the 5th is exorbitantly 
> expensive (at €800 there is no incentive at all to buy an ARM board 
> instead of a much more powerful, more fully featured and better 
> supported Xeon board).
>
> Worse, these variously deficient devices aren't exactly cheap, either 
> (well, apart from the Raspberry Pis). I find the lack of supply of 
> boards with sensible features quite thoroughly baffling, especially 
> since the rock bottom features (if they cut any more corners they'd be 
> perfect spheres) don't match the relatively high prices.
>
> Instead of leveraging decades of industry standardization on the 
> basics such as memory sockets, form factor (including power supplies), 
> almost every ARM board manufacturer seems to be intent on reinventing 
> their own wheels, and doing a pretty poor job of it, even though these 
> problems have been thoroughly solved for decades.
>
> Not that I think any manufacturers are listening...
>
> Gordan
>
> On 24/12/15 21:20, Robert Moskowitz wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 12/23/2015 07:45 PM, miniNodes Info wrote:
>>> The Lenovator HiKey board Jim mentioned can be found here:
>>> http://www.lenovator.com/product/90.html That is a 2gb RAM, 8gb eMMC,
>>> 8-core ARM64 board.
>>
>> No sata for all that power.
>> And draws a lot more power too.
>>
>> I will continue to wait to see what the Cubietruck plus will be and how
>> much.  They put out the blog on it back in July.  And then Hans will
>> have to get one to make the uboot for it...
>>
>>
>>>   They also offer a 1gb RAM version as well:
>>> <http://www.lenovator.com/product/86.html>http://www.lenovator.com/product/86.html 
>>>
>>>
>>> Also worth mentioning, the Qualcomm Dragonboard 410c finally has been
>>> restocked and has availability now, located here:
>>> https://www.arrow.com/en/products/dragonboard410c/arrow-development-tools#page-1 
>>>
>>
>> Even less in terms of interfaces.
>>
>>>
>>> The URL for the PINE64 board is simply
>>> <http://pine64.com>http://pine64.com.  That product is still being
>>> developed and funded via Kickstarter, so there is no general
>>> availability on that one quite yet.
>>
>> So, for now, I will stay with the armv7.
>
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