[Community] About the status

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 08.06.2013 um 15:17 schrieb Bob Ham:

> On Sat, 2013-06-08 at 14:21 +0200, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:
> 
>> And the Vivaldi tablet appears to make slow progress.
>> But I still did not get what the benefit of an exchangeable CPU
>> module may be and why they limit themselves to 68 pins of
>> a PCMICA form factor.
> 
> There seems to be some confusion here.  To quote the blog post,
> regarding the EOMA68 device shown in the video:
> 
>  "we've ended developing what is a pretty snazzy little hardware
> tinkerer's device as well which we plan to make available separately
> from the tablet devices"
> 
> The video shows an EOMA68 CPU card; there's nothing to say that the EOMA
> standard will be used by the Vivaldi tablet.  I would expect that the
> Vivaldi tablet simply makes use of the same SoC as that particular CPU
> card: the Allwinner A10.

... making it less powerful than our GTA04 based 7004 prototype.

And I have read some discussion about squeezing more useful signals
on the 68 pins.

My main point is that we (the Openphoenux community) already
posesses such a module (the GTA04 with B2B connectors) and nobody
is using them intensively (neither for tinkering nor something else).

So my concern is that the EOMA modules will also not be used widely
either.

Or if they are used widely, I would be happy to learn what there
is different making them more attractive. We all could use this
knowledge to improve the GTA0x and broaden the reach of this
community.

But for smartphone devices EOMA is too big anyways.

> 
>> They argue that you can replace the CPU in 1 or 2 years and
>> keep the display. But usually you rarely want to stick with
>> your older display for a significantly higher performance CPU.
> 
> I find this odd given that the GTA04 was developed to make use of the
> same display as the GTA02, which was 4 years old when the GTA04A4 was
> released.

Well, the display of the GTA01/02 was far ahead of the 2440/Glamo and was
only used better by the OMAP3. This was the main reason why the display
was kept the same. But we all know that even back then, there were ideas
about using even better/bigger displays.

> 
> Discarding usable technology is an ecological concern.  The development
> of systems that are designed to allow reusing of components is a great
> advance that should be supported.
> 
>> And at 200 EUR (which I don't believe they will achieve) it
>> is easier swapping the whole device...
> 
> Indeed, it is easier to destroy the environment than to maintain it.

Yes, good point.

But you still have to throw away or recycle EOMA modules with additional
components you wouldn't need when buying a fully integrated new device.

So you just keep the display and win a useless CPU module. If you
replace the whole device, you still have one you can give to someone
else because it is still a complete device.

We know this issue from the spare GTA02 boards after replacing with a GTA04.

I think only one or two persons have found some use for it. And others
explicitly decided not to upgrade their GTA02 because they don't want
to own a useless GTA02 board.

Nikolaus