[Arm-netbook] [status] eoma68-ic1t

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

cpu cards being like buses, you wait for ages then 3 come along at
once. i have been in touch with icubecorp, they have that awesome
hybrid VPU/GPU/CPU core, and they decided to do a sub-$2.50 55nm
210-pin QFP out of it, running at 400mhz but quad-threaded. it's
capable (on its own) of 720p video decode and 3D graphics *entirely*
in software. the down-side is that this revision was designed as a
low-entry android or embedded controller IC, so can only do up to
512mb RAM. they can do a respin but only with a large enough order.

this will be one of the very first FSF-Endorseable CPU Cards and it
will be the precursor to a more powerful version which we will do
later. the BOM is something staggering like only $12 and that's
including a SMC9514 USB-Ethernet Hub. it is juuuust about EOMA68
compliant and the only extra interface will be an SD/MMC card. it
will boot from SPI NOR Flash so that will be deliberately very small
(enough to hold a bootloader).

l.

[Ken Phillis Jr]

This is an interesting idea, but some more details are needed on the
SoC. The reason for this is that the IC3118 is missing important
features like USB OTG, Nand, HDMI/DVI, and Image Decoder. ( There is
also mention that this chip can only decode 480p via software ). There
is another chip that features all of this and more, but I do not see
as much details and that is the IC3228.

Also as a note, I do note that both chips use the same cores ( A
custom RISC core with 150 instructions )

On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 8:34 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
cpu cards being like buses, you wait for ages then 3 come along at
once. i have been in touch with icubecorp, they have that awesome
hybrid VPU/GPU/CPU core, and they decided to do a sub-$2.50 55nm
210-pin QFP out of it, running at 400mhz but quad-threaded. it's
capable (on its own) of 720p video decode and 3D graphics *entirely*
in software. the down-side is that this revision was designed as a
low-entry android or embedded controller IC, so can only do up to
512mb RAM. they can do a respin but only with a large enough order.
this will be one of the very first FSF-Endorseable CPU Cards and it
will be the precursor to a more powerful version which we will do
later. the BOM is something staggering like only $12 and that's
including a SMC9514 USB-Ethernet Hub. it is juuuust about EOMA68
compliant and the only extra interface will be an SD/MMC card. it
will boot from SPI NOR Flash so that will be deliberately very small
(enough to hold a bootloader).
l.
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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by Ken Phillis Jr
This is an interesting idea, but some more details are needed on the
SoC. The reason for this is that the IC3118 is missing important
features like USB OTG, Nand, HDMI/DVI, and Image Decoder.

it's entirely software-based: that's what it is: it's a hybrid of a
GPU, VPU and CPU. there are actually two separate threaded parallel
engines with hard-macro-configurable choices on the number of threads
in each engine.

they also had to cut it down dramatically to get it into the
available space for a 55nm die with only 210 QFP pins. so it was more
a matter of "can we fit this hard macro for a NAND controller in? no,
so it's out". they do however have two MMC interfaces, one is SD 2.0
eMMC compliant and 8-bit which is great.

so it is basically suited to being a high-speed embedded
micro-controller, and as a low-end android option.

Post by Ken Phillis Jr
( There is
also mention that this chip can only decode 480p via software ).

ah thank you for catching that.

Post by Ken Phillis Jr
There
is another chip that features all of this and more, but I do not see
as much details and that is the IC3228.

yes - the IC3118 is a precursor which with enough sales allows them
to jump-start the next chip.

Post by Ken Phillis Jr
Also as a note, I do note that both chips use the same cores ( A
custom RISC core with 150 instructions )

as i understand it, it's more than that (ok if you add the VPU
extensions and GPU extensions)

Post by Ken Phillis Jr
On Mon, Jun 9, 2014 at 8:34 AM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
cpu cards being like buses, you wait for ages then 3 come along at
once. i have been in touch with icubecorp, they have that awesome
hybrid VPU/GPU/CPU core, and they decided to do a sub-$2.50 55nm
210-pin QFP out of it, running at 400mhz but quad-threaded. it's
capable (on its own) of 720p video decode and 3D graphics *entirely*
in software. the down-side is that this revision was designed as a
low-entry android or embedded controller IC, so can only do up to
512mb RAM. they can do a respin but only with a large enough order.
this will be one of the very first FSF-Endorseable CPU Cards and it
will be the precursor to a more powerful version which we will do
later. the BOM is something staggering like only $12 and that's
including a SMC9514 USB-Ethernet Hub. it is juuuust about EOMA68
compliant and the only extra interface will be an SD/MMC card. it
will boot from SPI NOR Flash so that will be deliberately very small
(enough to hold a bootloader).
l.
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