ARM Motherboards

[stuffme]

I wonder why any of these SBC manufacturers don't make dual or quad core a9/a15 arm based boards with 4, 6 and 8 sata port configurations? I guess they don't seems to realize how big market they are missing out? All those DIY NAS builders out there waiting for truly low power light weight NAS solution.

[mattkosem]

I wonder why any of these SBC manufacturers don't make dual or quad core a9/a15 arm based boards with 4, 6 and 8 sata port configurations? I guess they don't seems to realize how big market they are missing out? All those DIY NAS builders out there waiting for truly low power light weight NAS solution.

I'm right there with ya on that. I think it has (mostly) to do with the available connectivity options on most of the available SOCs. Most of them don't have PCIE, and the ones that do usually have a tiny number of lanes and/or crappy slow CPUs. USB is the most you get in most cases and, until recently it was 2.0 spec. And, to make matters worse, the very same USB controller that powers the ports is also home to the Ethernet controller and other stuff.

Once we start getting SOCs (and, more excitingly, non-SOCs) that aren't targeted at phones the market should really open up.

--Matt

[lizardmech]

I like my odrioid-xu, replaced an old desktop with it and it's nice and fast even with a full linux desktop. I just wish could work out how to overclock it, I'm not experienced enough at making custom kernels.

[kuroikenshi]

have you got probe heat readings with that heatsink on?

that bad boy should be able to allow 2.00Ghz,

maybe the boys over at XDA have already have a kernel to suit exynos 5 Octa that would require little mod to none to get the desired result.

**edit, otherwise you can do some hard mods at the back of the pc, since there is an Overvolt module you might be able to tap into.

Maybe vince kingping might be able to help, if you can get him to give you some of his precious time that is.

[lizardmech]

Cooling isn't that great due to PoP chip design, having a ram module between the die and heatsink is like intel haswell TIM. With air cooling you can never get much bellow 70c under load. You need an odroid specific kernel to boot linux so I would have to build that one rather than using one from XDA. I actually found a voltage and clockspeed table in the kernel sources but I don't understand how these SoCs generate their clock speed and if it has to be multiples of 200mhz etc.

[kuroikenshi]

have you tried running android 4.xx on it?

[lizardmech]

have you tried running android 4.xx on it?

Yeah it runs both linux and android 4.2, android overclocking programs still appear to rely on the kernel for selecting clockspeeds though.

[stuffme]

I have also been looking into HTPC with these SBC boards, but the only thing that is stopping me to jump in is that you cannot calibrate your colors with i1display pro colorimeter. Even though you can install linux one of these arm soc boards, you need the software to support those architectures also. I guess I'll have to x86 one more time and buy haswell or baytrail basec NUc or something.

Would be nice to be able to watch 1080p mkv videos only like 2w power consumption. Now you are limited to x86 and the lowest you can do is like 30w.

[kl0012]

Would be nice to be able to watch 1080p mkv videos only like 2w power consumption. Now you are limited to x86 and the lowest you can do is like 30w.

Not sure where you get these numbers from? Haswell NUC consumes under 25W at full load (I guess it would be ~10W for video). Baytrail should consume much less. But with Gen8 graphics you're getting proper 24p frame rate, good postprocessing features and hardware encoder (not sure if these features are available with arm chips)
http://missingremote.com/review/intel-nuc-kit-d54250wyk

[mattkosem]

I have also been looking into HTPC with these SBC boards, but the only thing that is stopping me to jump in is that you cannot calibrate your colors with i1display pro colorimeter. Even though you can install linux one of these arm soc boards, you need the software to support those architectures also.

I see at least one open source Linux app that supports that hardware. Using it in arm Linux is just a compile away. I even see arm packages for it on some distros.

http://dispcalgui.hoech.net

--Matt

[jogshy]

AMD's Opteron A1100 8-core ARM A57 is almost ready ...




Now waiting for Tegra K1 devkit



A step forward to my 100W 64-core 5Ghz / 5TFLOPS+ APU desktop dream

[bearcatrp]

I'll wait for the dual or quad socket boards to come out with a 16 core per chip. Need a new cruncher.

[naokaji]

AMD's Opteron A1100 8-core ARM A57 is almost ready ...

Looks like the perfect basis for a homebuilt NAS...

[mattkosem]

AMD's Opteron A1100 8-core ARM A57 is almost ready ...

Woot! Can't wait!

[jogshy]

Tegra K1 devboard available for only 192$ !

Tegra K1 Quad Core A15 SoC with 192 Kepler GPU cores, 2Gb DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA, eMMC/SD card, mini-PCIE, GigaLAN, audio.
Runs Ubuntu Linux, OpenGL 4.4, CUDA 6:



https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1

[NEOAethyr]

@jogshy
Not bad, a good find there .

Not perfect though, could use more usb ports, scrap the vga and the internal connectors.
Needs 2x micro sd cards.
Otherwise it's pretty nice looking, that tegra chip is awesome.

Peeps are saying it's a 5w tdp for that chip.
That is the chip I want in my phone lol .

[lizardmech]

Tegra K1 devboard available for only 192$ !

Tegra K1 Quad Core A15 SoC with 192 Kepler GPU cores, 2Gb DDR3, USB 3.0, SATA, eMMC/SD card, mini-PCIE, GigaLAN, audio.
Runs Ubuntu Linux, OpenGL 4.4, CUDA 6:



https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1

This looks quite good, a shame they went with 2gb of ram though, that's the biggest limitation I have with my odriod-xu. Can you boot these with a generic kernel or does it need a special tegra one?

[jogshy]

Yep, I couldn't live with only 2Gb ... but probably the Denver dual-core 64bits version is on the way soon with 4Gb, according to this:



and, yep, I think it uses a specially-optimized kernel:

https://developer.nvidia.com/linux-tegra-rel-19

NVIDIA should make a desktop 100W version of that asap

[Andrew LB]

You all new this was coming.. and here it is! A water cooled Pico-Itx system!

[alpha0ne]

^ VERY Sexy !!

[Darakian]

So, which board is that? +1 to the sexy

[mattkosem]

Looks like an VIA EPIA PX-10000. Interesting project, but not sure it has anything to do with arm boards.

--Matt

[jogshy]

Does really need an ARM Soc to be watercooled?

[alpha0ne]

Does really need an ARM Soc to be watercooled?

Since when has 'need' ever come into the equation @ XS

[mattkosem]

Does really need an ARM Soc to be watercooled?

It's not an ARM board as far as I can tell. I guess only time will tell, though.

--Matt