Finishing up the hardware

[ible]

ok nice (and thanks).  was worried that small memory here might hurt a CPU upgrade in the future, but that's not the case.

 

[_wb_]

It is still being discussed? Man I really expected 2GB at minimum, even more in future versions.

What about the nand? I could live with 16GB, but 32GB will be much better since we can make use of the debian repos.

How much energy does RAM memory need? I suspect it's not a huge amount compared to all the rest, but keep in mind that RAM is always powered, even in standby mode when the screen and the CPU are effectively consuming zero power, so perhaps the power consumption of the RAM does play a role in the battery life.

And I think 4GB most likely consumes more or less twice as much power as 2GB, which most likely consumes four times as much power as 512MB.

When I use my Pandora, RAM is not really an issue at all (both my Pandoras have 512MB RAM). I can use LibreOffice and Firefox at the same time, and still play games or do whatever.

I think the Pyra should have more RAM than the Pandora, but perhaps 1GB is enough. I'm not sure, but if 2GB just ends up being mostly unused, slightly increasing the power consumption and probably increasing the price, then I'm not even sure if 2GB is a good idea. If we're going to have more than 2GB, then I first want to see a realistic use case for which it is actually useful.

For the eMMC on the other hand, the larger the better. Though I wouldn't make it larger than the optimal GB/euro point: typically the largest available one is more expensive (even per GB) than the second or third largest one.

E.g. when I look here:

http://en.chinaflashmarket.com/pricecenter/emmc

then I get the following prices per GB:

eMMC (MLC):

4GB: 0.5875$

8GB: 0.3875$

16GB: 0.3406$

32GB: 0.3531$

64GB: 0.3906$

(the TLC ones are cheaper, but TLC is less reliable than MLC so I think we should probably use MLC)

This indicates that 16GB is currently at the optimal point (two 16GB eMMCs are cheaper than one 32GB eMMC), but the relative price difference between 16GB and 32GB is not big so I would go for 32GB in this case.

 

[matzesu]

Who is this compani "goldendelico"?? Isnt Global Components near Micheals Place involved??


Or is goldendeloco the company from Nikolaus who makes our board design??


They wrote something on twitter, they had 75 % of the CPU Board ready..

 

[notaz]

Or is goldendeloco the company from Nikolaus who makes our board design??

Yes it's his company.

 

[matzesu]

Ok so whe in good company then

 

[myNewUsername]

Do we know the Pyra will have only 1GiB RAM?

 

[_wb_]

Do we know the Pyra will have only 1GiB RAM?

No. As far as we know, it will be 2GB.

http://dragonbox-pyra.com/specs.html

 

[myNewUsername]

Do we know the Pyra will have only 1GiB RAM?

 
No. As far as we know, it will be 2GB.

http://dragonbox-pyra.com/specs.html

Thanks, it looked like 1GiB in the posts above.

 

[rygD]

I have come to accept 2GB because most people feel that will be enough for everything practical we can throw at the Pyra.  I would still like 4 or 8 to help futureproof it, but I don't know if my ideas warrant having that much.  I think it was Grench that mentioned having a pair of Android VMs running, which isn't too far off from my own interest in VMs, but probably with different OSs.  Is it possible that 2GB might limit resource hungry commercial games we might otherwise be able to play?

As for the grey case, I am pretty sure that was an option in the poll.  I would be as happy with a somewhat dark grey as I would be with black or dark red,  which are somewhat better imo than clear, which I also kinda want (so the obvious solution for me is a translucent dark red for the bottom with case lighting and stone grey like the pic for the body with black for the back of the lid...did someone mention lava? Lets go all the way.).  I wouldn't want a very light grey or white.  It doesn't matter from a functionality standpoint, so as long as it isn't blue I will still get one.

I will probably get it if the only choice is blue, too.

 

[TrashyMG]

I have come to accept 2GB because most people feel that will be enough for everything practical we can throw at the Pyra.  

Even with heavy multi-tasking I've been hard pressed to consume more than 750MBs on the Devboard. 

 

[rygD]

I have come to accept 2GB because most people feel that will be enough for everything practical we can throw at the Pyra.  

Even with heavy multi-tasking I've been hard pressed to consume more than 750MBs on the Devboard. 

What about metasploit (if possible) or VMs and games like I mentioned?  I don't have specific games in mind since the ones I am most interested in either don't run at all, or are nearly unplayable, on x86 Linux boxes.

 

[Ivididiviividi]

It is still being discussed? Man I really expected 2GB at minimum, even more in future versions.

What about the nand? I could live with 16GB, but 32GB will be much better since we can make use of the debian repos.

How much energy does RAM memory need? I suspect it's not a huge amount compared to all the rest, but keep in mind that RAM is always powered, even in standby mode when the screen and the CPU are effectively consuming zero power, so perhaps the power consumption of the RAM does play a role in the battery life.

And I think 4GB most likely consumes more or less twice as much power as 2GB, which most likely consumes four times as much power as 512MB.

When I use my Pandora, RAM is not really an issue at all (both my Pandoras have 512MB RAM). I can use LibreOffice and Firefox at the same time, and still play games or do whatever.

I think the Pyra should have more RAM than the Pandora, but perhaps 1GB is enough. I'm not sure, but if 2GB just ends up being mostly unused, slightly increasing the power consumption and probably increasing the price, then I'm not even sure if 2GB is a good idea. If we're going to have more than 2GB, then I first want to see a realistic use case for which it is actually useful.

For the eMMC on the other hand, the larger the better. Though I wouldn't make it larger than the optimal GB/euro point: typically the largest available one is more expensive (even per GB) than the second or third largest one.

E.g. when I look here:

http://en.chinaflashmarket.com/pricecenter/emmc

then I get the following prices per GB:

eMMC (MLC):

4GB: 0.5875$

8GB: 0.3875$

16GB: 0.3406$

32GB: 0.3531$

64GB: 0.3906$

(the TLC ones are cheaper, but TLC is less reliable than MLC so I think we should probably use MLC)

This indicates that 16GB is currently at the optimal point (two 16GB eMMCs are cheaper than one 32GB eMMC), but the relative price difference between 16GB and 32GB is not big so I would go for 32GB in this case.

Sorry for being so badly informed about the development, but what "eMMC" are we talking about, and why do we need it to be that big? What other memory-related topic have i missed?

I have come to accept 2GB because most people feel that will be enough for everything practical we can throw at the Pyra.

Even with heavy multi-tasking I've been hard pressed to consume more than 750MBs on the Devboard.

What kind of multitasking was that?

 

[Neelix]

Sorry for being so badly informed about the development, but what "eMMC" are we talking about, and why do we need it to be that big? What other memory-related topic have i missed?

He's referring to the internal storage which the OS will be installed to.  Larger internal storage will mean more applications can be installed without having to put them on an SD card.

-Neelix

 

[Ivididiviividi]

Sorry for being so badly informed about the development, but what "eMMC" are we talking about, and why do we need it to be that big? What other memory-related topic have i missed?

 

He's referring to the internal storage which the OS will be installed to.  Larger internal storage will mean more applications can be installed without having to put them on an SD card.


-Neelix

Somehow i forgot that the solution was to keep both the microSD slot and the eMMC.


64M sure is enough for me ^_^

 

[bzar]

64M sure is enough for me ^_^

What will you fit in 64 megabytes?

 

[_wb_]

I have come to accept 2GB because most people feel that will be enough for everything practical we can throw at the Pyra.  

Even with heavy multi-tasking I've been hard pressed to consume more than 750MBs on the Devboard. 

What about metasploit (if possible) or VMs and games like I mentioned?  I don't have specific games in mind since the ones I am most interested in either don't run at all, or are nearly unplayable, on x86 Linux boxes.

The thing with anything emulated (e.g. Windows) or virtualized is that it essentially has a big time overhead and a very small space overhead.

So the bottleneck will always be the processing speed, not the memory. You'll always be emulating things from the past, which was a time when CPUs were slower and everything had less RAM. E.g. Windows XP ran on machines with 64MB of RAM, Windows 98 needed 16MB of RAM (24MB "recommended"), and games or applications from that era normally don't have memory requirements that are much higher than that.

More RAM will not help much at all for emulation. For native games, it could make a difference, but even there I suspect that the bottleneck will usually be in the processing power (the GPU with its limited power) and not in the amount of available memory. The biggest difference would be for native applications like big compile jobs, lots and lots of browser tabs, editing huge images or videos, stuff like that.

Sorry for being so badly informed about the development, but what "eMMC" are we talking about, and why do we need it to be that big? What other memory-related topic have i missed?

He's referring to the internal storage which the OS will be installed to.  Larger internal storage will mean more applications can be installed without having to put them on an SD card.

-Neelix

Exactly. And this is also the thing that should be the most future-proof, because IIRC it's not on the CPU board (which is in principle upgradeable) but it's on the main PCB. If a next-edition Pyra would have an upgraded CPU board (perhaps even an x86 based one with a full OpenGL GPU?), then it would make sense, and it would be possible, to give it more RAM as well to match that. But the internal storage on the eMMC is still going to be what it is.

I immediately want to add though that it's not that important to have a future-proof eMMC, since there's still the µSD slot that can override the eMMC, and also, I imagine that the idea of the "upgradeable CPU board" is mostly something to simplify the design of potential Pyra successors, but it's not really meant to actually upgrade Pyra 1 units to Pyra 2 units: the Pyra 2 would probably still have a slightly updated main PCB as well, with perhaps a faster/better wifi/4G chip, faster SD card slots, and a new eMMC. At least that's my prediction.

 

[thatgui]

I think the Pyra should have more RAM than the Pandora, but perhaps 1GB is enough. I'm not sure, but if 2GB just ends up being mostly unused, slightly increasing the power consumption and probably increasing the price, then I'm not even sure if 2GB is a good idea. If we're going to have more than 2GB, then I first want to see a realistic use case for which it is actually useful.

I think 2GB of RAM should be enough, but maybe there is a reason smartphone manufacturers went up to 3GB of RAM for Android ? 

Somehow i forgot that the solution was to keep both the microSD slot and the eMMC.


64M sure is enough for me ^_^

I doubt ED will choose 64GB, I personally hope for 32GB, but 16 GB are also ok (but if one wants to install a lot of SDK n'stuff, it could get a little crowded on the NAND internal memory)

 

[Kev2442]

32GB seems pretty fine for me as well, especially as I'll be able to plug in various SDs, µSDs, and of course my HDD.

2GB should be enough for heavy browser usage (I often browse with more than a hundred tabs, but I'm likely to change my habits as soon as I get a Pyra) but it's not too much either for the OMAP5.

We should wait for a better SoC to upgrade to 4GB or maybe 8. Some months ago, we heard about ED discussing with AMD about their 64-bit ARM w/ Radeon GPU. That would be nice to have with lots'o RAM. With such power, the world is ours. Mwahahaaa ! :lol:

 

[eric]

Bigger screen, faster processor and backlit keyboard, all in the same sized case!  Everything else is icing on the cake for me.  I can't wait.

 

[mclien]

The parts needed for the eSATA port have been removed from the PCB to save costs and moved onto the adapter.


Without the adaptor, you couldn't use eSATA anyways, so no need to have all the needed parts inside the normal device

except you keep the parts and the solderpoints inside the device, so we can choose to exchange the USB port with the SATA port or find us an old stock of a combined port or salvage it from some brocken notebook...