Future of the CPU board?

[ToastBucket]

Now that we can see the Pyra on the horizon (hello little guy) has anyone put any real thought into the next version of the CPU board? Unfortunately now that we’re nearing the end of the initial development of the Pyra, the OMAP5 is pretty dated.

Personally I think an iMX8M based CPU board would be a really good way to go. It’s a new SoC with some front running technology onboard and it’s honestly some damn good silicon. Great for future-proofing the Pyra and making it a real contender against some of the newer devices. Not to mention the iMX series base BSP is smooooth like butter it would just be a treat to bring up compared to TI platforms.

Really my main concern with it would be battery life as I’m not sure how the 8M compares to the 5432, haven’t read alllll the docs yet

What are you guys wanting to see for next gen CPU boards?

 

[Linux-SWAT]

No, the OMAP5 isn't "pretty dated", it's one of the best 32 bit ARM CPU.

 

[docbroke]

No, the OMAP5 isn't "pretty dated", it's one of the best 32 bit ARM CPU.

I would say OMAP5 is the best OMAP produced by Texas Insruments, and it will remain that way forever , but it is still dated.

 

[TrashyMG]

Well it's pretty dated, It's definitely a big boost compared to the Pandora for sure and will be a good platform. The biggest issue is if people don't buy the Pyra as is, there won't be a future CPU Board.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Anything older than 6 months is dated with that kind of reasoning.

 

[Binky]

My Pandora is terribly dated.

That doesn't make it any less useful, and of the electronic devices I own, it's still my favourite.

In fact, of all the improvements the Pyra is set to bring, the processor upgrade is probably the least exciting part. The better battery, better non-volatile memory, better display, better speakers, better leopard, better case, etc are all more significant.

Big CPUs are great, but I'm not going to be raytracing on my palmtop. Websites that depend on half a gig of javascript are rarely worth a second look anyway. Often, they aren't even worth a first look.

 

[elvissteinjr]

That iMX8M has been brought up multiple times as it likely ticks enough boxes to actually an usable SoC. The thing is that apart from having more modern APIs and architecture available on it, the actual performance boost would be rather small or it might even be slower depending on the application running (we can argue about DMIPS being useless, but the A15 has a way bigger number there to an extend that concerns me).

Throwing away the OMAP5 will not happen. The iMX8M seems to be no real upgrade either, though. I don't know who'd be in the market for such a CPU board.

 

[ThinkPad]

Anything older than 6 months is dated with that kind of reasoning.

Half a decade old dual core A15 with terrible terrible terrible thermal envelope.
and no, it is not even close to the best 32 bit SoCs in both performance and thermals.

...not dated at all !

 

[levi]

Nice troll!

 

[Silent-Hunter]

It doesn't matter how dated it is, as long as it works well. No one needs to play AAA games on the Pyra, and it seems like it runs most things just fine.

 

[TrashyMG]

No one needs to play AAA games on the Pyra

It can play AAA games, just ones from the early to mid 2000s

 

[Silent-Hunter]

It can play AAA games, just ones from the early to mid 2000s

Yeah sorry poor choice of words. More like, high end modern games. I don't know what to call it haha!

 

[levi]

Just call them high end modern games. It describes everything important about them to this conversation IMO.

To be honest, I was a gamer while the term triple A came up, and nobody explained what it meant then or since, so I'm not so keen on that specific adjective personally.

 

[ingoreis]

Maybe we can make an Hybrid Board with Arm and X86?

Its a nice Idea with 2 Cpus and Arm is the Main Cpu and X86 will be used in Qemu for "Fullspeed Virtualisation"



Windows XP we come

I think this will not work...its just an Idea.
Like an Arm/X86 Hybrid Board
And the X86 Cpu is the Coprocessor.

We where the first in the World running a System Setup like this

 

[FBnil]

Anything older than 2 months is dated with that kind of reasoning.

FTFY
[doublepost=1557863185,1557863020][/doublepost]

Maybe we can make an Hybrid Board with Arm and X86?

I wish CRUSOE was still around.. would have been fun.

 

[TrashyMG]

FTFY
[doublepost=1557863185,1557863020][/doublepost]
I wish CRUSOE was still around.. would have been fun.

Prob chock that up to the IBM fab (Now GlobalFoundries) that had a ton of yield issues bringing that processor online. I spent a lot of time testing that product as it was one of the first products I got to work with when I was barely in the company.

 

[pmprog]

I still think an FPGA board would make an interesting option... Though I've never got competent enough with vhdl to actually make anything... One day... One day... Maybe...

 

[rSl]

an fpga cpu board with 6502 core would do it for me.

 

[pmprog]

Suppose we could always steal @Paul Gardner-Stephen 's MEGA65 core, as there's even the telephony set up ready too lol

 

[Grench]

I have always wondered if someone took the old 80386 CPU 1.5µm to 1µm lithography masks and shrank them - and the rest of the system platform of a 'maxed out' 1987 80386 DX with on-die 4GB of RAM, an on-die 16bit Soundblaster equivalent and an on-die SVGA card equivalent, IDE drives connection - pile everything that would have been in a 'maxed out' desktop machine form 1987 into a single chip - would it be any good?

It would lack any control for WiFi, USB, SATA, etc... So, that part would suck...