Another angle is that at one moment you have to stop developing and ship product, even if not perfect. Again, you decide.

On Thursday, September 3, 2015, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl@lkcl.net> wrote:

ok, soo...

i've been following the updates to USB3 (10 gigabit speeds now with
USB 3.1). in combination with:

* the development of both the tablet and the laptop not having room
for an ethernet port
* the development of lower-cost SoCs not really having ethernet
* the fact that the ethernet components cost around $2 when the SoCs
themselves are around $2 to $4

... i'm coming to the conclusion that Ethernet should be removed, and
the 9 lines used to

* increase the USB3.0 allocation (4 wires) to USB 3.1 (8 wires)
* this would leave 5 spare pins for GPIO.
* at least two of those should be EINT-capable GPIOs

this would make it possible to redesign the tablet PCB to a more
"standard" one - removing the need for the I2C GPIO chip for example.

if there are any products that need ethernet, it can be done as a USB2
or USB3 compliant external IC.

the IC3128 PCB can be reduced down to around a $12 BOM, the EOMA68-A20
PCB can be reduced by a further $2.50.

any thoughts or objections, much appreciated the input.

l.

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