On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:58 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net wrote:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:prYbhMDZblEJ:www.allwin...
ok it's pin-compatible with the A23. with the removal of SATA and replacement with USB it can be done. i'll ask for some PCB CAD files.
l.
On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:55 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton lkcl@lkcl.net wrote:
On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 10:14 PM, Paul NeoStormer paulneostormer@gmail.com wrote:
So I can't find the page where this was discussed but I was told that the reason we couldn't go to a Quad-Core processor A31 was not because of pin compatibility but because it utilized a different graphics processor which we didn't really have open source for, a PowerVR instead of the Mali-400. We today they announced the A33 which uses the same Mali-400MP2 that the A20 uses, so is it possible to go to quad-core now?
ooooo yes! hooray! if it's pin-compatible with the A20 we can use it straight away.
ok just checked the A23 datasheet: it's only a 16-bit DDR3 RAM interface, one USB2 and one USB-OTG. so something like the 9514 USB-Eth hub would be needed (the 9512 apparently gets veery hot). also apparently A23 only addresses 1gbyte of RAM, we'll see if the A33 goes up to 2.
about powervr, you want luc's talk about the state of software libre reverse-engineering of GPUs. it turns out he's worked (in a proprietary environment) with powervr, so he knows that it is an absolute god-awful mess (hardware and software wise). his recommendation is to let imgtec stew, and to not even attempt the reverse-engineering *at all*, it's that bad.
l.