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A new hardware project should better use the refresh of Alder Lake N, i.e. the Amston Lake CPUs, which are sold as the Atom x7000 series. Alder Lake N and Amst

A new hardware project should better use the refresh of Alder Lake N, i.e. the Amston Lake CPUs, which are sold as the Atom x7000 series. Alder Lake N and Amston Lake are pin compatible, so the CPU model does not influence the schematic and PCB design. The development material is given by Intel under NDA, so you must contact Intel sales for that. Nevertheless, you can see the equivalent of a reference design by downloading the schematic of Radxa X4 and its PCB assembly drawings. Radxa is among the nice SBC vendors who provide good documentation for their products. All their products come with their complete schematics, as they should. For those who do not want or cannot enter in an NDA relationship with Intel, it is possible to design a product that uses a SOM instead of a CPU package. This greatly simplifies the design and the manufacturing, but SOMs are intended for industrial applications, so they are expensive. For example, I have looked now at DigiKey and I have seen a Advantech SOM with N97 (which is better than N100) at $272, with 4 GB DRAM, which is more than 4 times more expensive than a Radxa X4 SBC with 4 GB DRAM @ $60. The cheapest way to make a hardware design with Intel CPUs remains to integrate a small SBC like Radxa X4 into a bigger box, together with a custom PCB. Arm CPUs are not better. To make a hardware design with MediaTek Genio 1200 (quadruple Cortex-A78) or Rockwell RK3588 (quadruple Cortex-A76), you still need to get under NDA the required documentation. Only for microcontrollers like those made by Renesas, Infineon, ST, NXP, Microchip etc. you may find the complete documentation on-line. For RK3588 there have been published many schematics of various SBC's, so for some less important project one could design a PCB based on the public RK3588 datasheet and on the available schematic examples, but for a serious project one would want the real Rockchip documentation. In the same way, for an amateur project one could make an N100 design starting from the published Radxa X4 schematic, even without the Intel documentation. However, the Intel CPUs like Alder Lake N or Amston Lake are normally sold in bulk, e.g. 1000 pieces or at least a few hundred. It may be difficult to find a distributor who would sell smaller quantities.

15155 2y ago
> The development material is given by Intel under NDA, so you must contact Intel sales for that. Any idea on MOQ? Do they still require supporting chipset purchases? Cost, pinout and voltage inflexibilities usually preclude my ability to use SOMs. The RK3588 documentation is all available without NDA, as are a handful of Rockchip's reference Altium designs. I've had no issues with the mainline RK3566/RK3568 - love these chips.
- adrian_b 2y ago
  Searching now, I see that Atom x7425E (which is almost equivalent with N100, but it has a few extra features enabled, like in-band ECC, and it may happen to have a higher power consumption at default settings, because it is not tested @ 6 W, like N100; but for any Intel chip you can easily configure the desired power limits) can be bought as single pieces at Avnet for $79 (drops to $71 for 100 pieces) and at Mouser for EUR 79 (drops to EUR 67 for 100 pieces). The Atom CPUs, like N100 and the other Alder Lake N/Amston Lake, do not use chipsets. You can look at the Radxa X4 schematic to see what may be needed for power management and clock generation, besides the CPU package. If you only need small quantities, the Atom branded Alder Lake N are easier to find than those branded as N100/N97/N200/i3-N305, which are normally sold in large quantities to the big manufacturers of computers. You can see the available models in Intel Ark, at the Atom x7000 series (Atom x72xx are 2-core, Atom x74xx are 4-core, Atom x78xx are 8-core).
  - 15155 2y ago
    $85 - ouch.. Very tough pill to swallow with the RK3568 at $10-13 including an RK809 PMIC.
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      RK3568, which is a quadruple Cortex-A55, is in a completely different class of products. Any price over $20 would be unacceptable for such products. The chips competing with Intel are only RK3588 and MediaTek Genio 1200. Those cannot be cheaper than Intel, because the SBCs made with them have prices from the same price as the Intel SBCs to much higher prices than the Intel SBCs. Radxa, which buys N100 in bulk, must pay at most $50 for one (the Intel list price is $55), but probably much less, perhaps as low as $30, but when you want only a few pieces you cannot buy at that price.
      - 15155 2y ago
        The RK3588 is $35 with PMIC at MOQ 1 from two different CN parts people I deal with.
bpye 2y ago
> Arm CPUs are not better. To make a hardware design with MediaTek Genio 1200 (quadruple Cortex-A78) or Rockwell RK3588 (quadruple Cortex-A76), you still need to get under NDA the required documentation. Only for microcontrollers like those made by Renesas, Infineon, ST, NXP, Microchip etc. you may find the complete documentation on-line. Perhaps less interesting, but there are a handful of Cortex-A SoCs from TI [0] and NXP [1, 2], at least, that have non-NDA datasheets and reference manuals. [0] - https://www.ti.com/microcontrollers-mcus-processors/arm-based-processors/overview.html https://www.ti.com/microcontrollers-mcus-processors/arm-base... [1] - https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-processors/i-mx-applications-processors:IMX_HOME https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers... [2] - https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-processors/layerscape-processors:QORIQ-ARM https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers...
- adrian_b 2y ago
  True, but all those are really obsolete Cortex-A cores. The Cortex-M cores used in microcontrollers have a much slower evolution, but the Cortex-A cores are updated every year and the differences between the more recent cores and the older cores are very big. Cortex-A78, like in MediaTek Genio 1200 is the 2021 Cortex-A core. Cortex-A76, like in RK3588 and Raspberry Pi 5 is the 2019 Cortex-A core, already 5 years old. All older Cortex-A cores are hopelessly obsolete. There still are some borderline acceptable SBCs that use Cortex-A73, the 2017 Cortex-A core, i.e. 7 years old. The NXP and TI products use much weaker Cortex-A cores than even that. The only NXP products with Cortex-A cores that can be acceptable for certain purposes are those with Cortex-A55 cores (2018). These at least support the Armv8.2-A ISA, which corrects some important defects in the original Armv8-A instruction set. Nevertheless, the Cortex-A55 cores are very small and slow, so using a CPU with them is justified only if that results in a much smaller or much cheaper SBC than when using Cortex-A7x cores. That means that any acceptable SBC that uses Cortex-A55 cores must be small and fanless, e.g. a fanless credit-card-sized SBC that must be cheap too, e.g. not exceeding $50 unless it contains a lot of memory and interfaces that could justify a price slightly higher than that. Many of the solutions using TI or NXP Cortex-A based devices fail to satisfy the power consumption, size and price values that are expected for such cores (frequently due to their use of ancient manufacturing processes, which may make a Cortex-A55 consume as much power as a Cortex-A7x made with a newer CMOS process). NXP makes microcontrollers with 1 GHz Cortex-M7 cores, which are good enough for many of the applications for which Raspberry Pi SBCs have been used. For the remaining applications, which need fast interfaces, like for SSDs, USB 3 or multiple Ethernet interfaces, it is better to go directly to a SBC like Radxa X4, so there are only very few applications where a device with obsolete Cortex-A cores can be preferred to a either a cheaper microcontroller or a faster Intel Atom CPU.

15155 2y ago

> The development material is given by Intel under NDA, so you must contact Intel sales for that. Any idea on MOQ? Do they still require supporting chipset purchases? Cost, pinout and voltage inflexibilities usually preclude my ability to use SOMs. The RK3588 documentation is all available without NDA, as are a handful of Rockchip's reference Altium designs. I've had no issues with the mainline RK3566/RK3568 - love these chips.

adrian_b 2y ago
Searching now, I see that Atom x7425E (which is almost equivalent with N100, but it has a few extra features enabled, like in-band ECC, and it may happen to have a higher power consumption at default settings, because it is not tested @ 6 W, like N100; but for any Intel chip you can easily configure the desired power limits) can be bought as single pieces at Avnet for $79 (drops to $71 for 100 pieces) and at Mouser for EUR 79 (drops to EUR 67 for 100 pieces). The Atom CPUs, like N100 and the other Alder Lake N/Amston Lake, do not use chipsets. You can look at the Radxa X4 schematic to see what may be needed for power management and clock generation, besides the CPU package. If you only need small quantities, the Atom branded Alder Lake N are easier to find than those branded as N100/N97/N200/i3-N305, which are normally sold in large quantities to the big manufacturers of computers. You can see the available models in Intel Ark, at the Atom x7000 series (Atom x72xx are 2-core, Atom x74xx are 4-core, Atom x78xx are 8-core).
- 15155 2y ago
  $85 - ouch.. Very tough pill to swallow with the RK3568 at $10-13 including an RK809 PMIC.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    RK3568, which is a quadruple Cortex-A55, is in a completely different class of products. Any price over $20 would be unacceptable for such products. The chips competing with Intel are only RK3588 and MediaTek Genio 1200. Those cannot be cheaper than Intel, because the SBCs made with them have prices from the same price as the Intel SBCs to much higher prices than the Intel SBCs. Radxa, which buys N100 in bulk, must pay at most $50 for one (the Intel list price is $55), but probably much less, perhaps as low as $30, but when you want only a few pieces you cannot buy at that price.
    - 15155 2y ago
      The RK3588 is $35 with PMIC at MOQ 1 from two different CN parts people I deal with.

bpye 2y ago

> Arm CPUs are not better. To make a hardware design with MediaTek Genio 1200 (quadruple Cortex-A78) or Rockwell RK3588 (quadruple Cortex-A76), you still need to get under NDA the required documentation. Only for microcontrollers like those made by Renesas, Infineon, ST, NXP, Microchip etc. you may find the complete documentation on-line. Perhaps less interesting, but there are a handful of Cortex-A SoCs from TI [0] and NXP [1, 2], at least, that have non-NDA datasheets and reference manuals. [0] - https://www.ti.com/microcontrollers-mcus-processors/arm-based-processors/overview.html https://www.ti.com/microcontrollers-mcus-processors/arm-base... [1] - https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-processors/i-mx-applications-processors:IMX_HOME https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers... [2] - https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-processors/layerscape-processors:QORIQ-ARM https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers...

adrian_b 2y ago
True, but all those are really obsolete Cortex-A cores. The Cortex-M cores used in microcontrollers have a much slower evolution, but the Cortex-A cores are updated every year and the differences between the more recent cores and the older cores are very big. Cortex-A78, like in MediaTek Genio 1200 is the 2021 Cortex-A core. Cortex-A76, like in RK3588 and Raspberry Pi 5 is the 2019 Cortex-A core, already 5 years old. All older Cortex-A cores are hopelessly obsolete. There still are some borderline acceptable SBCs that use Cortex-A73, the 2017 Cortex-A core, i.e. 7 years old. The NXP and TI products use much weaker Cortex-A cores than even that. The only NXP products with Cortex-A cores that can be acceptable for certain purposes are those with Cortex-A55 cores (2018). These at least support the Armv8.2-A ISA, which corrects some important defects in the original Armv8-A instruction set. Nevertheless, the Cortex-A55 cores are very small and slow, so using a CPU with them is justified only if that results in a much smaller or much cheaper SBC than when using Cortex-A7x cores. That means that any acceptable SBC that uses Cortex-A55 cores must be small and fanless, e.g. a fanless credit-card-sized SBC that must be cheap too, e.g. not exceeding $50 unless it contains a lot of memory and interfaces that could justify a price slightly higher than that. Many of the solutions using TI or NXP Cortex-A based devices fail to satisfy the power consumption, size and price values that are expected for such cores (frequently due to their use of ancient manufacturing processes, which may make a Cortex-A55 consume as much power as a Cortex-A7x made with a newer CMOS process). NXP makes microcontrollers with 1 GHz Cortex-M7 cores, which are good enough for many of the applications for which Raspberry Pi SBCs have been used. For the remaining applications, which need fast interfaces, like for SSDs, USB 3 or multiple Ethernet interfaces, it is better to go directly to a SBC like Radxa X4, so there are only very few applications where a device with obsolete Cortex-A cores can be preferred to a either a cheaper microcontroller or a faster Intel Atom CPU.