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The Novena is pretty good in that its schematics are entirely open source. It also has plenty of expansion headers, a FPGA, removable RAM and wifi cards. Howeve
by TD-Linux 12y ago
The Novena is pretty good in that its schematics are entirely open source. It also has plenty of expansion headers, a FPGA, removable RAM and wifi cards. However, I don't think modularity is as important, because it's hard to make something modular, performant, AND low cost. If you have the sources, you can always make a customized version to suit your exact needs yourself, without the need for it to be modular.
(typing this from my Novena)
- XorNot 12y agoProject Ara seems like it might solve that problem itself. A laptop chassis which was just a GIANT Ara frame maybe?
- franciscop 12y agoProject Ara is going to be bigger than a regular mobile. It just has to have all those connecting hardware pieces.
- rl3 12y agoHopefully that turns out to be the case. I have a feeling that modularizing (at least in Ara fashion) cutting-edge GPUs and x86 processors is no small feat. Never say never, but it seems unlikely that form factor could be maintained, let alone heat and interconnect requirements dealt with, when simply boxing up existing laptop or PC hardware. It's likely that a lot of custom engineering and partnerships would be required beyond simply containerizing existing hardware. On the other hand, the trend toward things like on-die GPUs (and more) is promising, but at present you can't achieve truly top-end performance via this route. The ideal then, I suppose, would be able to just easily snap together the equivalent of a few GTX 980Ms, sprinkle in a few i7s for good measure, and simply have it all work. Going on a trip and feel like packing light? Just take one of each, casually snap off the rest with little hassle. Of course, if internet connectivity keeps improving at its current pace, application streaming may obviate the need for all of this, but who knows.