7 ms·
dont bother, this is an ancient 7 year old soc
by rasz_pl 11y ago
dont bother, this is an ancient 7 year old soc
- porsupah 11y agoMy video decoder ran at 40-90fps (admittedly, at a contemporary console resolution of 288x320) on an 8MHz ARM6 core. Are you certain a 400MHz device lacks utility?
- detaro 11y agoIs there a big downside to that?
- olympus 11y agoTechnology-wise, no. You are only giving up small efficiency gains in power usage and perhaps calculations per clock cycle. But knowing that it's a 400 MHz chip you probably weren't expecting the power of a modern desktop. But in terms of actual part numbers, yes. If you throw an old IC on your board because you could get it cheaper than a more modern part, you are risking the manufacturer EOL (end-of-life) that part sooner than you'd want. The manufacturer may have a replacement that is instruction set compatible on the software side and pin compatible on the hardware side, but you are running a very real risk of having to redesign your boards and recode a bunch of software when you can't get that chip any more. But some parts have been around forever and will continue to be around forever. So the designer has to consider for themselves if the old part is popular enough to continue being manufactured. I would have no problem dropping a 555 timer in a circuit, even though it's been around for decades. But I might want to ask the manufacturer about their lifecycle plans for a CPU, considering how fast things change in the industry.
- rasz_pl 11y agoIts a one off. They wont make them after they run out of old chips.
- JustSomeNobody 11y agoThis industry has almost always used older silicon for lesser expensive parts.
- joezydeco 11y agoOnce you're off my lawn I'll teach you all about the 8051, HCS09, and Z80, sonny boy.
- buserror 11y agoActually, I agree with the previous post; and I'm the former maintainer of the mini2440 architecture (which used the SoC that board inherits from). arm9 are a bit lame, and /ancient/ -- you can at least get a cortex a8 or so. A 400mhz arm9 is also dog slow. Also, on every single previous friendlyarm board, they tried to push their proprietary crap bootloader, until I ported u-boot in 2008 or so, but every single board afterward, they tried to push their binaries... .. down to shipping kernel sources with '.fo' files for drivers (!!!) -- as object files! For a bit of history on this, do read my old blog: http://bliterness.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/mini210s-and-open-source-issues.html http://bliterness.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/mini210s-and-open-s...
- rasz_pl 11y agoThats great, but Samsung is not big on second sourcing its designs. This SoC is no longer in production, it never be again. This board is build using waste reels found in Shenzhen market.
- morganvachon 11y agoFor $16, I'll certainly bother. I paid $45 shipped for the original Raspberry Pi with a processor that wasn't much better than this, and found all kinds of uses for it. Now, if this one was the price of the current RasPi 2, I wouldn't touch it. But this is most of the functionality of the original Pi at a third of the price. Sign me up!