Acolyte of the Butterfly
Posts: 104 from 2009/3/20
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jcmarcos wrote:
Very, very impressive initiative. Konstantinos, just clone that MPC8610 evaluation board in you have at the smallest possible cost, that's all.
Unfortunately that's not possible, for both copyright issues but also in terms of cost. Evaluation boards have lots of stuff that isn't really useful in an end product (like JTAG for example). Also they are quite big in size.
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Those dual cores look sexy, and we all know multiple cores are the trend these days. But there's a better trend: Classy programming! Give certain people a clever, single core, AltiVec equipped computer, and the only problem will be asking yourself what good use you could give to such a nice computer. Because making a computer just for the sake of it is very educating (the kind of task that governments should fund!), but not a business.
No, I'm definitely not doing it for fun -well not only anyway. It pisses me off that there is no interest in whatsoever to support and promote the ppc platform, and I think many feel the same way. This is a market in itself. Not big, but I believe it's self sustainable, if the choices are right. For this reason, I believe I should look past things like AltiVec support and focus on more market penetration. If the price is right, other users who might not otherwise choose it, might think it a nice choice. But I don't know if a 500EUR MPC8610 board would be a right choice, as much as I like Altivec -and you know I do! Also I'll have to look to the future, 86xx/e600 cores are going to be obsoleted sooner or later, while the QorIQ series are the focus of Freescale right now -I know I wasn't really fond of them a while ago, but I studied the specs and I found out that they're very worth CPUs.
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Attempt the smaller standard form factor, because it's likely that people will like tu put your computer inside places more interesting than a desktop case.
Totally agree on that.
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And... go for it! If bPlan is behind, that's a guarantee in itself. Are Gerald and Thomas excited yet?
They like the idea, and I already started discussions with them about the board. I don't think I'll have a second chance in this however so I'll have to make sure it succeeds the first time. That's why I wouldn't like wasting their time with constant discussions and constant specs changes. I'll have to make a decision about the hardware specs, the project's viability and then things will start rolling.
Again, thanks for the feedback.
Konstantinos
[ Edited by feanor on 2009/9/23 16:45 ]
