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PCMCIA Computer Project Aims Even Higher (and Cheaper) Than Raspberry Pi

Posted by timothy on from the concept-that-can-be-turned-into-an-idea dept.

lkcl writes "An initiative by a Community Interest Company Rhombus Tech aims to provide Software (Libre) Developers with a PCMCIA-sized modular computer that could end up in mass-volume products. The reference design mass-volume pricing guide from the SoC manufacturer, for a device with similar capability to the Raspberry Pi, is around $15: 40% less than the $25 Raspberry Pi but for a device with an ARM Cortex A8 CPU 3x times faster than the 700mhz ARM11 used in the Raspberry Pi. GPL Kernel source code is available. A page for community ideas for motherboard designs has also been created. The overall goal is to bring more mass-volume products to market which Software (Libre) Developers have actually been involved in, reversing the trend of endemic GPL violations surrounding ARM-based mass-produced hardware. The Preorder pledge registration is now open (account creation required)." Of course, the Raspberry Pi is not only only much further along, but has recently announced an expansion module (the Gertboard).

22 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Great by Hatta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll buy one of each.

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    1. Re:Great by lkcl · · Score: 3, Informative

      good man! feel free to fill in the preorder form http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/orders/ i'm a bit reluctant to do it on your behalf [aitch tee tee pee slashdot dot org slash tilde hatta]

      please do bear in mind that in the early stage we're *not* going to sell completely untested cards in mass-volume right away, that would be foolish. we're going to follow the process that Dr Schaller has been doing on the development of the GTA04 - http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GTA04_revisions as have various other projects, OpenPandora included.

      so, early alpha boards go out to people prepared to take a risk, but who have the money spare (under $100, gosh, wow, break the bank why not) to consider "what the heck, this is cool, let's support this initiative" but at the same time have some expertise in embedded GNU/Linux development, and they might actually get something that works perfectly first time, and they're the ones that got it, before anyone else.

      beta boards go out to people who want something that, hardware-wise, is pretty much guaranteed to work 100%, but maybe the software's not all there, and they might have to (gosh) get involved and help write it.

      stable boards go out to people who really would "just like something that works, thank you, where's the debian distro image, where's the instructions for putting everything onto an sdcard, heck, where can i buy a pre-loaded MicroSD card so i don't have to do that, even".

      so it's a known trade-off: the principles of Software (Libre) Development as applied to hardware: release early, release often. exactly the sort of thing that you never normally see in the development of hardware products, and i think it's pretty damn cool to be able to witness and be part of something that *isn't* GPL-violating. at bloody last.

  2. Why PCMCIA? by bcmm · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why use the PCMCIA form-factor? It appears they aren't actually using it for PCMCIA. Is it very difficult to design a connector, or is it to do with using existing manufacturing tools originally designed to make PCMCIA cards?

    --
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    Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
    1. Re:Why PCMCIA? by Nerdfest · · Score: 3, Interesting

      PCMCIA seems to be what happens when a marketing droid forces design constraints on something. "It needs to be the size of a credit card"! If if smaller and thicker, connectors would have been much sturdier.

    2. Re:Why PCMCIA? by petermgreen · · Score: 4, Informative

      PCMCIA was originally designed as a memory card form factor. It was later thickened up for use as an expansion card form factor.

      Also I think being thicker would have doomed it sooner as laptops got thinner.

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    3. Re:Why PCMCIA? by lkcl · · Score: 3, Interesting

      http://rhombus-tech.net//faq/#index4h2 - re-use of *existing* connectors, housings and assemblies keeps the price right down. yes you're absolutely right: expecting a complete new design of connector to be reasonably affordable is impossible.

      the whole initiative is based around leap-frogging over the normal barriers to entry for products. use Software (Libre) Developers for the software engineering. use off-the-shelf parts as much as possible. do a deal with the factory ["we won't charge you for software engineer time if you won't charge us for hardware engineer time"]. use pre-existing casework designs from China-based Industrial Flea Markets (don't get the wrong idea, here - these Markets are the size of football pitches and 7 stories high!) and so on.

    4. Re:Why PCMCIA? by hairyfeet · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Then what we really need to be shooting for is CRFF or card reader form factor because frankly i haven't seen any express card or cardbus slots in a while on anything sub $1k but they ALL have card readers now. Sure that doesn't give a lot of space but that is why everything is going nano right? tell them white coats to get on it!

      And while I love your idea of bringing standardization to mobile sadly it will NEVER happen, and here is why: all those PCs companies (with the exception of the fruit company and their world famous RDF) found that with standardization comes commoditization and razor thin margins and they don't like that, hence why there isn't jack shit interchangeable anymore if they can help it. I'm sure they miss the days of "Compaq RAM" that was 3 times the price but you had to buy if you had a Compaq, or Dell PSUs that were just funky enough they wouldn't fit in a normal case, and that is what they have now with mobile. After all how could they gouge you on a battery if you could just run AAAs? How could they get you to buy a whole new unit if the tiniest part fails if you could easily just buy the part and DIY or take it to the local shop?

      Sadly the corps have figured out "designed for the dump" gives them their biggest profits hence why everything is so flimsy and easily broken now. Personally I wish the FOSS guys all the luck in the world, i'd love a cell phone or laptop where parts were as easy to get and interchange as your average desktop but I doubt the corps would ever let that happen, it'd cost them too much profit.

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    5. Re:Why PCMCIA? by lkcl · · Score: 3, Informative

      hi pedrop,

      yeah we thought about that, but ExpressCard means PCI-e. so we investigated how many SoC "embedded" CPUs have PCI-e and it's like about... 5. several from marvell, but they're the high-end "server" style ones, with power budgets wayyyy over the reasonable limit.

      then we looked instead at PCI-e "PHY" chips. there's _one_: it's a PCI-e to USB converter, which says it all, really.

      the other option is an FPGA: they're just... horrendously expensive. something like the Zynq-7030 would be able to do it in hardware using the on-board FPGA, but that's not out yet.

      the only other option would be bit-banging! updating multiple GPIO pins to emulate a 33mhz ISA bus *shudder*. ... yeah overall we just went "ok, forget it - let's just take over PCMCIA at the connector/header/socket level".

    6. Re:Why PCMCIA? by tftp · · Score: 3, Informative

      re-use of *existing* connectors, housings and assemblies keeps the price right down

      lkcl, before you jump into production please make sure that you don't want your SATA and USB work. Because they aren't very likely to; the PCMCIA connector is not a controlled impedance part, and your pinout requires 90 Ohm differential for USB and 100 Ohm differential for SATA. Ethernet is also 100 Ohm, but it has plenty of margin. Even if the board works on the bench, it's not the right thing to do. You need a proper differential connector, something that you can get from Samtec, for example.

      I really don't know how much you are an expert in manufacturing, but I built a number of professional designs, and I strongly suggest that you don't pick an old, obsolete connector just because you think it is cool. You need to consider the other side of the connector. How many PCMCIA cages can you find at Digikey? How many of them are easy to solder by hand? Hell, this connector would give *me* trouble, and I can solder 0402 all day long under the microscope. This connector has pin spacing of 0.635 mm, and practically none of your customers can solder it.

      I still don't quite understand the business idea of your product. By "business" I don't mean making money; I mean "delivering value," making good things. What value do you expect to deliver if nobody can connect to your board? Your super-small form factor is a problem here. Very few electronic enthusiasts are so much concerned about size and space. They are far more concerned about being able to see the parts without using an electron microscope. If you'd ask me, I'd say you need to think how your customers are going to use your product.

      The talk about standard connectors ... if you want it done right, use COM Express. These modules are interchangeable and your product would actually fit into an existing market. You can actually sell the thing without Slashdot. Inventing your own standard, using an obsolete connector and breaking the electrical signaling requirements will not do you any good. You are not large enough to establish a competing standard, and your design is not as good anyway. But if you don't want to deal with COM Express (which is not a pleasure to solder either, I admit) then just forget the unification and use plain vanilla 0.1" headers for everything except high speed interfaces. Or include a CardBus breakout board with your CPU board.

  3. No competition, yet by LtGordon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Raspberry Pi is expected to ship to mainstream customers early Q1 2012. Per the summary, this group is still in the "could end up in mass production" phase. They can hardly compete if this one isn't being sold.

  4. not a fair pricing comparison by pz · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Mass-volume" pricing is manufacturer speak for wholesale prices, as in buying thousands of units at a time. You expect those prices to be half or less of retail. So a $15 OEM price will be about $30 at retail, generally speaking. That compares reasonably well to the $25 retail pricing of the Raspberry Pi, given that this new board has somewhat higher specs.

    --

    Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
  5. I'll wait until ... by petes_PoV · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ... there's a website that I can order one from at that price, which will deliver with 7 days.

    Until that time it's just vapourware - same goes for the Raspberry Pi, unless you want a keyboard sticker, they've got nothing on the market.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
  6. Computer on a PCMCIA card by rossdee · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Great, so this low cost computer can be plugged into the PCMCIA slot of a laptop. Or you couyld just use the laptop. Am i missing something here?

    1. Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card by Rennt · · Score: 4, Informative
      They are just using a cheap connector with plenty of pins. FTFA:

      These pinouts make no attempt to be electrically or electronically compatible with the legacy PCMCIA standard. 16 GPIO pins, 24-pin RGB/TTL, USB2, I2C, 10/100 Ethernet and SATA-II interfaces are included in the Version 1.0 specification.

    2. Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps the project leaders should instead think before writing marketing copy.

    3. Re:Computer on a PCMCIA card by lkcl · · Score: 3, Informative

      Great, so this low cost computer can be plugged into the PCMCIA slot of a laptop.

      ah NO! :) the mechanical design prevents insertion of EOMA-PCMCIA CPU cards into legacy PCMCIA slots:
      http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA#Deliberate_Mechanical_Non-interoperability

      if you tried to force it in, you would mechanically damage the laptop and/or the card, and once you'd done that, the chances are that you'd blow up the card and/or the laptop as well.

      Or you couyld just use the laptop. Am i missing something here?

      you're missing something :) the design concept is that the EOMA-PCMCIA CPU card *is* the laptop... but only when the modular CPU card is plugged into an EOMA-PCMCIA-compliant laptop Motherboard that's *designed* to take these CPU cards. see example motherboards here: http://elinux.org/Embedded_Open_Modular_Architecture/PCMCIA#Example_Motherboards

      to have an x86 CPU in a laptop already (cost of $300+) and to then put in an extra low-cost CPU card that does pretty much the same job as far as 98% of computer users are concerned, well... that would just be silly. why not just have a modular mass-volume laptop plus CPU card that can retail for about $95, eh? :)

  7. Re:Reptiles are among us! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    As a member of the Illuminati, I can assure you that we have no reptilian DNA at all. You are confusing us with some of our experiments.

    Please leave your Faraday cage, then we can reprogram you with correct ideas.

  8. Re:Reptiles are among us! by oodaloop · · Score: 4, Funny

    I am a reptilian illuminati, you insensitive clod!

    --
    Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
  9. Re:computer in your wallet by nyctopterus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You mean.. like a phone?

  10. Open platform by unixisc · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Had it been running an open spec hardware, it would have been more expensive. If you want an open CPU, ARM is not it - the only one I can think of is OpenRISC. One idea - take the OpenRISC CPU (essentially Verilog code that one would implement on an FPGA), take another FPGA to contain all the interface and support logic it needs, and then add whatever the appropriate amount of RAM and Flash it needs. Once all that is there, port something like Minix on top of it (so that the resource consumption is not much) and you'll have a purely open system.

    However, it will not be anywhere near as cheap as $35, at least initially. First of all, it's not something just a couple of guys will do - one would need whole engineering teams to do various things
    • Write a complete spec on both the hardware and the software
    • Make the tweaks to the design that are necessary for it to be supported on any fab, process & lithography, and work w/ the fab on ensuring acceptable yields
    • Procure the other supporting chipsets or design needed to make a complete system
    • Port an existing FOSS platform to this reference design - the OS, the UX, and everything else
    • Produce bundles based on different requirements - from low price to high functionality - which can then be sold in the market
    • License that entire design - hardware & software - to whoever wants to manufacture, market and sell it
    • Work on price reductions

    The above exercise would enable a company to produce a bunch of products that can be spec'ed @ difference performance points, and targeted towards various market segments - from home hobbyists and education going right up to smart phones and tablets.

  11. Good step in the right direction by lennier1 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I work in a company where some of our products are basically Full-HD TFT displays with integrated ARM-based computers (glorified nettop components) running a company-internal Linux distro.

    Having one of these to replace/upgrade their computer like you'd switch the optical drive in a business laptop would certainly cut down costs.

  12. What is this going to mean for me, the end-user? by Robotech_Master · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm not a programmer or a hardware hacker. I don't know anything about soldering circuit boards. I'm just a guy who likes to surf the net, write stories, play games, hang out on-line, and so on. What is the availability of this $15 device going to mean for me?

    I mean, at least (as far as) I know the Raspberry Pi is going to be producing fully-realized devices that I can buy, plug in a keyboard and monitor and Ethernet cable, and I'm done. It sounds like this project is just about building a circuit board. And while it's nice it will be 40% cheaper and three times as fast, I'd like to know what I could do with it if someone came up to me on the street and handed me one.

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