some thoughts on SAKC

Ron K. Jeffries rjeffries at gmail.com
Sat Feb 27 18:36:06 EST 2010


Comments inline ($rkj) . I deleted some stuff to reduce noise.


On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 14:30, Bas Wijnen <wijnen at debian.org> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Feb 27, 2010 at 12:09:40PM -0800, Ron K. Jeffries wrote:
> > To the extent that SAKC is used WITH a Nanonote, it could
> > easily be used as an extension to host computer.
> >
> > Having said that, I think the idea Carlos has floated of
> > implementing an interface from SAKC to emulate
> > SDIO is *very interesting* because I can see that
> > being a very high bandwidth connection from
> > Nanonote to SAKC with the two physically side by side
> > to enable SAKC to "plug in" to Nanonote.
>
> I see the possibility, but what is the use case?  What can a
> NanoNote+SAKC combination do that only SAKC cannot?  If you want a nice
> development interface, a full-size keyboard and screen are useful, so
> you'll want to connect to a full-size computer.  If all you want is
> adding i/o to the NanoNote, you can do so with a cheap controller from
> MicroChip (pic) or Atmel (AtTiny/AtMega)[1].  They should be able to
> implement an SDIO interface without trouble as well.  Extending the
> NanoNote over the SDIO interface is interesting, but not with such a
> powerful (and therefore expensive) device.
>
> [1] They are just as closed as the Ingenic chips from a HW side, of
> course.
>
$rkj Now I understand: You would like to design a
board to extends Nanonote by adding some number of i/o,
using the lowest cost approach, e.g. AtTiny on a small board with
i/o points.
What is not clear to me is what communication connection
would be between Nanonote and the i/o expansion. What do you suggest?

>
> > Even though SAKC will have an Xburst SOC, it does
> > not require a great deal of imagination to think of
> > interesting configurations where Nanonote does
> > background activitiies, and tells SAKC what it wants
> > done, and also does additional processing to
> > data pulled from SAKC that would otherwise
> > big down the SAKC CPU.
>
>  As a standalone unit, I think it can be very useful in a lab environment.
>
$rkj Bingo! SAKC will often be used standalone. It is a different
"flavor" of Nanonote--an early example of the Copyleft Hardware
doctrine at work. ;)

>
> > Having an Xburst SOC on SAKC drives it's cost
> > up by maybe $6. That's easily worth it.
>
> It is.  But it also means you no longer need a NanoNote with it.
>
$rkj this is a "don't care" to me. Plenty of Nanonotes will sell
on their own merits. Esp. once we have 64KB RAM, USB Host,
and WiFi, maybe via that plugin micro SD card thingie.

> Bas

-- ron k jeffries




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