Our current needs in a SBC

General Discussion
1

@numbqq
@goenjoy
@Frank

Here are a few things we need in a SBC.

  1. On board NVMe m2 connector and mounting along with PCIe 4 or faster so the full potential of NVMe can be used.
  2. Dual independent 10 Gb/s ethernet connectors, not shared
  3. 8 Gb ram
  4. A SoC manufacture that has open door policy and access to TRM (techincal resource manual) and other stuff.
  5. BSP that can be used in Yocto
  6. Rock solid running Ubuntu server
  7. Barrel connector for power
  8. Thru holes on the board for easier mounting in custom enclosures
  9. RTC with battery connector or onboard battery would be better
  10. Linux debug port with 3 pin connector on board
  11. Don’t need the big GPIO header, use a ribbon cable to a “breakout” style board.
  12. More space between the connectors or different locations.
  13. Wifi antenna connectors
  14. Wifi
  15. Cooling system like the VIM4
  16. Only need USB 3+
2 Likes
2

Hello @foxsquirrel

Thanks for you suggestions.

Maybe next generation SBC/ARM PC we will consider about these suggestions. :wink:

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it’s a good idea to write what each maker would appreciate in his ideal board,
i’d like khadas to adress multimedia player usage, but also server usage,
for which the board shall cost less than 70USD,
have onboard emmc (16G+),
I agree with the un necessity of 2x20 pins to look like the rpis
separate power socket is a must, but a small factor one, like what we have on modern laptops;
no need of tiny JST, no mipi, no csi socket, more than 2 usb sockets : at least one usb-A and two usb-c, no huge hdmi port, just a mini one,
the idea behing rpi compute module is good, consider to be compatible with their pinouts to benefit from existing “motherboards/carrier boards” and focus only on CPU boards that can evolve often,
propose a least one risc-V based SOC;
consider replacing the wifi-BT module w/ an ESP32 as a coprocessor and expose its GPIOs;
the embedded 8bit mcu is not so useful for us, remove it.

feel free to comment
tks

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for illustration, check this webpage A list of Raspberry Pi Compute Module carrier boards and devices – after hours coding where they listed a few members of that carrier baord ecosystem

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Yes, that would be very good and very risky. Do see plenty of upside potential with that due to the openness of the RISC-V and lack of license fees.