When will ARM motherboards be available?

[kazetsukai]

Open drivers are paramount to architecture independence- if you want to see other ARM succeed in the desktop space, purchase a beagleboard, install Ubuntu, start testing and filing bugs. Being a fanboy isn't going to help- only by being critical, active, and having high expectations with we get there.

The second I find a reasonably priced ARM or SPARC board with PCI Express, I'll click the buy button.

[jbo5112]

You can get a Tegra 2 Pico-ITX motherboard right now.

Motherboard: http://www.toradex.com/En/Products/Colibri_Boards/Iris ($179 w/ volume discounts)
CPU Module: http://www.toradex.com/Products/Coli...olibri-Tegra-2 ($139)

Sadly, they only have 256MB RAM, 100Mbit Ethernet and 1GB flash. The 1680x1050 LCD connection is acceptable for a desktop, and it does include support for full HD through a DVI connection. I think it might even support two displays. It also includes a micro-sd slot for extra storage.

You should see more desktop oriented boards in the next couple of years. Windows 8 will support ARM chips. NVIDIA has Tegra-3 coming out later this year. NVIDIA's "project Denver" ARM chip is aimed at pc's to supercomputers in 2013-2014, with 40-bit memory addressing. I would wait until I see something similar to the mini-ITX Atom boards with PCI-e, SATA and memory slot(s).

[movieman]

Sadly, they only have 256MB RAM, 100Mbit Ethernet and 1GB flash.

Yeah, a year after my last post in this thread and that ARM board is still selling for about the same price as the dual-core Ion motherboard plus 4GB of RAM and 40GB SSD that I bought back then.

Obviously it's a more limited market and aimed at embedded systems, but hopefully Windows going to ARM might encourage more cost-effective solutions.

[curaga]

One of the latest boards (not even for sale yet, will be in a month or two) is the Origen one:
http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/N...ignals-Origen/

1.2Ghz A9 dual core, 1gb ram, starts at 199$.

[russoribas]

There is pandaboard (pandaboard.org)
US$174
-Dual-core ARM® Cortex™-A9 MPCore™ at 1 GHz each.
-1G ram
- Onboard 10/100 Ethernet
- 802.11 b/g/n
- Bluetooth® v2.1 + EDR
-Full HD (1080p) multi-standard video encode/decode
-Imagination Technologies’ POWERVR™ SGX540 graphics core supporting all major API's including OpenGL® ES v2.0, OpenGL ES v1.1, OpenVG v1.1 and EGL v1.3 and delivering
-Low power audio

[Hephasteus]

Arm motherboards will be available in the 70's.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers

[Melchior]

ARM CPU in a Mini-ITX Carrier;

http://www.secoqseven.com

I think these ARE the Droids you are looking for!

[RonJohn]

Computing is computing, whether the CPU is ARM or x86, and ARM's only claim to fame is it's low power consumption.

Since desktop and pseudo-embedded computers don't run on batteries, an Atom or Via Nano should suffice your needs while being cheaper, running more s/w and having greater peripheral compatibility.

[movieman]

Since desktop and pseudo-embedded computers don't run on batteries, an Atom or Via Nano should suffice your needs while being cheaper, running more s/w and having greater peripheral compatibility.

A lot depends on what else is in those ARM SoCs.

We were playing 720P H.264 on 200MHz ARM chips with some hardware assist in the SoC back in 2005. My Intel Atom system can't play it reliably, though the Ion plays 1080P fine because it offloads the decoding to the Nvidia GPU.

Oh, and I believe those were $20 chips in bulk. So that's probably cheaper than an Atom and certainly cheaper than Ion.

[Adarion]

Computing is computing, whether the CPU is ARM or x86, and ARM's only claim to fame is it's low power consumption.

Since desktop and pseudo-embedded computers don't run on batteries, an Atom or Via Nano should suffice your needs while being cheaper, running more s/w and having greater peripheral compatibility.

Rapsberry Pi and stuff ARE cheaper. A lot cheaper.
And yes, while x86 might be comfortable at the time for end users, it has always been a thing to the Linux people to reach out for new architectures.
NetBSD and Linux will run on every thing that can distinguish between 0 and 1.
It is neccessary that we reach for more architectures, and then more hard- and software will follow.

By the way some years ago intel and amd were running a MHz race with no consideration for power uptake. Embedded device coudln't afford that and used small RISC architectures. Then, Transmeta (not really x86) and VIA stepped on and built x86 compatible chips in the lower enegry range. Finally amd and intel followed and did something about their power uptake. Still amd's Z-xx/C-xx/E-xxx arch or intel's atom is not in the range of some ARM or MIPS chips. Maybe more powerful on several tasks but sometimes you don't need lots of GPU or CPU power, just the right dimensions e.g. for a small handheld, storage device or network router.