It Doesn't Look Like We'll See AMD ARM Development Boards This Year

Things don't appear to be looking up for AMD's ARM efforts. It's looking like we probably won't be seeing AMD ARM development boards publicly available this year, if not the end of 2016, and there won't be many of them going around.

Last month I wrote about There's Still No Sign Of AMD's Low-Cost ARM Development Boards. While I've been quite excited to get my hands on some AMD ARM hardware, I haven't been able to yet. This is while the AMD-powered 96Boards HuskyBoard was supposed to ship at the end of 2015 and the LeMaker Cello AMD A1120 board announced earlier this year was supposed to ship by the end of Q2. The Cello is a quarter late and it's looking like it will be at least another quarter before we possibly see any AMD ARM hardware.

Since writing that article last month, I heard from a trusted comrade that a technical obstacle has delayed AMD's ARM SoCs. Board partners are waiting on AMD but it's looking like it won't be until the end of the calendar year when they are back up to speed... And it's looking like they won't end up being produced in large volumes.

That's a pity to hear and will now be curious to see if SoftIron's Overdrive system with the A1100 SoC ends up shipping in September or this technical problem has pushed back all AMD ARM products. Of course, the SoftIron system is rather expensive ($600+) but soon as I can get my hands on an affordable development board (e.g. Cello or HuskyBoard) will be glad to order one for Linux benchmarking.