Re: Novena (ARM)

[Matt Thomas <matt%3am-software.com@localhost>]

On Apr 12, 2014, at 2:59 PM, Christian Koch <cfkoch%sdf.lonestar.org@localhost> 
wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 11:22:00PM +0200, Rhialto wrote:
>> A certain "Bunnie" guy (famous from XBox hacking and other things) has
>> designed an open hardware computer and is doing a crowdfunding:
>> 
>> https://www.crowdsupply.com/kosagi/novena-open-laptop
>> 
>> "Novena is a 1.2GHz, Freescale quad-core ARM architecture computer
>> closely coupled with a Xilinx FPGA. It's designed for users who care
>> about open source, and/or want to modify and extend their hardware: all
>> the documentation for the PCBs is open and free to download, the entire
>> OS is buildable from source, and it comes with a variety of features
>> that facilitate rapid prototyping. "
>> 
>> Given that it is ARM, would NetBSD run on it automatically, or isn't it
>> that simple?
>> 
>> -Olaf.
> 
> It's not THAT simple, but it's pretty simple. Take a look at the snags the
> Raspbery Pi throws at you. The fact that Novena is completely documented would
> make getting NetBSD to work on it even simpler than most.
> 
> Thanks for sharing, looks pretty cool!

Compared to wandboard and other imx6 based platforms, it's quite expensive.  I 
wonder why then just didn't use the Xilinx Zynq and combine the CPU and FPGA in 
a simple part.  See http://www.parallela.org for a board like that.