Anyway, I think a few picture may illustrate the point about size, it's posing with a MicroSD next to the MicroSD slot, a full size SD card, a 2.5" HD in a caddy, a PCMCIA card and a mobile phone -just to give some idea of scale.
New Atom + Poulsbo motherboard arrived -no moving parts
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New Atom + Poulsbo motherboard arrived -no moving parts
Some people here may remember my obsession with small to tiny motherboards, even if they're not always silent (or in the case of the Via Pico ITX, really very loud). But I think my new very, very small motherboard might be of interest to people here; it has no moving parts whatsoever; integrated flash (2GB) and integrated RAM (512MB), so it should be completely silent (it's only just been dropped of by UPS so I don't know yet, it might have a terrible whine)
Anyway, I think a few picture may illustrate the point about size, it's posing with a MicroSD next to the MicroSD slot, a full size SD card, a 2.5" HD in a caddy, a PCMCIA card and a mobile phone -just to give some idea of scale.
Anyway, I think a few picture may illustrate the point about size, it's posing with a MicroSD next to the MicroSD slot, a full size SD card, a 2.5" HD in a caddy, a PCMCIA card and a mobile phone -just to give some idea of scale.
what sort of connections does it have? Have to go read up and see what fun it could be used for.My guess would be Portwell NANO-8044 or Portwell NANO-8045.Blue_Sky wrote:What is it? I've been waiting for something exactly like that to come out for my file server.
http://www.portwell.com/products/detail ... =NANO-8044
http://www.portwell.com/products/detail ... =NANO-8045
It's a good bit smaller than both of those boards! It's actually a Toradex Robin (84x55mm).dougz wrote:My guess would be Portwell NANO-8044 or Portwell NANO-8045.Blue_Sky wrote:What is it? I've been waiting for something exactly like that to come out for my file server.
http://www.portwell.com/products/detail ... =NANO-8044
http://www.portwell.com/products/detail ... =NANO-8045
To answer the question about interfaces, it has:
1x Gigabit LAN
1x SATA (not capable of 150MB/s speeds)
5x USB host
1x USB client
1x PCI Express (x1, with expresscard support)
3x SDIO
It also has LPC, 8xGPIO and I2C supported by a USB controller (HID class).
It's probably not the best basis for a file server, only having capability for one SATA port which is limited in performance and PCI express x1 for adding another controller.
One of the best capabilities though is that it runs from a DC supply of 4.75V -14.5V which means it can run directly from a 12V battery.
Specs & prices
As is usually the case, miniaturization is not cheap -- http://www.toradex.com/En/Products/Robin_Z530_Z510|Romeo| wrote:It's actually a Toradex Robin (84x55mm).
Re: Specs & prices
Certainly not cheap.dougz wrote:As is usually the case, miniaturization is not cheap -- http://www.toradex.com/En/Products/Robin_Z530_Z510|Romeo| wrote:It's actually a Toradex Robin (84x55mm).
However, it's not as bad value as it first appears, because it has integrated RAM, flash and PSU. Comparing this to (for example) a Via PICO ITX, it's actually surprisingly good value!
PX1000G £145
RAM £10
SSD £25
WI-PSU £28
Total £208
Robin with heatsink £168
Which is a £40 cheaper to go with the Robin which is smaller, faster and uses less power. Unsurprisingly I did this sum before I bought it, which made the switch a no brainer -it's almost a 20% cost saving per unit
Is it just me who wonders what sort of webserver cluster could you do by putting like say 16 of these in a 1U chassis...? It has 2GB of flash on board, aplenty for Linux + your PHP app. If one eats say 6W the whole thing is less than 100W -- and that's it. Compare the price, the performance and this power consumption to, say, a quad core Xeon server. I am sure 8 Atom cores beat a single Xeon core.
I imagine you can lay down 8 (8*5.5cm still less than 19") and then have two layers, each layer can be 2.2cm or so high, surely aplenty even with the heatsink which is 1.14 cm high according to its datasheet.
Of course you would need the a number of fans to cool it but nothing too bad for a rackserver. Heck if you are blowing it with strong 8cm blowers, it can be that the heatsink is unnecessary totally.
Adding a 16 port switch would be fairly trivial within the same 1U space as the board claims less than 10cm in depth.
I imagine you can lay down 8 (8*5.5cm still less than 19") and then have two layers, each layer can be 2.2cm or so high, surely aplenty even with the heatsink which is 1.14 cm high according to its datasheet.
Of course you would need the a number of fans to cool it but nothing too bad for a rackserver. Heck if you are blowing it with strong 8cm blowers, it can be that the heatsink is unnecessary totally.
Adding a 16 port switch would be fairly trivial within the same 1U space as the board claims less than 10cm in depth.
