Low Powered Mini ARM? It is Now Possible | Hacker News Reader

Low Powered Mini ARM? It is Now Possible

thechromesource.com

16 pointsdcawrey11 comments

The article is a little misleading. It uses an off-the-shelf Cortex-M3 processor core; the real innovation is in the clever power management system they use, and in integrating a microchip and a battery and a solar panel into a single tiny unit. They're looking at using it for wireless sensor networks, and adapting it to use other energy sources so they could use it in medical implants.

This kinda reminds me of IGLOO, Actel's 5 µW flash-based FPGA that can run an ARM Cortex-M1. Their product page even has a similar image as the OP with a little chip next to a penny.

http://www.actel.com/products/iglooseries/default.aspx

Has anyone ever worked with one of these?

(disclosure: I wrote some unrelated software for Actel a few years ago)

I posted an article based on a Asus prototype here: http://www.thechromesource.com/chrome-os-support-from-qualco...

And that was friggin 2009!

Does anyone know of a desktop or laptop powered by an ARM running Linux?

If by laptop you mean "non-netbook", then...not that I'm aware of. If you allow tablet/netbook sorts of things, there's the Touch Book, from the (in my opinion) goofily-named Always Innovating, which looks pretty neat to me: http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/

A quick google suggests there are others as well: http://www.slashgear.com/wistron-n900z-smartbook-sub-200-arm...

I ordered one of the netbooks from Always Innovating, but they never shipped it. They kept promising to ship their backlog, but never did. Then I mailed them and asked to cancel my order, but never heard back on that either.

I was semi-seriously considering placing an order when they first announced it, but feared pretty much exactly that -- sounds like my fears may not have been unreasonable. Hopefully you can get that dealt with.

The BeagleBoard (http://beagleboard.org/) may count as desktop. It's a tiny board with a 600 MHz Omap3 with 256MB RAM and the ability to play HD-Video. Power consumption is less than 3 Watt.

I own one and it's fun to play with, although the display resolution is limited to 720p (maybe even 1280x1024) and a standard Linux desktop is pretty slow on it - Angstrom is better.

I hope there will be something nettop like with tegra 2 / omap4 / nec's new platform in the near future, I'm looking for something like that as a replacement of my current desktop. Also boxee 2 might be interesting...

I just stumbled on another site regarding ARM development boards: http://www.armdesigner.com/KIT%20OMAP3530.html

this is interesting, yet is somewhat uninspiring

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