Please forgive the noobishness of the question. I have been interested in single board computers for a few years now, but wish to dive a little deeper. The SoPine module interests me, as I can certainly understand it's use in projects that are big enough to make it worthwhile to make my own boards.
Bluntly, I cannot seem to find anything to 'plug it into' besides the compute io module I could also purchase. Great for testing, but it seems like I might be better off in that case just getting a Pine64.
So here comes the noob question: what else could I plug it into? It isn't RAM, so certainly not a motherboard. I have seen on these forums that people are working on boards to hold and power multiple sopines; Is there anything else like this out there already, or other examples of things I could do with the sopine, short of having my own boards made, which is far beyond what my current abilities/projects demand.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
The main reason to make a module variant for a SoC really is integration into your own hardware projects... a lot of embedded systems for all kinds of applications need some higher level system running a OS like Linux for UI/networking/communication functions while the rest is done by specialized hardware (control systems, machine interfaces,.....). Designing in and obtaining a SoC like the A64 is a risky, time and cost ineffective path if you don't have some higher production volume... so you usually get the SoC with all the components that are required on a module and put that on your custom hardware design. This approach usually makes it also easier to upgrade in the future. There are whole companies in the embedded systems field that specialized only in making families of modules that are interchangable like Enclustra, Toradex or Phytec, to name a few...
when i purchased the sopine board and module part of my decision was based on the hope that pine64 would offer updated modules that could use the board and offer an increase in performance over the current module on something close to a yearly basis. so far that has not been the case, thy instead are going into the boards with multiple modules. this will require significant advances in the software that i'm not sure currently exist. the multiple module boards will also put a damper on advancements in new modules because most users won't want to update 7 modules every year or so. as a result i'm less exited personally about the program because i have no use for a board with multiple modules.
(12-23-2017, 06:49 PM)dkryder Wrote: [ -> ]when i purchased the sopine board and module part of my decision was based on the hope that pine64 would offer updated modules that could use the board and offer an increase in performance over the current module on something close to a yearly basis. so far that has not been the case, thy instead are going into the boards with multiple modules. this will require significant advances in the software that i'm not sure currently exist. the multiple module boards will also put a damper on advancements in new modules because most users won't want to update 7 modules every year or so. as a result i'm less exited personally about the program because i have no use for a board with multiple modules.
We need to release teh more powerful SBC first and then move into compute module. Based on current trend, the next compute module candidate is either Allwinner H6 or Rockchip RK3399 and plan on release in 2018. W also need to make sure that new compute module can work on existing baseboard.