Electronics > Manufacturing & Assembly

Compute module alternatives or purchasable ARM chips?

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loki42:
I'm looking for something like the RPi CM4. However they have absolutely no availability and I'd be scared about them having none in the future if they do become available.  What other options do I have at similar price and performance?

Processor Type:   ARM Cortex A72 or faster.  1 gb RAM, 9 W power budget,  price around $50 for SOM. Quantity 500-1000 to start with. Need something faster than an A53.

Do any of the tablet / chrome book ARM makers let you buy the chips in smaller quantities? 1 reel...

SMTech:
Commercial users can get Pi's that you might never see as "in stock", the system works although we haven't tried it in that volume... . The supply issues for Pi's are the same as for the alternatives, and they should be easing. As you've probably noticed there are lots of alternatives that are stocked quite well, but none of them offer the raw compute you are after, often they do beat a Pi in one chosen metric such as connectivity or hardware decoding. The powerful alternatives are just as hard to buy, expensive and don't have those organised commercial channels that exist for the Pi.

If you have the requisite skills and time to design your own, then if you found a chip you thought looked viable you should be able to talk to the manufacturer or reginal disti about your plans and get a sensible price, I don't think this is any less risky than choosing a Pi CM4 tho'. Certainly they are quite happy to sell in pretty much any qty and depending on how exciting your project sounds, might have other help to offer.

loki42:
A few vendors seem to have Qualcomm and Rockchip stuff. I can find a lot of A53 parts cheap but i hope something that's not 10 years old might be available. There's a Rockchip RK3566 with A55 cores which might be quick enough.

As far as chip are you suggesting I should just pester Qualcomm / MediaTek / Amlogic etc? Are they actually interested in smaller orders? I've designed MIPI stuff before but never DDR4 so I think the routing will be a lot more scary.

The low end Intel stuff looks like amazing value. They are $15 and seem to have pretty amazing performance. I'm not sure how hard routing a board for them is though, docs etc.

SMTech:

--- Quote from: loki42 on June 04, 2023, 09:24:44 am ---A few vendors seem to have Qualcomm and Rockchip stuff. I can find a lot of A53 parts cheap but i hope something that's not 10 years old might be available. There's a Rockchip RK3566 with A55 cores which might be quick enough.

As far as chip are you suggesting I should just pester Qualcomm / MediaTek / Amlogic etc? Are they actually interested in smaller orders? I've designed MIPI stuff before but never DDR4 so I think the routing will be a lot more scary.

The low end Intel stuff looks like amazing value. They are $15 and seem to have pretty amazing performance. I'm not sure how hard routing a board for them is though, docs etc.

--- End quote ---

First port of call your sales person, or relevant technical specialist for the reseller, you shouldn't need to be buying 10k or whatever of these to get them interested in coming to see you, 500 of these is still quite an expensive order line and certainly tasty enough if it repeats, they may then make the introduction to someone @ Qualcomm/Rockchip etc. We've had this for something as dull as a relay before ... It is almost certainly harder to deal with some of those people directly, but every manufacturer interfaces with the end user differently.

I'm not a layout person, but if you had something that did PoP memory that would solve that routing issue.

As well as the (premature??) reassurances of Pi availability in the press from Eben, we have heard reassuring stock talk via lets say "other channels" , I genuinely think its about to get much better.

asmi:

--- Quote from: loki42 on June 04, 2023, 09:24:44 am ---As far as chip are you suggesting I should just pester Qualcomm / MediaTek / Amlogic etc? Are they actually interested in smaller orders? I've designed MIPI stuff before but never DDR4 so I think the routing will be a lot more scary.
--- End quote ---
No need to be scared. Most morern SoCs come with reference designs for memory interfaces which you can simply replicate in your designs. Infact, I heard some vendors will not provide support for you if you don't follow their reference designs.
Take a look at NXP i.MX 8QuadPlus/QuadMax. These seems like monster SoCs with array of various cores, so maybe one of them will suit you.


--- Quote from: loki42 on June 04, 2023, 09:24:44 am ---The low end Intel stuff looks like amazing value. They are $15 and seem to have pretty amazing performance. I'm not sure how hard routing a board for them is though, docs etc.

--- End quote ---
Your company will need to execute a corporate NDA with Intel, that will give you access to their development portal with all kinds of resources, including reference HW designs and code examples for pretty much everything they make - from 5W super-lowend embedded SoCs all the way to latest and greatest Xeons.

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