The Next BeagleBone Better & Faster for Less!

[Tim Kientzle]

On Feb 21, 2013, at 7:17 AM, Ian Lepore wrote:

> On Thu, 2013-02-21 at 07:58 -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
>> On Feb 21, 2013, at 7:48 AM, Ian Lepore wrote:
>> 
>>> On Wed, 2013-02-20 at 23:49 -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
>>>> On Feb 20, 2013, at 11:13 PM, Brett Wynkoop wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> On Wed, 20 Feb 2013 23:49:03 -0500
>>>>> George Rosamond <george at ceetonetechnology.com> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> On 02/20/13 23:27, Alie Tan wrote:
>>>>>>> Just got a news about new Beaglebone:
>>>>>>> 
>>>>>>> http://beagleboard.org/unzipped/
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Wow.  Although personally, I could do without the HDMI.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> It would be ideal there was a stock FBSD image for them to provide for
>>>>>> purchasers... as in official on their www site as an alternative to
>>>>>> Linux.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> g
>>>>> 
>>>>> Greeting-
>>>>> 
>>>>> We need working USB support to contribute that to their site.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Is this new bone going to be the same as the old bone, but with video,
>>>>> in other words will current kernels run or will the hard core kernel
>>>>> folks have to rework things?
>>>> 
>>>> We'll likely have to rework thing, at least if we want to run out of flash on the card. it has a new flash chip that has micron markings on it. Sure would be nice to know what, exactly, that chip is…

I haven't found what SoC the new BeagleBone is
using, but the AM3359 used on the original BeagleBone
does support hardware ECC in the memory controller.

 "Section 7.1.1.1 GPMC (General Purpose Memory Controller) Features
   …
  • Up to 16-bit ECC support for NAND flash using BCH code (t=4, 8
     or 16) or Hamming code for 8-bit or 16-bit NAND-flash, organized
    with page size of 512 bytes, 1K bytes, or more."

There is also an "Error Location Module" documented in Section 7.4
of the TRM which seems to be the component that actually
implements the ECC coding and works with the GPMC.

Definitely a chunk of work to integrate, but it doesn't appear
to require that we implement software ECC.

Tim