[oe] FYI: Snowball (new low-cost board similar to beagle/panda)

[Han Hartgers]

> Next one in the list may be using an iMX6 from Freescale (in the page, this
> one is said to also target industrial applications and not only
> phones/tablets) :
> http://www.freescale.com/**webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?**
> code=IMX6X_SERIES<http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?code=IMX6X_SERIES>
> which will surely have its equivalent of the i.MX53's QSB :
> http://www.freescale.com/**webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.**
> jsp?code=IMX53QSB<http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB>
>
> What is the general impression of this I.MX53 Quick Starter board?
It looks to be in a similar league as the Beagleboard xM.
It has a more memory, Sata, 2 SD card slots.  But at the down side
complicated expansion connector and less USB ports.

The main advantage of this board would be the hardware video encoder and
decoder and the better(?) software stack for that part. But I don't know if
it is really as good as mentioned on the website.
But a bit of a strange choice to have a good hardware encoder/decoder but no
dvi/hdmi connector (needs a daughter board.)
This (better supported?) hardware encoder/decoder would push this cortex-a8
to the level of (or beyond) the Pandaboard with it's dual core Cortex-a9 on
this video point.

The website http://imxcommunity.org/ does not look very active. (more email
on the beagle and panda mailing lists.)

I hope to hear from someone that owns / played with this board how it really
"works". Is there anyone with some experience with this board?

Greetings,

Han