The BeagleBoard

[Dave]

http://beagleboard.org/

I used one of these to simulate an auto-associative neural network as part of a robot I built for my undergrad final year project and quite enjoyed using it. It's an open source board based on an OMAP (ARM-based) processor designed by TI an can run Linux. It's also been targeted as a platform to run RISC OS (the OS written for the original line of ARM based desktop computers from Acorn).

I found it very easy to get Linux running on and playing with the interface pins using the generic GPIO driver. My only complaints are that the voltage level for the interface pins is 1.8v which is a little awkward when designing other hardware that runs on 3.3-5v (e.g., micro-controllers). Also, there's no built-in Ethernet based networking.

[Avayan]

It seems we will always be destined to have voltage incompatibilities. From 2000 to 2005 I was bombarded with 3.3V microcontrollers, and I just hated their existence as everything I had was 5V tolerant. The need to have level shifters in between controllers and loads, was annoying enough to not even bothering to consider the 3.3V controllers. Plus I could do anything I wanted with an AVR, anyway.

Then in 2006 I started to work with the MSP430 and have been doing 3.3V microcontrolling ever since with no issue whatsoever. It seems that by this time, there was enough 3.3V tolerant peripherals and everything has been golden.

Still, I have started to see the 1.8V controllers lurking for some time and something tells me the same annoyance could show up any time now. Except, that some companies are making a good deal of these controllers to be 3.3V tolerant by including internal level shifters, internal buck-boost regulators, and such.

So although the cores will eventually go to the 1.8V arena (or even lower), we may not need to face this dilemma when pairing them to our peripherals. I am not singing victory yet, though...