CM4Ext Nano m.2 feature requests

[harlab]

CM4Ext Nano m.2 baseboard feature requests are welcome here

[gabyavra]

Any renderings so far? Or expected date for release?

[harlab]

Any renderings so far? Or expected date for release?

@gabyavra So far only render for connectors placement, because we want to hear some feedback

[Azkali]

Hi thanks for opening a repo for this project !
I will definitely buy one along the 7" touch screen ( or the 5" haven't decided yet ) PCB !
It fits entirely the needs for my project ! Keep up the good work !

[Azkali]

Hope that the project is still planned, I have a feature request which would speaker support ( some of those tiny 8ohm ones for example that can be seen in Nintendo DS ).
That would make it a very strong entrypoint for a modular smartphone ( seems that you already had this idea in mind with the product )

[harlab]

@Azkali had to take vacations and fly somewhere) Project is still planed. This one is likely not to have dedicated audio, as components take almost all available PCB space

Regarding modular smartphone... I actually have non-modular something based on CM3L with 5'' LCD+CTP, PCIe slot for LTE, battery charge, audio jack: HP+MIC, 2xUSB2.0, HDMI, WiFi and IMU. But this is not something I'd like not to call a smartphone, since a lot of work needed on a software side to make it work like a smartphone. Plus battery life is an issue, as CMs are missing low power cores and other power saving features

[gabyavra]

Great news

http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2021/raspberry-pi-can-boot-nvme-ssds-now

Any progress with the board?

[harlab]

@gabyavra thanks for keeping interest in our boards. We do follow Jeff’s blog and good to see NVMe to be officially supported soon. That definitely pushes us to speed up development and the board is still planned. To be fair, it has 3rd priority after: importing produced CM4Ext Nano and spoiler alert Nano with 2xUSB3.0 type-A connectors. Priority doesn’t mean those things are scheduled one after another, we do our best to keep that in parallel

[tmeers]

Looks like the render has 3 ports for DSI/CSI, is that possibly for dual CSI?

[harlab]

@tmeers that’s intended for dual CSI.

[vijaykrp]

@harlab. Very interesting project and I would like to make a feature request to support Google's M.2 Accelerator with Dual Edge TPU. Currently there are no SBC's available that support this module (google-coral/edgetpu#256) as it requires 2x PCIe Gen2 x1 interfaces on E-key slot.

Not sure if my request is feasible. But with dual CSI and TPU accelerators, I think it will make a very good option for AI applications.

[harlab]

Hi @vijaykrp
Raspberry Pi CM4 has limitation of the PCIe root complex and doesn't support 64-bit wide accesses, so we don't know if someone got TPU working with CM4 on PCIe
This issue discussed on Raspberry Pi Forums here https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=98&t=293248 and some other topics.
So something has to be done on Raspberry Pi side (CM5?) or Google (new ASIC revision/fw update)