[Open-graphics] Linuduino?

[Tim Schmidt]

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS2604014904.html

Atmel's now sampling a 400Mhz Arm-based SOC that runs at 400Mhz and
draws 80mW at full power.  It's got plenty of integrated peripherals,
including several SD card interfaces and SPI serial interfaces, 10/100
ethernet, and all sorts of other goodies.

It runs Linux, and costs $7 in quantities of 10,000

I'm a big fan or arduinos ( http://www.arduino.cc/
http://www.freeduino.org/ ).  This seems like the perfect device to
build a more-capable version for a similar cost.

It's got 64K of rom built-in, which seems like enough for a bootloader
that could boot USB or over the network.  Etherboot / GPXE certainly
fits in less.  SD cards are getting cheaper by the day, so I wouldn't
even solder any flash onto the thing, just ship it with an SD slot.
The console could be redirected over a serial port or the network
connection easily enough.  It would be pretty easy to build breakout
boards (much like arduino shields) that could contain anything from a
SATA controller to a Wifi IC (they're commonly attached through SPI in
the embedded world).

It seems like, for around $40, one could build a fairly capable linux
machine with plenty of GPIO lines, and expandability through SPI, USB,
and Ethernet.

Anyone up for a challenge?

--tim