SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The goal of the EOMA (Embedded Open Modular Architecture) project is to introduce the idea of being ethically responsible about both the ecological and the financial resources required to design, manufacture, acquire and maintain our personal computing devices. The EOMA68 standard is a freely-accessible, royalty-free, unencumbered hardware standard formulated and tested over the last five years around the ultra-simple philosophy of "just plug it in: it will work".
With devices built following this standard, one can upgrade the CPU-card (consisting of CPU, RAM and some local storage) of a device while keeping the same housing (e.g. laptop). One can also use the CPU-card in different devices (e.g. unplug CPU-card from laptop, plug into desktop); or use a replaced/discarded CPU-card from a laptop for NAS storage or a micro-server. There are housings currently available for a laptop (can be 3D-printed in full, or in part to replace parts that break) and a micro-desktop; and there are plans for others like routers or tablets in the future.
There are multiple articles talking about this project and analyzing the hardware, for example from ThinkPenguin, CNXSoft or EngadgetNG. There is also a recent live-streamed video introducing the project.
(Score: 1) by mafm on Monday August 01 2016, @06:17PM
It's true that the specs of the current CPU-card are probably not enough for desktop usage for many people. Some people who don't use many applications or browser tabs at the same time might be happy with the specs for desktops, or they might like to have an extremely light laptop that they can 3D-print and repair for years if parts break.
I think that it's good for micro-servers now and for years to come, or routers or devices like tablets, if the ecosystem thrives and such housings are created (there are plans about that).
Also, there are plans to look into ARM 64-bit CPUs (and other architectures) for future CPU-cards, some work has already been done in that regard.