Entries on a StrongARM processor card postcard!
At the recent Southwest Show, CJE Micro’s were showing off a prototype version of a new RISC OS computer based around an IGEPv5 (Cortex A15) processor, and Andrew Conroy told me that they were planning a competition to name the new computer.
That competition has now been officially launched.
With previous computers from CJE, the boards used have had names that fairly easily adapt themselves to something meaningful: PandaRO, for example, which indicates that it’s a PandaBoard-based computer running RISC OS. It’s not a name that could be called inspired, but it’s certainly a functional, practical one.
The new computer, however, is based on an ISEE IGEPv5 device, an OMAP5432 board which features an ARM Cortex A15 CPU – and, as Chris Evans points out in his announcement, none of that rolls off the tongue or is easily adaptable into a straightforward name.
The floor is open, therefore, for RISC OS users to don their thinking caps and come up with a good name for this new computer – and there’s a £200 discount on offer to whoever comes up with the name that is eventually chosen.
Additional specifications, if they are helpful in the search for that spark of inspiration, are that the computer will come with 4GB of DDR3 RAM (2GB of which is available for RISC OS), it features a SATA interface, a maximum clock rate (before overclocking) of 1.7GHz, and current benchmarks seem to put it at 178% of the speed of Cortex-A9 systems (such as the PandaBoard and i.MX6) when running RISC OS.
The winner will be picked by CJE Micro’s/4D at their sole discretion, and they reserve the right to adapt the winning name if they feel it necessary – or even not to use it at all – for the final product. The closing date is not yet set, but will not be before 1st May, 2015.
Entries should be sent by email to sales@cjemicros.co.uk – and, seeking clarification as a result of a minor kerfuffle over CJE’s mailing list a couple of years ago, Chris informs me that entrants will receive an email acknowledging their entry, and requesting permission for their details to be added to the mailing list.
So start thinking folks!
