The underlying problem here is that the cost of making an SoC is enormous. So to make, say, an ARM desktop class machine you have only a few choices:
1) Make your own SoC designed for the purpose. You can tailor it to meet your requirements precisely, but given the low volumes you'll be selling, your system will be at least $10,000 a box, likely more.
2) Use a designed-for-mobile SoC. This will hit your $200-$300 price point pretty easily (perhaps even sailing under it by a big margin), but the IO options will be bad, because mobile SoCs don't neeed SATA or PCIe. CPU performance is likely to be underwhelming because mobile SoCs are designed to hit a power consumption level that won't drain mobile batteries or make mobile devices overheat. Almost all the cheap devboards you can get today are in this category.
3) More recently we're starting to see server or networking SoCs, which gives you an option a bit like 2 but with different cost and expansion tradeoffs. Generally a bit more expensive than 2 because networking won't hit mobile volumes, but better I/O capability. CPU power may still be less than you might like. Examples here are the Macchiatobin board and the dev box that Socionext announced last week.
I don't think anybody disagrees that a proper desktop class machine for these architectures would be great; but there are huge economic barriers to getting there. Personally if I was looking at getting a new ARM setup I'd try something in class 2, likely the Socionext box when it becomes available (end of the year, I think they said).
Raptor Computing Systems will sell you a 4 core POWER9 CPU for $340 each [1]. A desktop mobo with the kinds of features discussed shouldn't be more than a few hundred dollars if slimmed down to one socket and a reasonable but limited set of peripherals (the Talos mobos go a bit over the top with features and hence are >$1k). Someone just has to design one, which is not easy or inexpensive, then hope that developers actually buy them.
It's a few hundred dollars if you have the market volume to sell it at that price. IBM have the volume (presumably mostly for servers) so they can do it. You can't spend the amount it costs to make a new SoC based only on the "hope" that people buy it; you need a business plan that says where the volume will come from, and there aren't enough customers for a developer box alone to provide that volume, so the dev box uses will always be a sideline from something else.
You can get lots of dev boards for existing SoCs. They have the problems of no PCIe, no SATA, etc that the n^parent was complaining about. If you want those features you first have to identify an SoC that has those; my claim is essentially that such pre-existing SoCs with the kind of features you want in a "developer box" are so thin on the ground as to be pretty nearly nonexistent. "Use a preexisting SoC" is what my classes 2 and 3 are.
Nah, the problem is the SOC mental model where you don't provide a generic IO bus. What ARM/etc really needs is a device with a decent memory and PCIe interface. Random board manufactures can then glue on the ethernet/sata/USB for a few bucks a function utilizing 3rd party chips that can be found on boards frequently costing less than $10.
That way instead of spending millions designing a SOC for each tier of devices you design a "generic" device and sell the ones with busted cores/cache/ram channels/whatever as low end developer machines after fusing the broken functionality off.
It's the lowest possible effort custom design you could make. The only major difference between the three generations of Pi SoCs (BCM2835, 2836, 2837) is the CPU, so it's a 5 year old SoC designed for set top boxes with a single IP block swapped out.
1) Make your own SoC designed for the purpose. You can tailor it to meet your requirements precisely, but given the low volumes you'll be selling, your system will be at least $10,000 a box, likely more.
2) Use a designed-for-mobile SoC. This will hit your $200-$300 price point pretty easily (perhaps even sailing under it by a big margin), but the IO options will be bad, because mobile SoCs don't neeed SATA or PCIe. CPU performance is likely to be underwhelming because mobile SoCs are designed to hit a power consumption level that won't drain mobile batteries or make mobile devices overheat. Almost all the cheap devboards you can get today are in this category.
3) More recently we're starting to see server or networking SoCs, which gives you an option a bit like 2 but with different cost and expansion tradeoffs. Generally a bit more expensive than 2 because networking won't hit mobile volumes, but better I/O capability. CPU power may still be less than you might like. Examples here are the Macchiatobin board and the dev box that Socionext announced last week.
I don't think anybody disagrees that a proper desktop class machine for these architectures would be great; but there are huge economic barriers to getting there. Personally if I was looking at getting a new ARM setup I'd try something in class 2, likely the Socionext box when it becomes available (end of the year, I think they said).