Is POP designed aka RAM on top of SOC requested by 96 boards ?
As we can’t use Kirin 960 on max frequency as it can’t pass heat over RAM module
It is impossible to cool Kirin 960 on 2,4GHz on big cores.
I remember raspberry pi 1 that also use POP design with RAM on top and next versions use RAM module on other side of board. It is nice solution for mobile phones but I think it is useless for boards like this, except it lower cost.
i don’t think it’s required by 96boards as db410 and many others do not follow it. most probably the kirin 960 is available only in a POP config
Agree with Sahaj, PoP is neither required nor prohibited in the 96Boards spec… it’s entirely up to the board designer whether to use PoP or not.
For parts that run hot it is also up to the board designer whether to allocate space underneath the board to help dissipate heat (db410c has lots of copper underneath to allow removal of heat from the CPU on the top… although db410c is pretty good for heat dissipation so I’ve never seen this feature used much).
But db410 use kind of slow qualcomm cpu with 1,4GHz
Kirim 960 Cortex A73 on 2,4GHz is kind of different compute level
Kirim 960 is running kind of fine on 2,1GHz, but we would be able to run it on more then 2,4GHz with nice heat sink and without that stupid RAM on top of SOC 
@danielt @xlazom00 interested in trying this on the 960? https://www.seeedstudio.com/Raspberry-Pi-Ultimate-Cooling-Dual-Fan-p-2926.html
I have better one, made from copper with fan
but max 2,1GHz with CPU intensive computing
I didn’t mean to imply DB410C was equivalent with Hikey960 in terms of power dissipation (this is obviously not the case). Only that the 96Boards spec imposes very few restrictions on how a board designer chooses to manage heat. The height limit on top of the board in the most obvious restriction (board designers are permitted to work round this by exploiting the fact there is no height limit on the underside of the board).
@ric96: I interestedly read about how different people are cooling 96Boards but personally I’ll be keeping all my Consumer Edition boards passively cooled… I’m content to accept that the high frequencies are only for interactive bursts. I’d probably think different if and when a has-lots-of-RAM Enterprise Edition board comes out though.
