Single-board computer (SBC) support

[romanzac]

Nim is an excellent choice for systems with limited resources. Single-board computers (SBCs) are widely used in educational institutions, ranging from high schools to universities. This is also true for devices like routers and other appliances that typically operate 24/7 in our homes.

Adding support for SBCs would enable:

• Children and students of all ages to engage with web3 technologies early in their lives.
• Individuals to participate in the libp2p network continuously with minimal operational costs.
• Families in developing countries to remain connected without the need for a laptop or desktop computer.

Preliminary research indicates that the following CPUs are among the most popular for SBCs: ARM Cortex-A9, ARMv8, and Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series.

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This issue tracks the both support and CI integration for the following platforms:

• [ ] ARM Cortex-A9
• [ ] ARM32 v8
• [ ] Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series

[mratsim]

Have you tried it?

nim-libp2p has been running on Rpi 3 and 4 and on phones since 2019-2020

• https://twitter.com/i/status/1224769743892230151
• https://ethereum.org/en/developers/tutorials/run-node-raspberry-pi/
• https://ethereum-on-arm-documentation.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

[kaiserd]

@mratsim Thank you for the input :).

One part of this issue, too, should be test coverage and having CI runs for these platforms. Also, let's make the issue more actionable and list the concrete platforms we aim to support in the future. (I just edited that in the OP)

[mratsim]

We use to have ARM Travis CI. But then Travis became insanely pricy after they were bought by a private equity fund.

For my own ARM testing I'm looking at Oracle Cloud free tier.

[romanzac]

Issue is related to #980