I saw lots of people clustered their RPis for different purposes (e.g. data mining, machine learning, big data storage and Hadoop and so on ...). As you know RPi has it's own drawbacks. For example lack of enough RAM or high speed IO busses (e.g. USB 3 or GbE). So I was thinking about a brand new board with these kind of capabilities at the same price and size. However as a trade off we have to remove some other stuffs from the board (i.e. HDMI, IO pins, 3 other USB ports, Audio Jack, power input -> we can use Ethernet cable/port instead).

What do you guys think about the idea? Is it even possible to design such board at around the price of RPi (~$35)?

Thanks