Yokemate of Keyboards
Posts: 2794 from 2006/3/21
From: Northern Calif...
Quote:
Andreas_Wolf wrote:
> my Pine64 [...] uses the exact same 64bit ARM CPU, as the Raspberry Pi 3.
> I wonder if it has any other identical components?
While the SoCs of the Raspberry Pi 3 and the Pine64 have the same CPU cores (Cortex-A53) at the same quantity (four) running at the same clock rate (1.2 GHz), the SoCs are not the same. It's the Broadcom BCM2837 in the Raspberry Pi 3 and the Allwinner A64 in the Pine64. That's why the GPUs are different. The BCM2837 contains the Broadcom VideoCore IV while the A64 contains the ARM Mali-400 MP2.
Interesting! Thanks for that info, though I'm sure I would have figured it out eventually, if I took more time to read, instead of quickly skimming through web content, and moving on to something else, but since those items are not high on my priority list of things to do, or items to play with right now, I don't spend much time researching them. Later, when I have more time to learn, as I prepare to actually use the Pine64 for a project, or get Linux running on it, I will spend the required time to read more about what other people are doing with their Pine64, and what drivers are available for it. The home security options interest me the most for that device, so I hope they are making good progress with Z-wave tools working on it.
I'll have to read up on the video core used in the Pine64 to find out if it is easier to program for, as I had read previously that the Broadcom GPU used in the Raspberry Pi series of boards is difficult to get documentation for, so writing a native driver for say MorphOS, to be able to use the RPi's GPU directly, and get 1080p resolution with 3D support, might be very difficult, or impossible. I hope that is not true, and don't see why Broadcom would withhold such information on a device intended for teaching and learning, but stranger things have happened in the computer world before, so I shouldn't be surprised. I also read here in these forums criticism of the All-Winner SOC's lack of documentation which would make writing native drivers difficult, or impossible.
Without full support of the GPU, the RPi & Pine64 boards are much less powerful for general use as a computing device, when they also have to do software rendering.
MorphOS - The best Next Gen Amiga choice.
