072808a.jpgThe BeagleBoard is a new computer that has me going doing down a spiral of depression (yes, it is that good). It's a three inch square board, based on the Texas Instruments OMAP3530, an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU on steroids doing a staggering 1200 MIPS:

- Over 1,200 Dhrystone MIPS using the superscalar ARM Cortex-A8 with highly accurate branch prediction and 256KB L2 cache running at up to 600MHz.
- OpenGL? ES 2.0 capable 2D/3D graphics accelerator capable of rendering 10 million polygons per second.
- HD video capable TMS320C64x+ DSP for versatile signal processing at up to 430MHz.
- USB power via complete chip-set with minimal additional power-consuming logic.
- DVI-D for connecting digital computer monitors
Compatibility with a huge collection of USB peripherals including hubs, keyboards, mice, WiFi, Bluetooth, web cameras, and much more.
- MMC+/SD/SDIO interface for memory or wireless connectivity.
- S-Video out for connecting your NTSC or PAL television or wearable visor.
- Stereo audio in and out for a microphone and headphones or speakers.
- Power via typical USB chargers for cell phones from your laptop, from an automobile adapter, from batteries, or even from a solar backpack.
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The funny thing comes when Texas Instruments is entering the "geek" camp, sporting a community driven web site and project farm for this product. This is exactly the same business as Genesi's, and even products collide: Both BeagleBoard and Efika are embedded CPU based computers, only that the later PowerPC based pales in comparison...
Strangely enough, BBRV have stated, on "PowerDeveloper.org", that they have developed a board with the same processor for Toshiba, which sells it at 99$ a pop... Where is it? I've been unable to find any reference to the OMAP 3530 in Toshiba's corporate site.

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Why? It seems like a cool little board and it's cheap, so why don't you simply buy it instead?

I wouldn't mind having SATA or at least PATA though, but no doubt there are lots of things this little board can be used for still!

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Well, I guess it's a winning strategy!

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The CPU itself seems comparable to the 5121e in specs in many ways, but 50% faster (and larger chache), and obviously *quite* tailored towards video. Should cost about the same in volume? For my personal taste however, in comparison *it lacks* some on board controllers as well, like SATA/PATA controllers and more important, ethernet(?). USB must be used to circumvent this. And it seems to even lack a standard PCI interface? So USB must be used for *any and all* extended functionality beyond whats already in the chip. Not necessarily a downer, depending on application of course, but if your application *needs* these functions it must surely be preferable with real controllers?

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Genesi is in no way tied to PPC only. AFAIK their "AURA" firmware effort is targeted for PPC, ARM and x86.

But in a MorphOS context, things are different, and the 5121e would be preferable over this ARM chip for several obvious reasons (ARM isn't even relevant in a MorphOS context, and neither is the board you mention).

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I hope that doesn't make me irrelevant. Qualifying things as irrelevant because we feel unconfortable with them is very human.

I agree with everything else you say, and I already knew about Genesi's ARM expertise: It's public information. It's interesting that we haven't seen any ARM based Genesi device yet, aside from that photo at a Toshiba booth some months ago. Does "AURA" only exist in this board?

I'm also happy to see that this news can be disturbing for us. I'm sure that, if the MorphOS team had the resources needed, they would be more than interested in having ARM in their hardware platform list.

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No, not because some "uncomfortable feeling", but because MorphOS is PPC and not ARM, and a similar PPC chip exists anyway.

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Well, speak for yourself. *I'm not* disturbed in any way, and I can't really understand why you would be disturbed either?

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It's not that ARM suddenly fell down from the sky; ARM is the dominant architecture in embedded computing targeted form consumer electronic devices, and has been for a *very* long time.

However, the entire MorphOS platform is PPC (which includes third party applications (and Amiga PPC applications as well), also from developers no longer present). Breaking with a legacy established by a 1.5 decade long evolution path and migrating to a different CPU architecture is not a trivial thing to do, and frankly I see no good reason to do it at this point either.

Lack of suitable CPU's is not the most pressing problem for MorphOS. I'm more concerned about the lack of a commercial purpose, strategy, unknown development path, etc.

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 29.06.2011 - 12:23 ]

> Strangely enough, BBRV have stated, on
> "PowerDeveloper.org", that they have developed a
> board with the same processor for Toshiba, which
> sells it at 99$ a pop... Where is it? I've been
> unable to find any reference to the OMAP 3530
> in Toshiba's corporate site.

BBRV said "same ARM core", not "same processor", so it would rather be strange if there was any reference to the OMAP3530 on Toshiba's site, especially since it's a TI CPU, not a Toshiba one.
However, Toshiba's TMPA910CRAXBG (the CPU on the BMSKTOPAS910, bigger picture, official site) has an ARM926EJ-S core (family: ARM9E, architecture version: ARMv5TEJ), whereas TI's OMAP3530 has a Cortex-A8 core (family: Cortex, architecture version: ARMv7-A). So the mystery as to which bplan/Genesi board with Cortex-A8 ARM processor BBRV referred to remains.

(reference)

> "Angstrom" which is evidently some embedded Linux
> that perhaps may have some merit or applicability
> to Efika.

http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/2007-12-images-efika-machines-uploaded

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 29.06.2011 - 12:21 ]

well cherrypal is fscked because the chip is b0rked. according to info on powerdevelper.org, hench why the genesi dev boards for the same chip have not gone out, they found bugs in the silicon and are waiting for a new revision.