Quote:

I would like to point out that there is a big difference between a consumer product and a development platform which is being sold at a subsidized price (PandaBoard, etc.).

Consumer products using the same Samsung processor are substantially more expensive.

ASiegel,Quote:

As long as it is sold to everyone without qualification, its still worthy of consideration.

Quote:

What makes you think they're subsidised?
You can get entire tablets for less than the price of those boards.

Quote:

They're also quite different. They have more components as well as screens and cases. They're also often radio devices so have to undergo an expensive certification process. Most of all, they likely have a rather hefty profit margin.

I don't care if it is a development platform.
Its fairly powerful and cheap.

Quote:

Tell that to the Teron/"AmigaOne" users (albeit that wasn't even cheap, and not particularly powerful!)...

Oh yeah, the Articia chipset.
Forgot about that one.

Think Genesi has yet?

No, seriously, I doubt this ARM design has THAT bad a flaw.

And quad-core! We've been discusing ASMP, SMP, Abox, Qbox, and Qusrk.

With that many cores, why not consider what could be done.

Heck, even the new Qorlq based products are offer insane numbers of processor cores.

>> I don't care if it is a development platform. Its fairly [...] cheap.

> Tell that to the Teron/"AmigaOne" users (albeit that wasn't even cheap [...])

Actually, the Teron boards were evaluation boards (for MAI's potential customers to evaluate the Articia chipset for potential own future products), not development boards. It's quite usual in the semiconductor industry to sell evaluation systems for manyfold the price of development systems.

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7713&forum=3&start=9

Well there's dev boards and then there's dev boards.

Dev boards for hardware developers are usually hideously expensive and usually broken in many different ways. They are products that are in development so they'll have all manner of weird debug interfaces and dip switches for settings. It's not unusual for you to have to write your own BSP just to get it to boot!

That said once these things get cleaned up they often become the basis for actual products.


The beagle board started a new trend because it was a different kind of board altogether. It's targeted at software developers and is more aimed at starting an ecosystem. These became available once the chip was on sale so they actually work. The biggest change was the price, they cost a lot less money.

It was a good trick. Everyone does boards like this now, and there's more coming...

minator,
Quote:

Yep, and they just keep getting cooler.

Development board vs. evaluation board Andreas?
Now we're really spliting hairs.

The main difference I see is the one minator pointed out (the "weird debug interfaces and dip switches for settings" included on development boards).

The primary purpose of the board I pointed to is to allow a hardware or software designer to become familiar with the Exynos 4412 Quad Core CPU Module.

In a way, I guess it is a subsidized price as the price of the DroidX board is only $10 more then the CPU module alone.

But who cares? Its a bargain.

If I had time for another toy, I'd buy one and the LCD panel.

Wonder how well Linux hosted AROS could be made to run on this thing?
Its GPU is a little weak, but the processor core performs fairly well.

Edit - Checking with Staf Verhaegen (an AROS developer with an interest in MorphOS - he owns a MorphOS equipped Powermac).
Something tells me this might actually be pretty easy. Both the Cortex A9 and the Mali400 are supported devices.


Both are generally over-priced, while the former do tend to have all the debugging ports and other devices minator mentions.

[ Edited by Jim 14.10.2012 - 03:23 ]

Hopes for 2013?

How about a 2GHz Quad core Cortex A15MP with a eight core Mali-T658 GPU?

It is possible.

Samsung Exynos 5450.

Maybe the time to start planning the ISA change is now.

I wasn't able to work with IBM, and Freescale processors continue to be late and expensive, but I'd be willing to bet that processor/GPU modules with this combination will be available at "reasonable" prices by next year.

It woudn't be nearly as difficult to work with this as the task undertaken by Aeon.

[ Edited by Jim 14.10.2012 - 04:08 ]

> Development board vs. evaluation board Andreas? Now we're really spliting hairs.

Tell that to Freescale who sell their evaluation boards for manyfold the price of their development boards, both for the very same chip, as outlined in the thread I linked to.

> The main difference I see is the one minator pointed out (the "weird debug
> interfaces and dip switches for settings" included on development boards).

This is what he pointed out as a feature of development boards for *hardware* developers vs. development boards for *software* developers.

> Both are generally over-priced

I wouldn't say so.

> The primary purpose of the board I pointed to is to allow a hardware or software
> designer to become familiar with the Exynos 4412 Quad Core CPU Module.

If I understand minator right, he says it's a board primarily targeted at software developers, not so much at hardware developers.

> Wonder how well Linux hosted AROS could be made to run on this thing?

I guess it should already run:

"linux-arm-system
The hosted version for Linux/ARM. [...] Please note that this version requires at least an ARMv6 CPU with VFP unit."
http://aros.sourceforge.net/nightly.php

> Something tells me this might actually be pretty easy. Both the Cortex A9
> and the Mali400 are supported devices.

Yes, the Cortex-A9 core meets the "at least an ARMv6 CPU with VFP unit" requirement, and the GPU support doesn't need to be inside AROS anyway as this is handled by the underlying Linux.

>If I understand minator right, he says it's a board primarily targeted at software developers, not so much at hardware developers.

In this case, I'm not sure he's right.
The company wants to sell CPU modules.
While the board is (typical of a development board) poorly laid out, and is primarily a software development platform, hardware developers are likely to purchase these to speed dvelopment.
For example, if I wanted to build a device that used the CPU module, I'd probably purchase a few of the board level products to evaluate areas where the form factor could be improved.
In the case of the DroidX, a mini-itx layout would be preferable as it would also standardized cases to be used.


And what Freescale calls evalution boards or development boards is completely confusing as their evaluation boards frequently contain the debuging features of a development board.
And the pricing is inconsistant.

The nice thing about ARM development boards is that prices are kept low to encourage independant developers to purchase and support the hardware.

On the other hand, PPC vendors tend to try to recover the development costs of their boards rather then just the production costs.

@ minator

Quote:

Because the official PandaBoard wiki specifically says so.

Quote:

Source: http://omappedia.org/wiki/PandaBoard_FAQ

And the board I've pointed to obviously costs more then $10 (the price premium above the CPU module as a stand alone part).

But is this subsidization a bad thing?

BTW - Andre, don't you work on AROS as well as MorphOS?

> Andre, don't you work on AROS as well as MorphOS?

You can read about his involvement with AROS in his posting history on aros-exec.org:

http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewpost.php?uid=1147

Thanks Andreas,
I can't believe he can afford to devote this much time.
Inspiring.

Fabien Coeurjoly (helped me getting my Comcast e-mail via OWB), Frank Mariak and Mark Olsen (developing R300 3D drivers), André Siegel (and his work on behalf of both MorphOS and AROS), and Harry Sintonen (who I have exchanged messageon the Amiga.org board) - just a few of the developers that have really impressed me.

Its very uncommon to be allowed this much info and access to the developers you're relying on.

This is just getting silly, a quad core USB computer!

http://liliputing.com/2012/10/hiapad-hi-802-pc-on-a-stick-with-freescale-quad-core-cpu.html

[ Edited by minator 17.10.2012 - 22:56 ]

OOO, I like that!
But I wonder what the clock speed is.

Hey Andreas, which GPU does this Freescale component use?

But I'm probably going to buy a DroidX as it probably has a faster cpu.

[ Edited by Jim 18.10.2012 - 06:55 ]

> I wonder what the clock speed is.

1.2 GHz (which is the max for the i.MX6Q) or below ;-)

> Hey Andreas, which GPU does this Freescale component use?

Already mentioned in this thread 1.5 years ago:

https://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7675&start=162

From http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=i.MX6Q can be seen:

- GPU 3D: Vivante GC2000 (200Mtri/s 1000Mpxl/s, OpenGL ES 2.0 & Halti, CL EP)
- GPU 2D (Vector Graphics): Vivante GC355 (300Mpxl/s, OpenVG 1.1)
- GPU 2D (Composition): Vivante GC320 (600Mpxl/s, BLIT)

More info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vivante_Corporation
http://www.vivantecorp.com/Product_Brief.pdf
http://www.vivantecorp.com/Vivante_GC320_Technical_Reference_Manual_V1.0_A.pdf

> DroidX [...] probably has a faster cpu.

Yes, 1.4 GHz of the Exynos 4412 in the ODROID-X is faster than 1.2 GHz or below of the i.MX6Q.

Update:

> this is the new revised list: [...]

New list of DMIPS per MHz and core figures for ARM cores, taking the Swift core of the Apple A6 SoC into account (only with an estimation unfortunately):

ARM Cortex-A7: 1.9
ARM Cortex-A8: 2.0
Qualcomm Scorpion: 2.1
Marvell Sheeva PJ4: 2.4
ARM Cortex-A9: 2.5
Marvell Sheeva PJ4B: 2.6
Qualcomm Krait: 3.3
Apple Swift: 3.3...3.5 (estimated)
ARM Cortex-A15: 3.5

Quote:

Talking of which...

http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/18/3521492/google-new-samsung-chromebook-249-monday

Update:

> I think Applied Micro (X-Gene) or even Cavium (Project Thunder) might
> arrive in high-end ARM land before nVidia (Project Denver/Boulder).

Calxeda revealed as new ARMv8 contender with "Lago":

http://www.calxeda.com/calxeda-lays-out-a-vision-for-the-hyper-efficient-datacenter/


Edit: Seems like Calxeda won't design its own ARMv8 core but will use a ready-made core from ARM Ltd. instead:

"Announced licensees of the new processor series include AMD, Broadcom, Calxeda, HiSilicon, Samsung and STMicroelectronics."
http://www.arm.com/about/newsroom/arm-launches-cortex-a50-series-the-worlds-most-energy-efficient-64-bit-processors.php

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 30.10.2012 - 23:44 ]

>> ARM Cortex-A15: 3.5

> Talking of which...
> http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/18/3521492/google-new-samsung-chromebook-249-monday

Nice :-) Samsung made its promise true and beat TI.

Hits the shelf on Monday?
OMG! Guess I need to figure out what $250 expense has to be foregone.

minator,
Quote:

Well, being the first(?) Cortex-A15 in a consumer product is kind of cool, and so is the price, but the display seems a bit tacky judging from the article (a poor display is usually a deal-breaker IMHO, no matter the price), and it's a bit worrying if it can't properly play HD videos on true HD displays? Maybe that CPU was really tailored for a future Galaxy S IV smartphone, and less suitable in a device like this? And the lack of both Ethernet and 3G/4G wireless makes it even less usable, and puts it even further down my wishlist...