[Arm-netbook] Selecting the right Soc for out ARM Notebook project.

[Gordan Bobic]

On 05/05/2012 23:21, David Given wrote:
> On 05/05/12 23:08, moo cow wrote:
> [...]
>> the kirkwood doesnt have hardware FPU from recollection ?  as i
>> understand it debian is starting now to take more advantage of hard float ?
>
> Yup, the Kirkwood has no hard float. It is, I am told, based on the old
> Intel StrongARM architecture, which is why it's relatively power hungry.

Indeed, but it is also substantially faster than the other ARMv5 CPUs.

> It also apparently gets less work done per clock cycle than modern ARM
> architectures.

That is indeed true (see my previous email where I compare it to a 
Cortex A9). But does it really matter?

> Debian (and Ubuntu) have just introduced a new architecture, armhf,
> which properly makes use of the hardware floating point unit on modern
> ARM architectures (ARMv7 and above). The A10 is ARMv7 so we can use armhf.

Don't attribute too much significance to hf. How many FP heavy 
applications do you really use?

> What core implementation is the A10 based around?

I thought it was a generic A8?

> [...]
>> .. my hacked debian kirkwood iconnect and usb HD  is still after a
>> couple of years working away 24/7 doing its VPN, squeezebox server,
>> minidlna, bbc iplayer duties and more .. though its lack of performance
>> is getting noticable and its looking for its replacement .. but for a
>> tenner on ebay its a star :-)
>
> I run cowlark.com off a SheevaPlug with a couple of hard drives plugged
> in to it. That does firewall, router, SMTP, IMAP, HTTP, NNTP, voicemail,
> backup duties, and a few other things (including running Java
> servlets!), and handles it all very nicely. Total power consumption
> including the ADSL router, wifi access point and UPS, is about 15W. But
> it's not quite reliable, and it's a bit sluggish, and HDD access over
> USB is dead slow; I'm looking to replace it with the A1000.

LOL! Maybe you should replace the lot with just one of those Samsung 
ADSL/WiFi/Ethernet routers that you can run OpenWRT on or something. ;)

Gordan