From paul at boddie.org.uk Fri Nov 6 17:03:24 2015 From: paul at boddie.org.uk (Paul Boddie) Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 18:03:24 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea Message-ID: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> Hello, I see that Luke's friends/rivals at Olimex are considering the idea of a laptop based on their "64-bit" development board: "A64-OLinuXino OSHW 64-bit ARM DIY Laptop idea update" https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/a64-olinuxino-oshw-64-bit-arm-diy- laptop-idea-update/ Their blog post about the board: "We work on A64-OLinuXino the first Open Source Hardware 64-bit development board" https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/we-work-on-a64-olinuxino-the-first- open-source-hardware-64-bit-development-board/ The baffling thing about this "64-bit ARM" stuff, apart from the apparent lack of vendor cooperation for Linux kernel development... "One of the problem is that A64 is quite new and no any Linux-Sunxi support, as nobody have seen A64 development boards yet. SO it may pass several months until A64-OLinuXino run anything else than Android 5.1" ...is that the principal benefit of bringing "64-bit" to ARM - addressing more than 2GB RAM - is absent from this design. Indeed, I've only seen one ARM- based board - and not even a "64-bit" one [1] - which had 4GB RAM, let alone more than that. And I imagine that the 4GB RAM is divided between the cores on that Freescale i.MX6 board. (From what I've heard, Freescale is somewhat better than Allwinner with regard to support and documentation, contrary to claims in comments on the Olimex blog.) Anyway, I thought this was worth a quick perusal. Paul [1] http://solid-run.com/freescale-imx6-family/hummingboard/hummingboard- specifications/ From hozer at hozed.org Fri Nov 6 18:04:00 2015 From: hozer at hozed.org (Troy Benjegerdes) Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 12:04:00 -0600 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea In-Reply-To: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> References: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: <20151106180400.GC27205@nl.grid.coop> I think my response to stuff like this now is: "Show me the KiCAD design files and a board I can get in the mail next week" So far, my experience with Allwinner is it's great if you like reverse engineering, but if you actually want to ship a product use something that comes with decent documentation and industrial part grades, which is either freescale or TI at this point. I need an open-hardware design I can use for a tractor/combine auto-guidance system, and it needs to have industrial temp ranges and a 5 year minimum availibility lifetime. On Fri, Nov 06, 2015 at 06:03:24PM +0100, Paul Boddie wrote: > Hello, > > I see that Luke's friends/rivals at Olimex are considering the idea of a > laptop based on their "64-bit" development board: > > "A64-OLinuXino OSHW 64-bit ARM DIY Laptop idea update" > > https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/a64-olinuxino-oshw-64-bit-arm-diy- > laptop-idea-update/ > > Their blog post about the board: > > "We work on A64-OLinuXino the first Open Source Hardware 64-bit development > board" > > https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/we-work-on-a64-olinuxino-the-first- > open-source-hardware-64-bit-development-board/ > > The baffling thing about this "64-bit ARM" stuff, apart from the apparent lack > of vendor cooperation for Linux kernel development... > > "One of the problem is that A64 is quite new and no any Linux-Sunxi support, > as nobody have seen A64 development boards yet. SO it may pass several months > until A64-OLinuXino run anything else than Android 5.1" > > ...is that the principal benefit of bringing "64-bit" to ARM - addressing more > than 2GB RAM - is absent from this design. Indeed, I've only seen one ARM- > based board - and not even a "64-bit" one [1] - which had 4GB RAM, let alone > more than that. And I imagine that the 4GB RAM is divided between the cores on > that Freescale i.MX6 board. (From what I've heard, Freescale is somewhat > better than Allwinner with regard to support and documentation, contrary to > claims in comments on the Olimex blog.) > > Anyway, I thought this was worth a quick perusal. > > Paul > > [1] http://solid-run.com/freescale-imx6-family/hummingboard/hummingboard- > specifications/ > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Troy Benjegerdes 'da hozer' hozer at hozed.org 7 elements earth::water::air::fire::mind::spirit::soul grid.coop Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, nor try buy a hacker who makes money by the megahash From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 6 19:42:21 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 19:42:21 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea In-Reply-To: <20151106180400.GC27205@nl.grid.coop> References: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> <20151106180400.GC27205@nl.grid.coop> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote: > I think my response to stuff like this now is: > "Show me the KiCAD design files and a board I can get in the mail > next week" > > So far, my experience with Allwinner is it's great if you like > reverse engineering, but if you actually want to ship a product > use something that comes with decent documentation and industrial > part grades, which is either freescale or TI at this point. the problem with freescale is that they're _way_ behind, and that's ok because most of their customers are in the automotive and engineering industry, so they can tolerate the higher pricing. the problem with TI is that they are also way behind, and for the "higher spec" parts - those that are designed for mass-volume such as the OMAP4 and OMAP5, they flatly refuse to open those up. that leaves everyone else with the crap such as single-core Cortex A8 processors that are over 2x the price of a china equivalent. *but*... butbutbut... both freescale and TI (as you rightly note below) do long-term supply (they have to), with industrial temperature ranges, and that in and of itself is attractive to certain niche markets that are happy to pay the premium for it. the delays in both TI and freescale's design chain however means that it will be several years before we see an arm64 from freescale. you _might_ see an arm64 SoC from TI, soon, but it will almost certainly be a cartelled one that you or i simply will not be able to gain access to. > I need an open-hardware design I can use for a tractor/combine > auto-guidance system, and it needs to have industrial temp ranges > and a 5 year minimum availibility lifetime. then yes, you want the [incredibly expensive, relatively] freescale or TI parts. especially for the industrial temperature ranges: you simply won't find a china-based fabless semiconductor company doing an SoC that is within industrial temperature ranges. at all. l. From lasich at gmail.com Fri Nov 6 22:01:24 2015 From: lasich at gmail.com (Hrvoje Lasic) Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 23:01:24 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea In-Reply-To: <20151106180400.GC27205@nl.grid.coop> References: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> <20151106180400.GC27205@nl.grid.coop> Message-ID: > I need an open-hardware design I can use for a tractor/combine > auto-guidance system, and it needs to have industrial temp ranges > and a 5 year minimum availibility lifetime. but it doesn't mean that you wont need to change ram/flash or possibly some other component of design. it also doesn't mean that industrial temperature ranges that you have in mcu are present in all other components you use, especially in open hardware design. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Wed Nov 11 02:58:43 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 02:58:43 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] eoma68-a20 nand Message-ID: wasn't planned but happened accidentally: confirmed access to nand flash (read and write) with sunxi and u-boot mainline (recent) kernels. bit of additional work to do, will be documented shortly. l. From joem at martindale-electric.co.uk Wed Nov 11 09:30:07 2015 From: joem at martindale-electric.co.uk (joem) Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 09:30:07 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea In-Reply-To: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> References: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: <1447234299.25086.8.camel@jm-desktop> On Fri, 2015-11-06 at 18:03 +0100, Paul Boddie wrote: > Hello, > > I see that Luke's friends/rivals at Olimex are considering the idea of a > laptop based on their "64-bit" development board: More on it at http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/11/10/allwinner-a64-datasheet-and-user-manual-released/ KiCAD design of the schematic is available along with datasheets. Reading the datasheet, the device is capable of addressing 3GB RAM, though I am not sure any performance improvements are gained because the L1 cache is only 32k :( With 64 bit words to chew, the cache is only about 4K words. Down from the 8K words in a 32 bit ARM :( :( :( Still, the graphics ought to be quicker with the hardware present in the chip and ability to move data in larger chunks. From gacuest at gmail.com Wed Nov 11 10:39:05 2015 From: gacuest at gmail.com (GaCuest) Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 11:39:05 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea In-Reply-To: <1447234299.25086.8.camel@jm-desktop> References: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> <1447234299.25086.8.camel@jm-desktop> Message-ID: En 11 de noviembre de 2015 en 10:31:58, joem (joem at martindale-electric.co.uk) escrito: > > Still, the graphics ought to be quicker with the hardware present > in the chip and ability to move data in larger chunks. Use the same MALI 400 MP2 that Allwinner A20. There should be  no differences (or not much) in the graphics part. From monnier at iro.umontreal.ca Wed Nov 11 13:14:47 2015 From: monnier at iro.umontreal.ca (Stefan Monnier) Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 08:14:47 -0500 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea References: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> <1447234299.25086.8.camel@jm-desktop> Message-ID: > though I am not sure any performance improvements are gained because > the L1 cache is only 32k :( L1 cache is always small, that's normal. That's why there are L2/L3/... caches. Stefna From lkcl at lkcl.net Wed Nov 11 12:15:00 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 12:15:00 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea In-Reply-To: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> References: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 5:03 PM, Paul Boddie wrote: > Hello, > > I see that Luke's friends/rivals at Olimex to clarify what paul is referring to: he's referring to a conversation on a 20,000-strong high-profile mailing list in which olimex brushed off criminal activity on their part (copyright violations, distributing unlicensed binaries for profit), and at the same time used my "failure" to have sold any commercial products [legal or otherwise] as a "reason" as to why my pointing out their criminal activity should be ignored. please use your own good judgement as to whether that fits with the concept "friends" or the concept "rivals". l. From lkcl at lkcl.net Wed Nov 11 12:20:06 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Wed, 11 Nov 2015 12:20:06 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea In-Reply-To: <1447234299.25086.8.camel@jm-desktop> References: <201511061803.25590.paul@boddie.org.uk> <1447234299.25086.8.camel@jm-desktop> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 9:30 AM, joem wrote: > On Fri, 2015-11-06 at 18:03 +0100, Paul Boddie wrote: > Reading the datasheet, the device is capable of addressing 3GB RAM, > though I am not sure any performance improvements are gained because > the L1 cache is only 32k :( 32k data and 32k instruction cache. i hope that's per core! and a L2 512mb... that's not bad. > With 64 bit words to chew, the cache is only about 4K words. > Down from the 8K words in a 32 bit ARM :( :( :( weeelll.... at least it still runs 32-bit instructions. anyone know if gcc tends to output the lower-sized instructions as a preference where possible, only running into the newer 64-bit ones when it's strictly necessary? > Still, the graphics ought to be quicker with the hardware present > in the chip and ability to move data in larger chunks. yeah MALI400's a bit CPU-intensive, so quad-core should help. performance/watt btw, Cortex A15 is down *15 percent* compared to a Cortex A7. overall, though: this _is_ a $5 SoC. you have to expect some level of "lowliness" :) l. From gacuest at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 19:50:53 2015 From: gacuest at gmail.com (GaCuest) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 20:50:53 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module Message-ID: Maybe this is interesting for EOMA-68... http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tx1-module.html From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 13 20:30:48 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 20:30:48 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 7:50 PM, GaCuest wrote: > > Maybe this is interesting for EOMA-68... > > http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tx1-module.html there's a practical/comfortable power guide of around 3.5 watts for any EOMA68 cpu card - 4.0 watts is slightly uncomfortable, and 5.0 watts is the hard external cut-off limit that will drop the power, stone dead. i'm currently looking at a 64-bit quad-core ARM SoC that will have to be run at around 900mhz to stay within this limit. luckily, information's available on it so it's possible to use. .... nvidia... yyeah, if someone can break through their barriers to entry, such that PCB CAD files and technical datasheets are made available, great, i can take a look. l. From laserhawk64 at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 20:46:18 2015 From: laserhawk64 at gmail.com (Christopher Havel) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:46:18 -0500 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: A pity it's got to be that low -- Atom Z2460 has a TDP of 4w... it's an SoC Atom from what I understand -- meaning no chipset, just add RAM, VReg, and a few interface bits. But there's no way to keep the required external components less than a watt, I'm sure. Worth noting, even VIA can't keep up with that. Closest is an Eden ULV 1.0GHz Esther core... it gets 3.5w TDP but that's before the chipset and everything else... Oh well :( Just a thought -- I forget -- are EOMA68 cards permitted to protrude from the slot any, the way PCMCIA/Cardbus cards almost always did? If so, it *may* be possible to wire up a small ventilation system -- fan with a bit of ducting is what I'm picturing, there's no room for a real heatsink in there, after all. But every little bit helps... ;) On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 7:50 PM, GaCuest wrote: > > > > Maybe this is interesting for EOMA-68... > > > > http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tx1-module.html > > there's a practical/comfortable power guide of around 3.5 watts for > any EOMA68 cpu card - 4.0 watts is slightly uncomfortable, and 5.0 > watts is the hard external cut-off limit that will drop the power, > stone dead. > > i'm currently looking at a 64-bit quad-core ARM SoC that will have to > be run at around 900mhz to stay within this limit. luckily, > information's available on it so it's possible to use. > > .... nvidia... yyeah, if someone can break through their barriers to > entry, such that PCB CAD files and technical datasheets are made > available, great, i can take a look. > > l. > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 13 20:54:09 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 20:54:09 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 8:46 PM, Christopher Havel wrote: > A pity it's got to be that low -- Atom Z2460 has a TDP of 4w... it's an SoC > Atom from what I understand -- meaning no chipset, just add RAM, VReg, and a > few interface bits. yep. intel's been told... but they keep taking the advantage of the geometry shrinks to increase speed, *not* reduce power. so they're deliberately pissing in their own back yard, basically. > But there's no way to keep the required external components less than a > watt, I'm sure. 32 bit 800mhz DDR3 (1.5v) RAM uses only around.... 300mA (0.3A), so it's doable. > Worth noting, even VIA can't keep up with that. Closest is an Eden ULV > 1.0GHz Esther core... it gets 3.5w TDP but that's before the chipset and > everything else... yyep... and the eden is only in 45nm and isn't a very good design... *and* x86 has a performance/watt penalty inherent in its design, due to the CISC instruction set.... long story, i've written about this before. > Oh well :( > > Just a thought -- I forget -- are EOMA68 cards permitted to protrude from > the slot any, the way PCMCIA/Cardbus cards almost always did? of course. > If so, it > *may* be possible to wire up a small ventilation system -- fan with a bit of > ducting is what I'm picturing, there's no room for a real heatsink in there, > after all. But every little bit helps... ;) graphite paper also helps. l. From laserhawk64 at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 20:55:42 2015 From: laserhawk64 at gmail.com (Christopher Havel) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 15:55:42 -0500 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Maybe I'm being a little dense but I don't get the graphite paper reference/pun. On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 3:54 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 8:46 PM, Christopher Havel > wrote: > > A pity it's got to be that low -- Atom Z2460 has a TDP of 4w... it's an > SoC > > Atom from what I understand -- meaning no chipset, just add RAM, VReg, > and a > > few interface bits. > > yep. intel's been told... but they keep taking the advantage of the > geometry shrinks to increase speed, *not* reduce power. > > so they're deliberately pissing in their own back yard, basically. > > > But there's no way to keep the required external components less than a > > watt, I'm sure. > > 32 bit 800mhz DDR3 (1.5v) RAM uses only around.... 300mA (0.3A), so > it's doable. > > > Worth noting, even VIA can't keep up with that. Closest is an Eden ULV > > 1.0GHz Esther core... it gets 3.5w TDP but that's before the chipset and > > everything else... > > yyep... and the eden is only in 45nm and isn't a very good design... > *and* x86 has a performance/watt penalty inherent in its design, due > to the CISC instruction set.... long story, i've written about this > before. > > > Oh well :( > > > > Just a thought -- I forget -- are EOMA68 cards permitted to protrude from > > the slot any, the way PCMCIA/Cardbus cards almost always did? > > of course. > > > If so, it > > *may* be possible to wire up a small ventilation system -- fan with a > bit of > > ducting is what I'm picturing, there's no room for a real heatsink in > there, > > after all. But every little bit helps... ;) > > graphite paper also helps. > > l. > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 13 20:59:56 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 20:59:56 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 8:55 PM, Christopher Havel wrote: > Maybe I'm being a little dense but I don't get the graphite paper > reference/pun. reference. graphite is a heat conductor that's... i think it's something like over 100x more efficient than copper. graphite paper is used as a heat spreader in mobile phones. they simply lay it over the components and ensure it's also in good contact with the casework. much less messy than thermal gel. l. From laserhawk64 at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 21:06:03 2015 From: laserhawk64 at gmail.com (Christopher Havel) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 16:06:03 -0500 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Wax pad or cheap thermal gloop (please use at least the copper stuff, that silicone gunk looks like it came out the wrong end of a pigeon!) to the shell and blow some air across that shell. My old ASUS 1000HE uses that exact method -- except that the shell is the keyboard underlay and palmrest... it's thin sheet metal... might be a half mm thick. Might. That and a 40x10 or 50x10 mm fan is all it ever needed. Something like this barely needs a fan if at all, but (again) every little bit helps -- what I'm picturing is something like 30x7mm in an external housing that is both intake and exhaust -- just do the housing so that the air gets direction. I'll do up a drawing later, I'm cutting a bolt with a hacksaw right now and I'm almost done. Soon as I get the bolt off, fix the motor it's holding together, and put it all back together I'll draw something up, host it on Imgur, and throw a link up here. Shouldn't be too long now... On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 3:59 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 8:55 PM, Christopher Havel > wrote: > > Maybe I'm being a little dense but I don't get the graphite paper > > reference/pun. > > reference. graphite is a heat conductor that's... i think it's > something like over 100x more efficient than copper. graphite paper > is used as a heat spreader in mobile phones. they simply lay it over > the components and ensure it's also in good contact with the casework. > > much less messy than thermal gel. > > l. > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gacuest at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 21:35:57 2015 From: gacuest at gmail.com (GaCuest) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 22:35:57 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Here there are some documentation, if anyone are interested: https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 13 22:19:55 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 22:19:55 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 9:35 PM, GaCuest wrote: > Here there are some documentation, if anyone are interested: > > https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads got it. woo holy shit - max current (sustained) - 12 amps just on the cpu alone. at around 1.0 to 1.2 volts that's about 12-13 watts for the main cores. GPU's another 6 watts, just on its own. that puts it into the "desktop / server" category. it would be a fantastic candidate for something like EOMA200. l. From laserhawk64 at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 22:58:40 2015 From: laserhawk64 at gmail.com (Christopher Havel) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 17:58:40 -0500 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Direct link to photo of sketch. If the sketch isn't legible enough from that, I can do a proper scan... Basic idea here is (as discussed earlier) an actively cooled (meaning fanned) Type-II size EOMA68 card. On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 5:19 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 9:35 PM, GaCuest wrote: > > Here there are some documentation, if anyone are interested: > > > > https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads > > got it. > > woo holy shit - max current (sustained) - 12 amps just on the cpu > alone. at around 1.0 to 1.2 volts that's about 12-13 watts for the > main cores. GPU's another 6 watts, just on its own. > > that puts it into the "desktop / server" category. it would be a > fantastic candidate for something like EOMA200. > > l. > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 13 23:39:32 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 23:39:32 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: not bad chris. type III is 8mm btw, that's a 10W limit. On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 10:58 PM, Christopher Havel wrote: > Direct link to photo of sketch. If the sketch isn't legible enough from > that, I can do a proper scan... > > Basic idea here is (as discussed earlier) an actively cooled (meaning > fanned) Type-II size EOMA68 card. > > On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 5:19 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton > wrote: >> >> On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 9:35 PM, GaCuest wrote: >> > Here there are some documentation, if anyone are interested: >> > >> > https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads >> >> got it. >> >> woo holy shit - max current (sustained) - 12 amps just on the cpu >> alone. at around 1.0 to 1.2 volts that's about 12-13 watts for the >> main cores. GPU's another 6 watts, just on its own. >> >> that puts it into the "desktop / server" category. it would be a >> fantastic candidate for something like EOMA200. >> >> l. >> >> _______________________________________________ >> arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk >> http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook >> Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk > > > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk From laserhawk64 at gmail.com Fri Nov 13 23:41:38 2015 From: laserhawk64 at gmail.com (Christopher Havel) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 18:41:38 -0500 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: I know, but IIRC the 8mm ones aren't going to be the first out of the gate, or even the third -- and an x86 offering would be, uhm, a very good idea IMO -- and the sooner, the better. ;) On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 6:39 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > not bad chris. type III is 8mm btw, that's a 10W limit. > > On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 10:58 PM, Christopher Havel > wrote: > > Direct link to photo of sketch. If the sketch isn't legible enough from > > that, I can do a proper scan... > > > > Basic idea here is (as discussed earlier) an actively cooled (meaning > > fanned) Type-II size EOMA68 card. > > > > On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 5:19 PM, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton > > wrote: > >> > >> On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 9:35 PM, GaCuest wrote: > >> > Here there are some documentation, if anyone are interested: > >> > > >> > https://developer.nvidia.com/embedded/downloads > >> > >> got it. > >> > >> woo holy shit - max current (sustained) - 12 amps just on the cpu > >> alone. at around 1.0 to 1.2 volts that's about 12-13 watts for the > >> main cores. GPU's another 6 watts, just on its own. > >> > >> that puts it into the "desktop / server" category. it would be a > >> fantastic candidate for something like EOMA200. > >> > >> l. > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > >> http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > >> Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 13 23:56:27 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 13 Nov 2015 23:56:27 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Jetson TX1 Module In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 13, 2015 at 11:41 PM, Christopher Havel wrote: > I know, but IIRC the 8mm ones aren't going to be the first out of the gate, > or even the third -- and an x86 offering would be, uhm, a very good idea IMO > -- and the sooner, the better. that's going to be down to intel, to get a decent SoC out their door that can fit in a 2.5W budget. there are other design factors involved as well, not least is that the... naive people at intel seem to think it's okay to put out 1,100 pin monsters with a 0.4mm pin pitch, then expect people to fork out thousands of dollars on protoytpe 10 to 12 layer PCBs @ only 1.2mm thick... ... and that's *just the prototypes* cost, when all the china-sourced SoCs make do with 6 layer (which costs around $600 for 5 samples), 4 layer (which can be had for around $500), and there are even china SoCs out there which can fit onto 2-layer PCBs, now. then there's the cost of their offerings. the SoCs that go into the USB-PC dongles? look up the price on intel's web site: those are $32. $32 for fuck's sake! are their marketing team high or something?? there's *$5* quad-core 2ghz 64-bit ARM processors out there that can address up to 32 gigabytes of RAM, and they're trying to still pretend that the processor is the most important factor in the BOM of a product. basically intel haven't got the faintest clue as to why they aren't even remotely in the market. and because they're not in the market, they haven't a chance to find *out* why they're not in the market. they focussed so much on desktops, servers and laptops that they've had ARM and MIPS SoCs create an entire market that they're *never* going to get into if they keep up with their current "strategy". back in 2007 they even sold the PXA design because it was too embarrassingly good, it was making the intel atom look piss-poor by comparison in the performance/watt stakes. anyone from intel - if you're reading this - for god's sake get a grip, contact me and i'll help you to spec out a decent SoC that will stand a chance in the china market. you've already found out why china fabless semiconductor companies can't work with you - that was another costly learning experience, wasn't it? when you're ready to listen, i'll be happy to walk you through what you need to do. l. From maillist_arm-netbook at aross.me Sun Nov 15 16:24:54 2015 From: maillist_arm-netbook at aross.me (Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross) Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2015 16:24:54 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Turris Omnia FLOSS Router Message-ID: <5648B1D6.6080206@aross.me> https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ thoughts? there’s one comment on the indiegogo page about the wifi chipsets there looking at using depending on sourcing. not sure that it will be completely free software (inc (ie wifi)firmware & driver). they don’t say what is definition of the "lifetime of the device" is, regarding updates for it? 2 years or 10? ###### I’m looking to get a decent, free software router. come to think of it what about the eome-68 router? When eoma-68 isn’t going to have Ethernet? From lkcl at lkcl.net Sun Nov 15 16:30:30 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Sun, 15 Nov 2015 16:30:30 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Turris Omnia FLOSS Router In-Reply-To: <5648B1D6.6080206@aross.me> References: <5648B1D6.6080206@aross.me> Message-ID: On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 4:24 PM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote: > https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ > > thoughts? > > there’s one comment on the indiegogo page about the wifi chipsets there > looking at using depending on sourcing. > > not sure that it will be completely free software (inc (ie wifi)firmware > & driver). marvell. *shudder*. good luck to them. > they don’t say what is definition of the "lifetime of the device" is, > regarding updates for it? > > 2 years or 10? > > ###### > > I’m looking to get a decent, free software router. > > come to think of it what about the eome-68 router? When eoma-68 isn’t > going to have Ethernet? yehh i know. that's the way it goes. i didn't want to remove the possibility of an eoma68 router at the lower-end cost but i figured, if there are USB3 SoCs out there later, they can always put in a multi-port GbE that way. From tzafrir at cohens.org.il Mon Nov 16 06:12:22 2015 From: tzafrir at cohens.org.il (Tzafrir Cohen) Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2015 07:12:22 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Turris Omnia FLOSS Router In-Reply-To: <5648B1D6.6080206@aross.me> References: <5648B1D6.6080206@aross.me> Message-ID: <20151116061222.GE23928@lemon.cohens.org.il> On Sun, Nov 15, 2015 at 04:24:54PM +0000, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote: > https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ > > thoughts? > > there’s one comment on the indiegogo page about the wifi chipsets there > looking at using depending on sourcing. > > not sure that it will be completely free software (inc (ie wifi)firmware > & driver). https://lists.debian.org/debian-arm/2015/11/msg00077.html | As far as I know the only thing that needs the binary blob is the | default AC wifi cards in the complete package (not just the board), but | you can use any wifi card that you like. -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzafrir at jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's tzafrir at cohens.org.il | | best tzafrir at debian.org | | friend From martin-kameke at t-online.de Fri Nov 20 08:34:25 2015 From: martin-kameke at t-online.de (Martin von Kameke) Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 09:34:25 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] LVDS and HDMI to the same time In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi, It is possible to use lvds and hdmi to the same time? I will display the same picture. Best regards, Martin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 20 16:01:10 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 20 Nov 2015 16:01:10 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] LVDS and HDMI to the same time In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 20, 2015 at 8:34 AM, Martin von Kameke wrote: > Hi, > > It is possible to use lvds and hdmi to the same time? I will display the > same picture. sorry, martin, you've not provided any context. the same picture... on what device? l. From maillist_arm-netbook at aross.me Mon Nov 23 20:08:29 2015 From: maillist_arm-netbook at aross.me (Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 20:08:29 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Cool Recycled Laptop Bag for EOMA-68 Laptop? Message-ID: <5653723D.7020200@aross.me> http://www.protecttheplanet.co.uk/terracycle/denim-messenger-bag.html i look the look of it. made from scrap denim. I’d say looks the part for a laptop bag to sell/go with a eoma-* laptop. I wonder how the sew the scraps together? machine or cheap/slave labour? From lkcl at lkcl.net Mon Nov 23 20:42:46 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 20:42:46 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Cool Recycled Laptop Bag for EOMA-68 Laptop? In-Reply-To: <5653723D.7020200@aross.me> References: <5653723D.7020200@aross.me> Message-ID: On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 8:08 PM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote: > http://www.protecttheplanet.co.uk/terracycle/denim-messenger-bag.html > > i look the look of it. made from scrap denim. I’d say looks the part for > a laptop bag to sell/go with a eoma-* laptop. i like it! thanks for the tip. > I wonder how the sew the scraps together? machine or cheap/slave labour? yehh don't be fooled by the people who "pass judgement" on large-scale factories just because they get paid less and work more hours than we do: their cost of living is 1/10th to 1/100th of ours. remember, it was only recently in holland that a wealthy textile merchant purchased weaving machines and offered people jobs at 12 hours a day for 6 days a week. he had enormous queues outside his factories. why? because people in holland at the time were *hand-sewing* clothes, working *16* hours a day for *7* days a week, earning *less* money. and that was only 100 to 150 years ago. in a european country. l. From elena.valhalla at gmail.com Mon Nov 23 21:08:34 2015 From: elena.valhalla at gmail.com (Elena ``of Valhalla'') Date: Mon, 23 Nov 2015 22:08:34 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] Cool Recycled Laptop Bag for EOMA-68 Laptop? In-Reply-To: <5653723D.7020200@aross.me> References: <5653723D.7020200@aross.me> Message-ID: <20151123210834.GA20606@virginsteele.home.trueelena.org> On 2015-11-23 at 20:08:29 +0000, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote: > I wonder how the sew the scraps together? machine or cheap/slave labour? AFAIK there is still no fully automated machine that is able to sew clothing (or similar stuff) and is in industral use anywhere in the world: there are machines to do the cutting part, and then sewing is done by simpler machines that are controlled by humans. -- Elena ``of Valhalla'' From lkcl at lkcl.net Tue Nov 24 04:03:16 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 04:03:16 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card Message-ID: ok, been quite busy, 3 to 4 different things going on. first one: i've been working on getting the eoma68-a20 board up and running (booting) out of NAND flash, that's been quite hair-raising. using a sunxi 3.15-10-rc5 kernel i was able to use the standard mtd-tools package to erase and write to the hynix TSOP48 NAND chip, placing an SPL-enabled recent version of u-boot onto it. this all worked fine... except it turns out that MLC NAND can self-destruct just by reading! all i can say is, no wonder allwinner's bootloader process is so damn complex! it's like a 4-stage boot: boot0 (minimum bring-up), boot1 (capable of reading NAND as well as SD/MMC FAT partitions), then u-boot (modified to read allwinner's strange partition format) and finally linux kernel. second, the jz4775 CPU Card is finally underway: http://rhombus-tech.net/ingenic/jz4775/news/ this is the first FSF-Endorseable CPU Card, using the 1.2ghz low-power Ingenic MIPS. it seems strange to put a $3 processor alongside $2.50 of NAND Flash and then put in almost $12 of DDR3 RAM ICs (2 GB RAM) but the threshold where SoCs were no longer the most expensive part of a BOM was passed a loong time ago. third, the laptop main board, i've got everything working except the LCD. i've blown up 2 LCDs already, it was necessary to buy 2 more. first mistake was that it was hard to read the datasheet so the connector was reversed: that resulted in -20V being shoved up the backside of the +3.3v sensitive ICs on the LCD, end result when i was finally able to make up a reversed-cable, the "magic smoke" left that LCD. also i hadn't noticed that i'd shorted the 5V rail to the 3.3v rail, which didn't help, and may have damaged some of the GPIOs on one of the EOMA68-A20 boards i have here. still quite a bit to investigate there. fourth, i've managed to smoke about 3-4 Power ICs already - various MOSFETs, two 3 Amp RT8288 PMICs from microdesktop boards i'm using for test purposes - all to get the laptop power / charger board up and running. annoying! but finally a couple of hours ago, by making up a 2nd board with minimal components, i managed to get the LTC4155 up and recognised on the I2C bus, as well as check that it was outputting stable 5V from USB-style input. the next phase is to populate the over-voltage and reverse-voltage protection components. it's getting there... it's just slower than i would like. l. From paul at boddie.org.uk Tue Nov 24 09:06:52 2015 From: paul at boddie.org.uk (Paul Boddie) Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 10:06:52 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> On Tuesday 24. November 2015 05.03.16 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > > second, the jz4775 CPU Card is finally underway: > http://rhombus-tech.net/ingenic/jz4775/news/ > > this is the first FSF-Endorseable CPU Card, using the 1.2ghz low-power > Ingenic MIPS. it seems strange to put a $3 processor alongside $2.50 > of NAND Flash and then put in almost $12 of DDR3 RAM ICs (2 GB RAM) > but the threshold where SoCs were no longer the most expensive part of > a BOM was passed a loong time ago. This is great news! I also like the 2GB RAM support - with many ARM single- board computers still only supporting 1GB, it makes sense to go for the maximum here - and the USB boot mode support, which is great for experimenting with new boot payloads and is one of the nice things about the Ben NanoNote. Paul From lkcl at lkcl.net Tue Nov 24 13:42:44 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 13:42:44 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> References: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 9:06 AM, Paul Boddie wrote: > On Tuesday 24. November 2015 05.03.16 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: >> >> second, the jz4775 CPU Card is finally underway: >> http://rhombus-tech.net/ingenic/jz4775/news/ >> >> this is the first FSF-Endorseable CPU Card, using the 1.2ghz low-power >> Ingenic MIPS. it seems strange to put a $3 processor alongside $2.50 >> of NAND Flash and then put in almost $12 of DDR3 RAM ICs (2 GB RAM) >> but the threshold where SoCs were no longer the most expensive part of >> a BOM was passed a loong time ago. > > This is great news! I also like the 2GB RAM support - with many ARM single- > board computers still only supporting 1GB, it makes sense to go for the > maximum here - those kinds of decisions i believe are usually made based on the faulty logical analysis which is summarised as "but... but.... the processor costs less than the memory!!!" > and the USB boot mode support, which is great for experimenting > with new boot payloads and is one of the nice things about the Ben NanoNote. same company. nanonote is the jz4720. l. From paul at boddie.org.uk Tue Nov 24 15:30:31 2015 From: paul at boddie.org.uk (Paul Boddie) Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 16:30:31 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: References: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: <201511241630.32581.paul@boddie.org.uk> On Tuesday 24. November 2015 14.42.44 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 9:06 AM, Paul Boddie wrote: > > This is great news! I also like the 2GB RAM support - with many ARM > > single- board computers still only supporting 1GB, it makes sense to go > > for the maximum here - > > those kinds of decisions i believe are usually made based on the > faulty logical analysis which is summarised as "but... but.... the > processor costs less than the memory!!!" RAM is (or will soon be) the inhibiting factor around the adoption of single- board computers. People forgave the first model of the Raspberry Pi for having 256MB RAM because it was only supposed to be used for "lightweight" tasks, but people's expectations tend to increase when they realise that these devices could replace their primary computer. I suppose that you could cluster several of them if they each only provided, say, 1GB RAM, but then you need the convenient infrastructure to make that easy. Indeed, a multi-slot cluster unit would be nice with EOMA-68, and I think someone mentioned something similar earlier in the year. The software architecture would also need reconsidering, however. As I understand it, 32-bit MIPS divides the addressable memory space in two, meaning that 2GB of actual memory is the limit. I haven't paid enough attention to 32-bit ARM recently to say whether similar limits apply there, but a move to 64-bit architectures is necessary to address over 4GB, anyway, and that would be the motivation for doing it. (Which is why I was baffled by the Olimex "64-bit" device that was only going to provide 2GB RAM.) > > and the USB boot mode support, which is great for experimenting > > with new boot payloads and is one of the nice things about the Ben > > NanoNote. > > same company. nanonote is the jz4720. Yes. The NanoNote deliberately exposed the USB Boot pins to facilitate experimentation, whereas the Letux/Trendtac Minibook/MiniPC (which uses the mystery jz4730) apparently requires more work to mess around at the booting stage. I also noticed that the MIPS Creator CI20 has USB Boot (using a jz4780) as well. And the (micro)SD Boot mode is also very handy, of course. Paul From lkcl at lkcl.net Tue Nov 24 15:53:10 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 15:53:10 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: <201511241630.32581.paul@boddie.org.uk> References: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> <201511241630.32581.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Paul Boddie wrote: > On Tuesday 24. November 2015 14.42.44 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: >> On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 9:06 AM, Paul Boddie wrote: >> > This is great news! I also like the 2GB RAM support - with many ARM >> > single- board computers still only supporting 1GB, it makes sense to go >> > for the maximum here - >> >> those kinds of decisions i believe are usually made based on the >> faulty logical analysis which is summarised as "but... but.... the >> processor costs less than the memory!!!" > I suppose that you could cluster several of them if they each only provided, > say, 1GB RAM, but then you need the convenient infrastructure to make that > easy. Indeed, a multi-slot cluster unit would be nice with EOMA-68, and I > think someone mentioned something similar earlier in the year. yes. primary justification for this is to enable rack-mount low-power modular servers. > As I understand it, 32-bit MIPS divides the addressable memory space in two, > meaning that 2GB of actual memory is the limit. rright. as ingenic's MIPS is home-grown they inform me that the jz4775 can actually address up to 3GB of RAM. however that would involve a... rather complex board arrangement, of a mixture of ICs or to simply put in 4GB DDR total and ignore 1GB of it. > I haven't paid enough > attention to 32-bit ARM recently to say whether similar limits apply there, absolutely they are - because the peripherals are all memory-addressed, and the boot ROM also has to be addressed somehow. to make life a bit simpler (save some silicon space), usually only a few of the address bits are utilised to make the decision "address this peripheral yes/no". so hilariously you can sometimes address the exact same peripheral at regularly-spaced (large) memory intervals. this was i believe the case with at least the intel pxa 270: it was over 10 years ago but i do seem to recall seeing the exact same peripherals at different addresses when reverse-engineering an XDA smartphone. in short... yeah :) l. From pmiscml at gmail.com Tue Nov 24 18:36:14 2015 From: pmiscml at gmail.com (Paul Sokolovsky) Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 20:36:14 +0200 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: References: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> <201511241630.32581.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> Hello, On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 15:53:10 +0000 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: [] > RAM is (or will soon be) the inhibiting factor around the adoption of > single-board computers. > > I haven't paid enough > > attention to 32-bit ARM recently to say whether similar limits > > apply there, > > absolutely they are - because the peripherals are all > memory-addressed, and the boot ROM also has to be addressed somehow. Just as x86-32, ARMv7 has physical address extension http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0438i/CHDCGIBF.html , so it can address more than 4Gb of physical memory. That still leaves 4Gb of virtual memory per process, and thanks god - bloating memory size doesn't mean growing its speed, so the more memory, the slower it all works. Generally, it's pretty depressing to read this memory FUD on mailing list of "sustainable computing" project. What mere people would need more memory for? Watching movies? Almost nobody puts more than 1Gb because *it's not really needed*. And for sh%tty software, no matter if you have 1, 2, or 8GB - it will devour it and sh%t it all around, making the system overall work slower and slower with more memory. (I'm currently sitting on 16Gb box with constant 100% cpu load - it's Firefox collecting garbage in its 6Gb javascript heap - forever and ever). For comparison, my latest discovery is relation database engines which can execute queries in few *kilobytes* of RAM - https://github.com/graemedouglas/LittleD and Contiki Antelope http://dunkels.com/adam/tsiftes11database.pdf -- Best regards, Paul mailto:pmiscml at gmail.com From paul at boddie.org.uk Tue Nov 24 21:49:06 2015 From: paul at boddie.org.uk (Paul Boddie) Date: Tue, 24 Nov 2015 22:49:06 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> References: <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> Message-ID: <201511242249.07386.paul@boddie.org.uk> On Tuesday 24. November 2015 19.36.14 Paul Sokolovsky wrote: > > Just as x86-32, ARMv7 has physical address extension > http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0438i/CHDCGI > BF.html , so it can address more than 4Gb of physical memory. That still > leaves 4Gb of virtual memory per process, and thanks god - bloating memory > size doesn't mean growing its speed, so the more memory, the slower it all > works. 4GB or 4Gb? I guess you mean the former. Again, I haven't kept up with this, so it's useful to know. I remember that the i386 architecture had support for larger address spaces, but I guess that it was more convenient to move towards the amd64 variant in the end. > Generally, it's pretty depressing to read this memory FUD on mailing > list of "sustainable computing" project. What mere people would need > more memory for? Watching movies? Almost nobody puts more than 1Gb > because *it's not really needed*. And for sh%tty software, no matter if > you have 1, 2, or 8GB - it will devour it and sh%t it all around, > making the system overall work slower and slower with more memory. (I'm > currently sitting on 16Gb box with constant 100% cpu load - it's Firefox > collecting garbage in its 6Gb javascript heap - forever and ever). FUD? Ouch! Thanks for classifying some pretty innocent remarks in such a negative way. For your information, my primary machine for the last ten years has only ever had 1GB - and I was making do with 128MB for years before that - and at times I have felt (or have been made to feel) behind the times by people who think everybody went amd64 and that nobody develops on 32-bit Intel any more. Yes, software is bloated and we can often do what we need with less. Another interest of mine is old microcomputers where people used to do stuff with a few KB, just as you've discovered... > For comparison, my latest discovery is relation database engines which > can execute queries in few *kilobytes* of RAM - > https://github.com/graemedouglas/LittleD and Contiki Antelope > http://dunkels.com/adam/tsiftes11database.pdf It's worth bearing in mind that PostgreSQL was (and maybe still is) delivered with a conservative configuration that was aimed at systems of the mid- to late-1990s. Contrary to what people would have you believe, multi-GB query caches are usually a luxury, not a necessity. Anyway, my point about memory still stands: you can get by with 256MB for sure, but people are wanting to run stuff that happens to use more than that. It's not their fault that distributions are steadily bloating themselves, and these users don't necessarily have the time or expertise to either seek out or rework more efficient distributions. Moreover, some of the leaner distributions are less capable to the extent that it really is worth evaluating what a bit of extra memory can deliver. Finally, there are also genuine reasons for wanting more RAM: not for programs but for manipulating data efficiently. And on sustainability, after a while it will become rather more difficult to source lower-capacity components, and they may well be less energy-efficient than their replacements, too. Some progress is actually worth having, you know. Paul From cnxsoft at cnx-software.com Wed Nov 25 02:22:22 2015 From: cnxsoft at cnx-software.com (Jean-Luc Aufranc) Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 09:22:22 +0700 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> References: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> <201511241630.32581.paul@boddie.org.uk> <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> Message-ID: <56551B5E.4040305@cnx-software.com> > (I'm > currently sitting on 16Gb box with constant 100% cpu load - it's Firefox > collecting garbage in its 6Gb javascript heap - forever and ever). I'm glad I'm not the only one suffering from this... From lkcl at lkcl.net Wed Nov 25 02:41:20 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 02:41:20 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: <56551B5E.4040305@cnx-software.com> References: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> <201511241630.32581.paul@boddie.org.uk> <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> <56551B5E.4040305@cnx-software.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 2:22 AM, Jean-Luc Aufranc wrote: >> (I'm >> currently sitting on 16Gb box with constant 100% cpu load - it's Firefox >> collecting garbage in its 6Gb javascript heap - forever and ever). > > > I'm glad I'm not the only one suffering from this... ... you're not - it's a known design flaw in web browser design: a global process running all tabs/windows in order to reflect a global javascript execution context. chrome fixed the design flaw by running entirely separate processes per window, which brings its own set of problems. i run over 100 tabs on a regular basis, so every now and then i end up with 100% cpu usage and occasionally well over 45 gb of virtual memory gets allocated. solution: kill firefox and restart it, allowing it to reopen all tabs. recent versions leave the tabs "unopened" until you *actually* open them by explicitly clicking on them. l. From phil at hands.com Wed Nov 25 08:44:50 2015 From: phil at hands.com (Philip Hands) Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 09:44:50 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: References: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> <201511241630.32581.paul@boddie.org.uk> <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> <56551B5E.4040305@cnx-software.com> Message-ID: <87oaei79j1.fsf@whist.hands.com> Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton writes: > On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 2:22 AM, Jean-Luc Aufranc > wrote: >>> (I'm >>> currently sitting on 16Gb box with constant 100% cpu load - it's Firefox >>> collecting garbage in its 6Gb javascript heap - forever and ever). >> >> >> I'm glad I'm not the only one suffering from this... > > ... you're not - it's a known design flaw in web browser design: a > global process running all tabs/windows in order to reflect a global > javascript execution context. chrome fixed the design flaw by running > entirely separate processes per window, which brings its own set of > problems. > > i run over 100 tabs on a regular basis, so every now and then i end > up with 100% cpu usage and occasionally well over 45 gb of virtual > memory gets allocated. solution: kill firefox and restart it, > allowing it to reopen all tabs. recent versions leave the tabs > "unopened" until you *actually* open them by explicitly clicking on > them. As a user of pentadactyl this procedure is particularly simple :restart I only mention this because I have a feeling that pentadactyl might be something that some of the folk here would like but may not have heard of -- it makes Firefox/Iceweasel behave like vi -- it sounds mad, but many people find it instantly addictive. The only real downside is that it's often a bit behind the latest Firefox release, so doesn't yet work with 42, but if you're OK with packaged versions, Debian's currently got 38.2.1esr available in everything since oldstable (wheezy), and that works with the current version ... which is packaged for testing (a.k.a. "stretch") as xul-ext-pentadactyl Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd. |-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ |(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 818 bytes Desc: not available URL: From lkcl at lkcl.net Wed Nov 25 10:10:39 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 10:10:39 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: <87oaei79j1.fsf@whist.hands.com> References: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> <201511241630.32581.paul@boddie.org.uk> <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> <56551B5E.4040305@cnx-software.com> <87oaei79j1.fsf@whist.hands.com> Message-ID: On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 8:44 AM, Philip Hands wrote: > As a user of pentadactyl this procedure is particularly simple > > :restart > > I only mention this because I have a feeling that pentadactyl might be > something that some of the folk here would like but may not have heard > of -- it makes Firefox/Iceweasel behave like vi -- it sounds mad, but > many people find it instantly addictive. cool! :) From monnier at iro.umontreal.ca Wed Nov 25 13:07:12 2015 From: monnier at iro.umontreal.ca (Stefan Monnier) Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 08:07:12 -0500 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card References: <201511241006.53988.paul@boddie.org.uk> <201511241630.32581.paul@boddie.org.uk> <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> <56551B5E.4040305@cnx-software.com> Message-ID: > ... you're not - it's a known design flaw in web browser design: a > global process running all tabs/windows in order to reflect a global > javascript execution context. chrome fixed the design flaw by running > entirely separate processes per window, which brings its own set of > problems. It's a also a design flaw in the HTML5 system itself: every webpage is basically its own program, so you end up running lots of program that are under the control of people whose interest is not to reduce your CPU or memory usage. Most real applications try to be careful not to use up CPU resources at all as long as there's no user interaction, but many webpages have way too much commercial interest in constantly jumping up and down to grab your attention and/or staying in touch with a whole bunch of servers to maximize the amount of data they collect on it. I almost regret the time when flash was the only game in town for "active" web pages, and I could just run a cron job to periodically kill all flash processes. Stefan From lkcl at lkcl.net Wed Nov 25 13:45:30 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 13:45:30 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop power board Message-ID: .... i have the LTC 4155 15W power IC as well as the STC3115 battery monitor ICs recognised on the I2C bus with 5V power applied, yippeee. embarrassingly, i had the 5V DC socket wired reverse-polarity. this is, uhh, an officially-sanctioned test of the reverse-voltage protection on the power board design. no, really :) on a 2nd (minimally-populated) board i have the 5V regulated output up, but not on the fully-populated board. what i'll do is fill in all the components from the minimally-populated board, testing it as i go along. i'm looking forward to _not_ setting fire to the apartment when i plug in the e-bike lithium battery. unlike many of these "laptop" batteries it has no current protection circuit built-in, and it's perfectly capable of delivering 20 amps maximum current :) l. From pmiscml at gmail.com Wed Nov 25 20:16:42 2015 From: pmiscml at gmail.com (Paul Sokolovsky) Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2015 22:16:42 +0200 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: <201511242249.07386.paul@boddie.org.uk> References: <20151124203614.5daa9db7@x230> <201511242249.07386.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: <20151125221642.0b954c6b@x230> Hello, On Tue, 24 Nov 2015 22:49:06 +0100 Paul Boddie wrote: > On Tuesday 24. November 2015 19.36.14 Paul Sokolovsky wrote: > > > > Just as x86-32, ARMv7 has physical address extension > > http://infocenter.arm.com/help/index.jsp?topic=/com.arm.doc.ddi0438i/CHDCGI > > BF.html , so it can address more than 4Gb of physical memory. That > > still leaves 4Gb of virtual memory per process, and thanks god - > > bloating memory size doesn't mean growing its speed, so the more > > memory, the slower it all works. > > 4GB or 4Gb? I guess you mean the former. Yep, 4GiB, can't live up to 21st century standards, yuck. > Again, I haven't kept up > with this, so it's useful to know. I remember that the i386 > architecture had support for larger address spaces, but I guess that > it was more convenient to move towards the amd64 variant in the end. The way it was pushed on everyone, yeah. And we'll see if the same is happening now with arm64 - just as you, I skipped x86_64 "revolution", so can't judge for sure, but as far as I can tell, yeah, it's being pushed pretty much. Which is only said for projects like EOMA68, because it's endless run, and all the careful selection of nice 32-bit SoCs risk going down /dev/null, being consumers soon will meet classic stuff with "wwwwhat? it's not 64-bit?" > > Generally, it's pretty depressing to read this memory FUD on mailing > > list of "sustainable computing" project. What mere people would need > > more memory for? Watching movies? Almost nobody puts more than 1Gb > > because *it's not really needed*. And for sh%tty software, no > > matter if you have 1, 2, or 8GB - it will devour it and sh%t it all > > around, making the system overall work slower and slower with more > > memory. (I'm currently sitting on 16Gb box with constant 100% cpu > > load - it's Firefox collecting garbage in its 6Gb javascript heap - > > forever and ever). > > FUD? Ouch! Thanks for classifying some pretty innocent remarks in > such a negative way. Perhaps it was a bit strong, but we all know that EOMA68 project is rather overdue, and it feels that maybe - just maybe - something will materialize finally anytime soon. And maybe - just maybe - coming up with high-end 2Gb module is good idea to show that project can deliver "bleeding edge" spec, not perceivably lag behind the market midline. But marketing it with "RAM is (or will soon be) the inhibiting factor around the adoption of single- board computers." is IMHO will only hurt the project, as its main goal (unless my memory plays tricks on me) is to deliver commodity hardware in the hands of people to do real-world things (and allow to sustainably reuse that hardware for doing even more real-world things). So, one of scenario how it all may come up is that all this sustainability talk may be a marketing gimmick and there won't be much more sustainability in EOMA than freedom in some fairphone. It will be a toy for particular kind of hipsters, delivered to them in denim recycled bags. Luke gets rich and will drive a sustainable personally tuned Tesla, but not that rich to produce an open-hardware SoC. All that would be pretty sad finale after all these years. So, I hope the project will continue to educate how cool it's to run a home router with server capabilities with 256MB RAM instead of typical 32MB, even if it costs 3x (for starters, hope it gets more sustainable over time), rather than ship luxuries and proclaiming demise of 1GB single-board computers. Thanks for other comments - insightful. [] > > Some progress is actually worth having, you know. > > Paul > -- Best regards, Paul mailto:pmiscml at gmail.com From lkcl at lkcl.net Thu Nov 26 16:58:20 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 16:58:20 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop power PCB working! Message-ID: yaaaaa, i have battery-operation, i am currently running an eoma68-a20 off of a 10Ah e-bike battery, and both the LTC4155 charger/dual-supply IC and the ST3115 battery guage IC are up and recogniseable on the I2C bus. i have yet to compile up the linux kernel modules for both these devices, but they are both available... somewhere :) only slight issue to track down: power drops to 4V when the 5V DC is plugged in, i still have to investigate that, but it may be related to the setting of 3A input and i only have a 2A 5V charger. i can change the settings, and i can also "ping" the LTC4155 over the I2C bus... maybe :) but.... progress, yay! l. From paul at boddie.org.uk Thu Nov 26 17:33:20 2015 From: paul at boddie.org.uk (Paul Boddie) Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 18:33:20 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: <20151125221642.0b954c6b@x230> References: <201511242249.07386.paul@boddie.org.uk> <20151125221642.0b954c6b@x230> Message-ID: <201511261833.20731.paul@boddie.org.uk> On Wednesday 25. November 2015 21.16.42 Paul Sokolovsky wrote: > > Paul Boddie wrote: > > > Again, I haven't kept up > > with this, so it's useful to know. I remember that the i386 > > architecture had support for larger address spaces, but I guess that > > it was more convenient to move towards the amd64 variant in the end. > > The way it was pushed on everyone, yeah. And we'll see if the same is > happening now with arm64 - just as you, I skipped x86_64 "revolution", > so can't judge for sure, but as far as I can tell, yeah, it's being > pushed pretty much. Which is only said for projects like EOMA68, > because it's endless run, and all the careful selection of nice 32-bit > SoCs risk going down /dev/null, being consumers soon will meet classic > stuff with "wwwwhat? it's not 64-bit?" Well, I used Alpha back in the 1990s and that was a 64-bit transition worth pursuing, given how much faster the architecture was than virtually everything else that was available to me at the time. But it's precisely the "it's not 64-bit?" thinking that leads to products like that Olimex one (and also the Qualcomm arm64 development board [*]) where, as I noted, the most significant current motivation - more memory headroom for those who need it - is completely ignored. I guess we'd both ask what the point of such products is, other than "preparing for the future" or whatever the usual sales pitch is. [*] https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/dragonboard-410c ("Free graphics possible" according to the Debian Wiki's ARM 64 port page... https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port ...which lists the gold-plated options for "preparing for the future" offered by vendors who don't really seem to be certain that it is the future at the moment.) > > FUD? Ouch! Thanks for classifying some pretty innocent remarks in > > such a negative way. > > Perhaps it was a bit strong, but we all know that EOMA68 project is > rather overdue, and it feels that maybe - just maybe - something will > materialize finally anytime soon. And maybe - just maybe - coming up > with high-end 2Gb module is good idea to show that project can deliver > "bleeding edge" spec, not perceivably lag behind the market midline. At this point 2GB is pretty reasonable. Indeed, I'd be happy with 2GB for my own purposes: I did consider upgrading my desktop machine to 2GB a few months ago, but it would be much nicer to go with EOMA-68 devices instead. My personal justification for more than 1GB involves developing and testing stuff in User Mode Linux which isn't happy running with a small tmpfs, and although I could switch to other virtualisation technologies (distribution support just wasn't there when I started to use UML), I imagine that I'd still need more memory to make it all happy, anyway. I could imagine using a couple of 1GB devices instead for such activities. Going down to 512MB could work, too, but might involve more attention to the distribution-level stuff. At some point, the extra work required in tailoring the software to work well with the hardware is work I don't really have time for, however. So, 256MB would present some awkward choices, given the state of various distributions today. I'm not saying that everyone needs 2GB or even 1GB (or maybe even 512MB), but then again, I'm not a big media "consumer" on my hardware, so I do wonder what amount of memory would be the minimum to satisfy "most people". > But marketing it with "RAM is (or will soon be) the inhibiting factor > around the adoption of single- board computers." is IMHO will only > hurt the project, as its main goal (unless my memory plays tricks on > me) is to deliver commodity hardware in the hands of people to do > real-world things (and allow to sustainably reuse that hardware for > doing even more real-world things). Oh, it wasn't a marketing suggestion at all. I don't suggest playing the game of who can offer most RAM, but it is clear that the amount of RAM does influence potential buyers and their impressions of what they might be able to use the device for. One can certainly get away with offering something very cheap and saying that it is good enough for "lightweight tasks" or, given the shenanigans in the "educational" scene at the moment, as an almost "throwaway" piece of gear that occupies the attentions of certain kinds of users for a short while, especially with things like this Raspberry Pi Zero that was announced very recently, but I think that it serves people better to have something that can address more than their absolute basic needs. Otherwise, they'll say that "this cheap thing is all very well, but I want a proper laptop", or whatever. > So, one of scenario how it all may come up is that all this > sustainability talk may be a marketing gimmick and there won't be much > more sustainability in EOMA than freedom in some fairphone. It will be > a toy for particular kind of hipsters, delivered to them in denim > recycled bags. Luke gets rich and will drive a sustainable personally > tuned Tesla, but not that rich to produce an open-hardware SoC. All > that would be pretty sad finale after all these years. Actually, Fairphone has come some way in terms of freedom: the Qualcomm SoC that's in the second product may even be supportable by Free Software. Meanwhile, Luke's Tesla would have to be personalised to stand out where I live. :-) > So, I hope the project will continue to educate how cool it's to run a > home router with server capabilities with 256MB RAM instead of typical > 32MB, even if it costs 3x (for starters, hope it gets more sustainable > over time), rather than ship luxuries and proclaiming demise of 1GB > single-board computers. Well, a lot of these computers have to get to 1GB first before their demise. ;-) But it is certainly the case that you can deliver better (and better- supported) hardware to various kinds of devices, and for many of them a modest amount of memory (by desktop/laptop standards) would go a long way. I don't think I would ever dispute that. Paul From lkcl at lkcl.net Thu Nov 26 22:37:26 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 22:37:26 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card In-Reply-To: <201511261833.20731.paul@boddie.org.uk> References: <201511242249.07386.paul@boddie.org.uk> <20151125221642.0b954c6b@x230> <201511261833.20731.paul@boddie.org.uk> Message-ID: > Actually, Fairphone has come some way in terms of freedom: the Qualcomm SoC > that's in the second product may even be supportable by Free Software. > Meanwhile, Luke's Tesla would have to be personalised to stand out where I > live. :-) i like what fairphone are attempting - providing people with the means to repair their own devices. it's a pity that they haven't really thought it through properly: if they had, they would have made the parts *properly* modular - i.e. in ESD-protective robust and independent cases such that either a 4-year-old or an 80-year-old could swap out parts in a few seconds.... *safely*. and i won't be buying a tesla, i will be making my own hybrid - including designing the engine (@ 40% more fuel-efficient than existing 2-stroke and 4-stroke engines, by using "detonation" i.e. over1800F combustion temperature) - and including *reversing* the size of the hydrocarbon engine vs electrical engine: a 6kW hydrocarbon engine along-side a 12kW (20kW peak, going into over-temperature) electrical engine. the over-temperature characteristics are now permitted in Europe under EU vehicle category L7E [heavy quadricycle] for up to 30 seconds of "boost power" at up to 25kW so that the vehicle may accelerate at the same rate as other, more powerful (yet heavier) vehicles. long story - been working on a design of ultra-efficient vehicle for several years. l. From lkcl at lkcl.net Thu Nov 26 22:58:45 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2015 22:58:45 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] qualcom snapdragon 410 Message-ID: > [*] https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/dragonboard-410c > > ("Free graphics possible" according to the Debian Wiki's ARM 64 port page... > > https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port Adreno GPU. niiiice. minimalist hardware datasheet (with pinouts but not mechanical layout) on arrow electronics, as well as a five THOUSAND page datasheet on the hardware registers. this might actually qualify as an FSF-Endorseable processor, and, with a bit of work, might actually be a great candidate for an EOMA68 CPU Card. it will need a MIPI-to-RGB/TTL converter IC on-board. there's I2C, UART, SPI, 2 SDCs (one is eMMC, the other is SD/MMC), only one USB port (bleeeergh!), which means that a USB Hub IC is needed.. so we're looking at... whatever the SoC cost is (knowing qualcomm they'll want around the $12 mark for it), plus USB Hub IC and components ($1.50), plus a MIPI-to-RGB/TTL converter IC (could be as high as $2.50), so we'd be looking at what.... $15.... ... and the allwinner A64 we know is only $5. with 2 USB interfaces, RGB/TTL output.... whyy, god, whyyyyy... :) l. From gacuest at gmail.com Fri Nov 27 10:54:26 2015 From: gacuest at gmail.com (GaCuest) Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 11:54:26 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] qualcom snapdragon 410 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: En 26 de noviembre de 2015 en 23:59:02, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (lkcl at lkcl.net) escrito: > > [*] https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/dragonboard-410c > > > > ("Free graphics possible" according to the Debian Wiki's ARM 64 port page... > > > > https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port > > Adreno GPU. niiiice. minimalist hardware datasheet (with pinouts > but not mechanical layout) on arrow electronics, as well as a five > THOUSAND page datasheet on the hardware registers. > > this might actually qualify as an FSF-Endorseable processor, and, > with a bit of work, might actually be a great candidate for an EOMA68 > CPU Card. it will need a MIPI-to-RGB/TTL converter IC on-board. > there's I2C, UART, SPI, 2 SDCs (one is eMMC, the other is SD/MMC), > only one USB port (bleeeergh!), which means that a USB Hub IC is > needed.. > > so we're looking at... whatever the SoC cost is (knowing qualcomm > they'll want around the $12 mark for it), plus USB Hub IC and > components ($1.50), plus a MIPI-to-RGB/TTL converter IC (could be as > high as $2.50), so we'd be looking at what.... $15.... > > ... and the allwinner A64 we know is only $5. with 2 USB interfaces, > RGB/TTL output.... > > whyy, god, whyyyyy... :) >  There is a EOMA-68 with Allwinner A20. So you have a cheap EOMA-68. In my opinion, a EOMA-68 with Qualcomm it is a good idea, because is more powerful than Allwinner A64 (Adreno 306 is better than Mali 400 MP2). I have some doubts: - EOMA-68 has enough power for the Snapdragon 410? - Do you have support/drivers of the GPU in Linux (like OpenGL ES 3.0)? In my opinion, there should be a EOMA-68 with a more basic and cheap  hardware (Allwinner series) and other EOMA-68 with a more powerful and  expensive hardware (Snapdragon series). > l. > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk From joem at martindale-electric.co.uk Fri Nov 27 11:20:57 2015 From: joem at martindale-electric.co.uk (joem) Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 11:20:57 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero is out Message-ID: <1448623311.16727.1.camel@jm-desktop> The $5 Raspberry Pi is out https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/ All sold out everywhere in hours :( From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 27 16:43:02 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 16:43:02 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] qualcom snapdragon 410 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 10:54 AM, GaCuest wrote: > I have some doubts: > - EOMA-68 has enough power for the Snapdragon 410? A53 goes power-hungry at 1ghz (big voltage jump). at 900mhz or below, it's fine. A53 is 15% more power-performance-hungry that the A7. > - Do you have support/drivers of the GPU in Linux (like OpenGL ES 3.0)? yes. > In my opinion, there should be a EOMA-68 with a more basic and cheap > hardware (Allwinner series) and other EOMA-68 with a more powerful and > expensive hardware (Snapdragon series). agreed. it's also FSF-Endorseable, which is awesome. l. From gacuest at gmail.com Fri Nov 27 21:20:17 2015 From: gacuest at gmail.com (GaCuest) Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 22:20:17 +0100 Subject: [Arm-netbook] qualcom snapdragon 410 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: En 27 de noviembre de 2015 en 17:43:27, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (lkcl at lkcl.net) escrito: > On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 10:54 AM, GaCuest wrote: > > > I have some doubts: > > - EOMA-68 has enough power for the Snapdragon 410? > > A53 goes power-hungry at 1ghz (big voltage jump). at 900mhz or > below, it's fine. A53 is 15% more power-performance-hungry that the > A7. > > > - Do you have support/drivers of the GPU in Linux (like OpenGL ES 3.0)? > > yes. > > > In my opinion, there should be a EOMA-68 with a more basic and cheap > > hardware (Allwinner series) and other EOMA-68 with a more powerful and > > expensive hardware (Snapdragon series). > > agreed. it's also FSF-Endorseable, which is awesome. > > l. >  I know that A53 is power-hungry. My question is if Adreno 306 consumes more  or less than Mali400 MP2. Adreno seems to have better support than Mali, so it seems a better choice.  Freedreno also supports other Adreno GPU? RAM? It will be interesting to see this new EOMA-68. > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook at lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook at files.phcomp.co.uk From maillist_arm-netbook at aross.me Fri Nov 27 22:59:19 2015 From: maillist_arm-netbook at aross.me (Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross) Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 22:59:19 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop power board In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <5658E047.9050407@aross.me> Great news, happy news! Where did you get the ebike batt from? From lkcl at lkcl.net Fri Nov 27 23:11:01 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2015 23:11:01 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop power board In-Reply-To: <5658E047.9050407@aross.me> References: <5658E047.9050407@aross.me> Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 10:59 PM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote: > Great news, happy news! > > Where did you get the ebike batt from? a random internet search - can't recall immediately the company name, can look it up if you're interested. l. From maillist_arm-netbook at aross.me Sat Nov 28 13:05:36 2015 From: maillist_arm-netbook at aross.me (Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross) Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 13:05:36 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop power board In-Reply-To: References: <5658E047.9050407@aross.me> Message-ID: <5659A6A0.4010501@aross.me> On 27/11/15 23:11, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: > On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 10:59 PM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross > wrote: >> Great news, happy news! >> >> Where did you get the ebike batt from? > > a random internet search - can't recall immediately the company name, > can look it up if you're interested. > l. i am, though how much was it? Ive been thinking about a big lithium batt for my portable boom box project and for use with other gadgets. As as flexible power bank. arr i just realised, its in a 3.7v configuration and not say 14.8v configuration? im boosting the voltage to 19-36v. hench me thinks i’m going to need that higher normal (is that the right word?) voltage :) Thank you. From lkcl at lkcl.net Sat Nov 28 13:39:42 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 13:39:42 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] laptop power board In-Reply-To: <5659A6A0.4010501@aross.me> References: <5658E047.9050407@aross.me> <5659A6A0.4010501@aross.me> Message-ID: On Sat, Nov 28, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross wrote: > On 27/11/15 23:11, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote: >> On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 10:59 PM, Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross >> wrote: >>> Great news, happy news! >>> >>> Where did you get the ebike batt from? >> >> a random internet search - can't recall immediately the company name, >> can look it up if you're interested. >> l. > > i am, though how much was it? $10 in volume. company's named g-power. > Ive been thinking about a big lithium batt for my portable boom box > project and for use with other gadgets. As as flexible power bank. > > arr i just realised, its in a 3.7v configuration and not say 14.8v > configuration? correct. > im boosting the voltage to 19-36v. hench me thinks i’m going to need > that higher normal (is that the right word?) voltage :) ... and a charging mechanism, and to check the power consumption. this battery's rated at nominal 0.3C (3A) discharge rate, but can cope with 1C (10A). it's a low-cost battery in other words. l. From lkcl at lkcl.net Sat Nov 28 14:43:31 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 14:43:31 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] qualcom snapdragon 410 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 9:20 PM, GaCuest wrote: > En 27 de noviembre de 2015 en 17:43:27, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (lkcl at lkcl.net) escrito: >> On Fri, Nov 27, 2015 at 10:54 AM, GaCuest wrote: >> >> > I have some doubts: >> > - EOMA-68 has enough power for the Snapdragon 410? >> >> A53 goes power-hungry at 1ghz (big voltage jump). at 900mhz or >> below, it's fine. A53 is 15% more power-performance-hungry that the >> A7. >> >> > - Do you have support/drivers of the GPU in Linux (like OpenGL ES 3.0)? >> >> yes. >> >> > In my opinion, there should be a EOMA-68 with a more basic and cheap >> > hardware (Allwinner series) and other EOMA-68 with a more powerful and >> > expensive hardware (Snapdragon series). >> >> agreed. it's also FSF-Endorseable, which is awesome. >> >> l. >> > > I know that A53 is power-hungry. My question is if Adreno 306 consumes more > or less than Mali400 MP2. don't know. > Adreno seems to have better support than Mali, so it seems a better choice. > Freedreno also supports other Adreno GPU? afaik. > RAM? lots. > It will be interesting to see this new EOMA-68. http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/HOT-NEW-IC-MSM8916-5VV-MSM8916-8916-5VV-8916-QUALCOM-BGA/1394673_32342302837.html well, it's made it out of the restricted distribution chain and into the mainstream bazaar. haha, there's even templates for BGA stencilling available so people can replace the IC: http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20151128063810&SearchText=MSM8916+IC l. From lkcl at lkcl.net Sat Nov 28 14:46:53 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 14:46:53 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] qualcom snapdragon 410 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: http://linaro.co/db410c-schematics schematics for the dragonboard.... looking good so far. From lkcl at lkcl.net Sat Nov 28 14:54:48 2015 From: lkcl at lkcl.net (Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton) Date: Sat, 28 Nov 2015 14:54:48 +0000 Subject: [Arm-netbook] qualcom snapdragon 410 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: https://developer.qualcomm.com/qfile/29367/lm80-p0436-35_a_pm8916-pm8916-1_device_spec.pdf PM8916 power management datasheet.... interestingly, qualcomm is violating google's usage conditions by deliberately manipulating search results - "PM8916 datasheet" comes up with a top hit of "Qualcomm 4K datasheet". had to find the actual PM8916 datasheet with "PM8916 datasheet filetype:pdf" l.