On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 5:15 PM, Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk wrote:
On Tuesday 10. March 2015 17.36.17 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
good news: after being very patient and persistent, my contact at ingenic put me in touch with a support engineer who confirmed that the limitation on the jz4775's reported maximum resolution (1280x720) is for the *video decoder* not the actual LCD output capabilities. the actual LCD output may go as high as something like 1700x1700 (not at 60fps obviously) but that things like 1280x800 @ 60hz (the crucial limit of the eoma68 spec) are fine, as is even 1366x768@60hz.
So it's the VPU that only supports 720p, rather than an actual video output limit of 720 lines. I suppose that's what they're trying to say on the following page:
http://www.smartqzwatch.co.uk/specifications/ingenic-jz4775-application- processor
in a way, yeah. what they don't say there is that the video decode engine source is fully available, and they also don't mention that flat-out the jz4775 i think uses only a maximum of 250mW which is awesome.
Some day, even smartwatches will need more than 720p video playback for those who are bothered by that kind of thing. ;-)
:)
honestly, i really don't see this as being a huge show-stopper enough to warrant exclusion of a low-cost SoC that could be the first FSF-Endorseable candidate to run GNU/Linux OSes with a decent amount of RAM (2Gbytes).
I'd certainly be interested, and I would imagine that it would be a good alternative to the various non-open-hardware boards that have been emerging recently for the MIPS platform, as well as a solid alternative to certain popular ARM-based single-board computers.
that's the idea. i'm kinda fed up with there being no even-25%-way-decent options at a reasonable price. sure you can get OMAP3 or AM Sitara SoCs but the only FSF-Endorseable ones come completely devoid of anything remotely useful for GPU or VPU acceleration.
as i've had the first revision PCB done nearly 4 months ago, that just leaves financing of the first revision jz4775 CPU Card to arrange. i have one potential sponsor: if anyone else would like to help out that would be great. we're likely looking at around $USD 1,500 for 5 PCBs.
I don't think I'd be aiming to be a sponsor as such, not being an organisation that would get involved because they see the commercial value in what you're doing, but I'd certainly be interested in seeing this card come to fruition, as indeed I am about the microdesktop and other things getting made.
me too, damnit! :) on that score we finally heard from the contract manufacturer, they aim to focus on getting the quotes.
Actually, with regard to the crowd-funding effort, was it going to include the IC1T board as well as the A20 board, and would the jz4775 board also join the crowd-funding line-up if successfully produced as a first revision?
YES. although it would be necessary to move sharp-ish. even if the 1st revision didn't work i'd really really still like to try to get it in, as the IC1T board only really supports android (cross-compiled) - the jz4775 actually stands a chance of being self-hosting (native debian packages and compiler).
l.