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/
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/
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On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 6:04 PM, Troy Benjegerdes hozer@hozed.org 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.
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.
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-manu...
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.
En 11 de noviembre de 2015 en 10:31:58, joem (joem@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.
On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 9:30 AM, joem joem@martindale-electric.co.uk 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.
On Fri, Nov 6, 2015 at 5:03 PM, Paul Boddie paul@boddie.org.uk 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.
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