Which A15 board would be better for a Risc OS Port???

Hi folks so the big question? which A15 development board will be the best target for Risc OS port
In the Red corner you have the OMAP5432 processor-based uEVM from Texas Instruments link http://www.svtronics.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=33
In the Black corner you have the Arndale 5 Dual Board Package-B with Exynos5 Dual Cortex A15 from Samsung Link http://www.howchip.com/shop/item.php?it_id=AND5250B
On the side of the OMAP we already have a port for the Panda ES so some of the code base will exist already so maybe it can be reused ? not sure if the spec & doc’s are complete??
The Arndale 5 Dual Board is a complete new SOC so a big Question mark but looks very promising good doc’s so far.
So any thoughts and comments please.

The Exynos5 has a sata interface which would be lovely!

They both do.

Also both of them have their Ethernet over USB – I am awaiting a log in to get hold of the Arndale stuff but I have a sneaking suspicion that (unlike the Ti board) it is using the same combined SMSC USB / Ethernet chip family as the current boards :-(

I am awaiting a log in to get hold of the Arndale stuff

In the interval between announcing it and locking with account passwords the 5MB user manual, schematics for the baseboard, audio module etc were quick downloads. Were you after something else?

Got it all now.

The Arndale is a lot better documented.

The base board is huge though!

The base board is huge though!

Ah, but most of the important connecors face the same direction – means mounting in a standard small chassis is easier with all the cables heading the same way, or all ports out the back.

I see we have not had any comments from the heavy hitters yet come on will & Jeffery what do you think???

There’s quite a variety of interesting A15-related parts coming out of TI at the moment, so I’d be inclined to look in that direction. Many of the new developments have not hit boards (or production silicon) yet though.

I fear however that, on the TI Cortex-A15 overview page, the promised “up to 5.6 GHz Cortex-A15” is a slight mistake. On the other hand, 1.6 GHz is still nice :-)

Well hi everyone just had my new toy in the post the omap5432 EVM board got it this morning,
hooked it up to my PC serial port, set it to boot from sd card it working but all i get is rubbish at the mo.
will have a look on the internet when i get back lnternet see if there is a uboot MLO for it, only seen something called USBBoot so far.
has anyone else got this board yet and have they got any where with it?, any help would be welcome.

So has anyone else got one of these boards??? is anyone able to build U-boot and the required mlo files.
I will have to build a linux system at the weekend to start looking into it a bit more so any help and pointers will be great.

new toy in the post the omap5432 EVM board

A couple of similar products look to be:

• EPP-Pico-OMAP5430
• uQ7-OMAP5

I guess they’ll all be fairly pricey though.

you guys seem to have missed the Samsung Chromebook.
It is a great A15 based netbook and running Ubuntu or Debian is quite easy to do.
I’d love to see RISC OS running on it :-)

you guys seem to have missed the Samsung Chromebook.
It is a great A15 based netbook and running Ubuntu or Debian is quite easy to do.
I’d love to see RISC OS running on it :-)

If you look at the spec of the Arnedale and the Samsung Chromebook (ARM version) they look similar enough that the Arnedale is probably intended to be a dev board for the Chromebook.
The Chromebook has the downside that the first thing needed is to hack past the normal default boot environment – I haven’t looked at the recent debian/ubuntu boot hacks.
However, totally agree it could be a nice neat laptop for RISC OS users, with a possible market for labels to cover the Samsung logo for those who would rather it said something else.

with a possible market for labels to cover the Samsung logo for those who would rather it said something else

I’ve got no problem with Samsung. Better that than something made up by a bloke† in a shed in a run-down industrial estate in an old mill town.

† Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

you guys seem to have missed the Samsung Chromebook.

The Chromebook has the downside that the first thing needed is to hack past the normal default boot environment – I haven’t looked at the recent debian/ubuntu boot hacks.

The Android port hasn’t been getting too far.

The Android port hasn’t been getting too far.

Yup, as I said the first hurdle is the non-destructive (avoiding the brick style) change from the default boot environment.

No hurdle on the boot since Chromebook has official dev mode which allows running different kernels from SD card. I have been running like that for many months already and have recompiled the kernel many times to keep up with the changes.
For RISC OS to run on it there is a lot of work to do of course. The positive side is that Cortex-A15 devices are getting more available like the ODRIOD-XU. (which i hope to receive tomorrow.)
Availability of an ARM notebook like the Chromebook should make up for the hurdle to get RISC OS running on it. In the past k-exec used to work to boot a RISC OS ROM but i don’t know if that is still feasable.

It’s a tempting prospect. If RISC OS could be made to run on integrated hardware of that nature, I’d buy into the platform.

ODROID-XU arrived. whoa.. this is an entirely different beast.
Very fast and with integrated emmc it has > 100MB/s disk access.
I will take a look at my ‘old’ RPCemu code (the one optimized for ARM) and see if i can run it on this beastie. For now i have my hands full with taming it to run my own compiled kernels. It puts the Panda in the shade big time!
Oh and for spoilers: it has USB3 :-)

Sounds fun! Did you spot that you’re not the only RISC OS person on the Odroid forum?

The Odroid-XU runs quite well and it can do 1080p video in software (still waiting for the OpenGL-ES drivers :-( )

I would recommend the Samsung ARM Chromebook for RISC OS 5 since it has a huge amount of CPU power, Dual core (so only one core gets wasted ;-) ) and 2GB memory.
Oh, lest not forget USB3 which is a lot faster than USB 2 of course.

Just imagine a blazing fast RISC OS notebook and quite cheap too.
Who do i need to XXXXXXXX to get that started?

The IGEPv5 was announced the other day. Another potential high end target for a RISC OS port? See here for details.

Highlights include 4GB DDR3 1066Mhz ram, 2GHz CPU and Gbit ethernet.

The Android port hasn’t been getting too far.

Taken from more recent posts in that thread:

• Installing Android on the Samsung XE303C12 Chromebook
• Graphics and Compute Development on Samsung Chromebook

Done quite a bit of reading on A15 boards and I’d love to see work on this one…

http://www.hardkernel.com/main/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G137463363079&tab_idx=1