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

Quoting the sales blurb…

Processor: Samsung Exynos5 Octa ARM Cortex™-A15 1.6Ghz Quad and Cortex™-A7 1.2GHz Quad CPUs

Eight cores and we will only be using one of them. The ironic thing? RISC OS would be just as happy on any of them. I mean, running on a “slow” 1.2GHz core isn’t exactly a hardship. ;-)

Memory 2Gbyte LPDDR3 RAM PoP (800Mhz, 1600Mbps/pin, 2 × 32bit Bus)

;-) With a 256MB Pi, I tend to have around 207MB free (32MB taken for the GPU, about 6MB for RISC OS, leaving my usage at ~11MB (half of that being NetSurf)).
I suppose, however, a much faster memory bus would be a huge improvement, even if my spare memory would be habitually sitting at 1999MB. I’d hope with that sort of capacity, the official RAMFS doesn’t limit itself to a ‘mere’ 128MB. Allocate a half-GB RAMdisc, copy the entire source/build to it, then run !Builder. Whoo…

Does this imply, by the way, that if you scaled the CPU back to run at 800MHz, you would have something running at about the same speed as the Pi with zero-latency memory accesses? Or does the speed controller do something naff like step back the memory as the processor slows down?

3D Accelerator PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 EP)

Wake me up when we can do something exciting with it.

Video supports 1080p via HDMI cable(H.264+AAC based MP4 container format)

??? HDMI uses MP4? Since when?
Or is this to make it seem more impressive that it can do what a Pi does?

Audio On-board Audio codec

I’m sure Jim would like to know if it is “good enough”. :-) Seriously though, it is a MAX98090 offering 24 bit samples to 96kHz. Better than a CD but won’t set the world alight. Wasn’t Jim recently talking about 192kHz/24bit?

Standard 3.5mm headphone jack

Shame there’s no optical or SPDIF. I wonder what the “best” quality is able to be pushed out of a headphone jack before you just can’t tell the difference any more.

HDMI Digital

Well DUH! Show me HDMI analogue and then we’ll talk.

USB3.0 Host SuperSpeed USB standard A type connector x 1 port
USB3.0 OTG SuperSpeed USB Micro A-B type connector x 1 port
USB2.0 Host High Speed standard A type connector x 4 ports

Worth pointing out that the nice shiny four USB ports are USB 2. There’s only one USB 3 port. That said, I have a USB3.0 harddisc that makes claims that my computer (1.6GHz Atom) just can’t deliver. It’d be interesting to see if an ARM board with USB3 could really fly?
[hell, there’s enough processing power in there that you could pretty much nearly run a microkernel and devote an entire core to it – fast enough for ya?]

Display HDMI monitor

You’re getting repetitive.
It is worth noting that the ‘in detail’ says: Standard Micro-HDMI, supports up to 1920 × 1080 resolution – does this imply that larger display sizes are unobtainable? Oh, and at what framerate is full HD? Interlaced or stepscan?

Storage (Option): MicroSD Card Slot
eMMC module socket : eMMC 4.5 Flash Storage (up to 64GByte capacity and 160MByte/sec access speed)

Either one of these would be your boot drive, right there.

Fast Ethernet LAN 10/100Mbps Ethernet with RJ-45 Jack ( Auto-MDIX support)

Not Gigabit LAN on the board?

Gigabit Ethernet LAN USB3.0 to Gigabit Ethernet adapter (USB module)

Oh – wait – we’re not still using USB LAN modules are we?
Jeez people, why not invent an ARM SoC with enough GPIO to run a LAN chip directly.

WiFi (Option) USB IEEE 802.11b/g/n 1T1R WLAN with Antenna (USB module)

So a “selling point” is a ten euro WiFi dongle you could get from Amazon, huh?

HDD/SSD SATA interface (Optional) SuperSpeed USB (USB 3.0) to Serial ATA3 adapter for 2.5"/3.5" HDD and SSD storage

Oh, come on! This is ridiculous. I bought one those in an itty-bitty box to store my animé as I got fed up burning DVDs. That harddiscs exist in USB form doesn’t make it a selling point.

Why not add that you can get USB radios? Or toy missile launchers? Hell, with recent changes in weather, how about a USB fan to keep the owner cool?

Power (included) 5V 4A Power

Power is included? What? A really big battery? Do I send it back for a replacement when it runs out? I’d worry about postage, have you seen how much Colissimo charges for, well, anything?

Sarcasm aside – it sounds like a nice board to start considering how multicore stuff would work.

I think the IGEPv5 would be a better bet being an OMAP device, having 1000bT and S-ATA directly connected to the CPU and an idle second core to start considering the multicore stuff.

The “Lite” version should be good enough for us, albeit on-board flash would be a bonus.

Yep IGEPv5 or a possible future PandaBoard. OMAP5 will be also present inside the Pyra game console.
And this product too: https://www.tigal.com/product/2772.

[Rumeur] Apple travaillerait bien à des Mac ARM ¹ (version anglais à Ubergizmo.com).

¹ Earlier rumour started by Wired in 2011

[Rumeur] Apple travaillerait bien à des Mac ARM

Makes sense – must be a pain to maintain OS X and iOS. And, recall, Macs have jumped architecture twice already – the 68000 family for classic Mac¹ (up to MacOS 8), the PowerPC for Sexy-looking-but-weighs-a-tonneMac (mostly MacOS9 but can run a very Mac OSX), and then the Intel Macs.

By doing this, it might help to unify large parts of the codebase between desktop and mobile. Just so long as they don’t go and make the mistakes Microsoft is making with Windows Eight-Point-Bleugh.

¹ The 1990 “Classic”, not the 1984 “Classic”. ;-)

First signs of life for OMAP5432EVM

U-Boot SPL 2011.09 (Feb 25 2013 – 10:52:00)
Texas Instruments OMAP5432 ES2.0
OMAP SD/MMC: 0
reading u-boot.img
reading u-boot.img

U-Boot 2011.09 (Feb 25 2013 – 10:52:00)

CPU : OMAP5432 ES2.0
Board: OMAP5430 EVM
I2C: ready
DRAM: 2 GiB
Relocated addr: 0xfef8d000
WARNING: Caches not enabled
MMC: OMAP SD/MMC: 0

• Warning – bad CRC, using default environment

In: serial
Out: serial
Err: serial
Net: No ethernet found.
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
Device: OMAP SD/MMC
Manufacturer ID: 73
OEM: 4247
Name: NCard
Tran Speed: 25000000
Rd Block Len: 512
SD version 2.0
High Capacity: Yes
Capacity: 7.5 GiB
Bus Width: 4-bit
reading ifs-omap5-uevm5432.bin

5242880 bytes read

1. Starting application at 0×80100000 …
   OMAP5 HAL init
   Board config=CortexA15

Time for Bed now

First signs of live for OMAP5432EVM

I suggest you talk to Willi Theiss – he’s already made it much further than that. Not sure why he hasn’t announced it on the forums at all, but if people are going to start duplicating work then I think it’s about time someone said something.

So the next question where do I get willi’s email address or better still he can get me by sending a message to me at rob@interactivedisplays.com.au Because as you say there is no point in going over the same ground.

Rob, I shall contact you ASAP; but please be patient, I am a bit busy with non-RO related work.

Thanks Willi look forward to hearing from you.

Any help required for testing?

While not an A15 board, what does everyone think of this little thing?

http://liliputing.com/2014/08/shuttle-launches-firs-android-arm-based-computers.html

The music is a little on the cheesy side! But it looks nice enough, I “think” there is an Freescale i.MX6 port underway – I could be wrong about this. Whether there is a port underway or if it actually gets completed is purely guess work.

On the note of the A15, if there is any testing required I’m quite happy to get the board required and do some detailed testing etc. if that would be useful.

Just out of my own ignorance, is there a thread on here or a website which states who is working on what?? I did a search but just came up with a lot of people thinking that someone, somewhere is working on something… lol

I did a search but just came up with a lot of people thinking that someone, somewhere is working on something… lol

If you check for changes in the source code there are elements that relate to iMX6 work. Some of the changes are public and are marked as submissions by John Ballance. Yes, he’s working on something, but it isn’t public.(yet?)

One day maybe……
https://developer.nvidia.com/jetson-tk1

An “old” German RISC OS programmer (Mr. Hill) works for nvidia as a software developer. Unfortunately, he currently has no interest in RISC OS

Can anyone chime in on who is working on the OMAP5432EVM port? I might be able to donate a OMAP5432EVM board in a month or two to a developer so long as work will get done.