Development On Arm

[u9i]

Hey guys.

I am planning on buying myself an Efika MX smartbook, which is ARM based. This one to be exact:

https://www.genesi-u...tore/details/12

Here is a proper picture:

http://www.blogarm.n...kamx_smartbook/

Apparently, it is not really ready for public consumption, but i am tired of waiting. 930grams is ok by me

The thing is, i have been using my eee pc 901 for making games for the Wiz, so the question is, can i compile for Wiz, Caanoo and co. with this thing. It is probably optimistic to think, but is it as simple as just replacing my intel->ARM compiler executables with the corresponding ARM->ARM compiler, or will i need to get a lot of sources and make my own toolchain for each device i want to support, and recompile each library i want to use?

/Uni

EDIT: And what are your thoughts about the machine?

 

[skeezix]

Let me say one thing --

We've been developing software for many many years; any phone, digital watch, calculator these days is probably beefier in CPU than machines costing thousands a few years ago So yes, without even looking at the specs, any halfway useful ARM based netbook will be able to compile things.

The only questions of course are..

1) are you able to build the toolchains yourself?
2) how long it takes to compile something, but by the sounds of it you're not aiming to build some massive thing, so not really an issue.

Assembling your own toolchain is not that bad; its a little weird when you've not done it before, but its documented around. ie: just building gcc in cross-compiler mode so that you end up with an ARM gcc, is not hard (and is documented pretty well.) Its lining up the libs from the Wiz, Caanoo etc with the compiler that can be tricky and messy.

So you'll be fine, but you may have to stumble through these steps yourself. You might want to check with some of the Pandora threads, as numerous people are building things natively on their Pandora (which is ARM based), and many of the steps would be the same.

jeffphone

edit: Specs remind me of the Touchbook over at http://www.alwaysinnovating.com/touchbook/

edit: "Freescale i.MX515 (ARM Cortex-A8 800MHz)" is plenty good enough to build and run stuff, targetting Wiz. Why would you get rid of the EEE by chance?

 

[Exophase]

This one does have the advantage of being able to execute ARM assembly (including NEON) directly. A laptop that can do that sounds at least mildly enticing to me. SSHing into a Pandora works well, but it's not a very good way to pass the display for graphically demanding things.

Sadly doesn't look like there's any VGA or HDMI out, so you can't make a full desktop solution out of it.

 

[u9i]

Thanks guys. Thanks for replying. Skeezix, I am sure it compiles fast enough. I am very patient The big exciting issue is if i can make a toolchain myself. I will take the time and see if i can. It will give me more freedom and great insight into embedded development. I think blogarm.net will make a proper review so i will wait to order and see what more they say.

Exophase, i don't see any display port either (no not apple's display port, just a port for some video signal ). I think it has one though. Think it is VGA even. I will ask them about that. It is not so important to my purchase though. It is a low-power single core ARM Cortex-A8. I'm guessing about the same performance as Pandora?

My main reasons is the light weight, noiseless (fans give me headache... i call it a work injury hehe), 10" screen, my eee has 9" and should have a long battery life (although, it is not much better then many others out there now), it is also said to have a much better keyboard then my crappy old eeepc keyboard. Keyboards have come a long way on netbooks since i bought my eee. Then of course it is ARM, which basically is the reason for the "noiseless" feature Oh, and no hard drive (drop resistant).

My eee has served me well. It had (edit) has a 20GB SSD, so it was before the times where netbooks got hard drives. But now its fan is getting too noisy for me, so time to change

/Uni

 

[u9i]

Exophase, it does have an HDMI port: http://www.blogarm.net/guide/single.php?id=10

 

[Exophase]

Nice find u9i. Pretty cool! It will actually be good to see how some benches perform vs an OMAP3 Linux machine.. in particular I want to see how memory latency is.