MIPS Creator CI20 Dev board - free to Project developers (limited number)

[vcoleiro1]

Imagination Technologies is offering a MIPS dev board to project developers. You probably know them from there PowerVR GPU's, a while ago they bought MIPS and this seems like the first toe dip so to speak.  

More info here: http://www.engadget.com/2014/08/27/imagination-tech-mips-dev-board/

Seems to be capable of running Linux distros like Debian 7, as well as Android 4.4,

Specs: 1.2GHz MIPS32 CPU, 1 GB RAM and a PowerVR SGX540 GPU . 8GB of on-board storage and a full-size SD card reader, Ethernet port,Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11 b/g/n WiFi , 2 full USB ports and a HDMI-out port.

 

[sebt3]

"PowerVR SGX540 GPU" no thanks. had enough of that

 

[TrashyMG]

"PowerVR SGX540 GPU" no thanks. had enough of that

Until the Pyra with the PowerVR SGX544 right?

 

[sebt3]

Until the Pyra with the PowerVR SGX544 right?

yeah, at least I'm expecting somewhat a bit more of power out of it...

 

[fantomid]

Answers regarding open source and SGX :


forum.imgtec.com/discussion/comment/17922


Sorry for my english.

 

[WizardStan]

I've forwarded this to my PM. We weren't planning on working with MIPS anytime soon but you can't really argue with free.

 

[elwing]

It's GCW0 big sister soc... strange between the JZ4770 and the JZ4780 they not only changed frequency and details like that but went from their vivante gpu to SGX...

 

[Exophase]

I've forwarded this to my PM. We weren't planning on working with MIPS anytime soon but you can't really argue with free.

I dunno, I'd argue with free if you have to go through this whole application process in the hopes of winning the selection lottery to get a dev board that's worth $50 at best. Not that it really matters now that the website has been forced down.

It's GCW0 big sister soc... strange between the JZ4770 and the JZ4780 they not only changed frequency and details like that but went from their vivante gpu to SGX...

Rockchip, HiSilicon, Actions also went from Vivante to PowerVR and/or Mali. Only SoC maker I can find that still uses them is Marvell. Marvell SoCs tend to end up in more embedded sort of stuff like Chromecast.

Jz4780 is really pretty different from Jz4770, it has two CPUs and is on a better process node, has double the L2 cache, etc. So much better than what's in GCW-Zero but still not that great.

 

[vcoleiro1]

The intial run for the free offering was only 1000 units.  Considering they were getting 200 applications a second at one point, its all over for the free trial I'd say.  

That said, they are planning on launching for a price (to be determined) after this run.

 

[WizardStan]

I dunno, I'd argue with free if you have to go through this whole application process in the hopes of winning the selection lottery to get a dev board that's worth $50 at best

Aye, if that's the case. The application process thus far has consisted of name, company, and project description, it took me less than a minute to fill it in, but I've no idea what will be expected if we get through this stage. Once it starts taking any real time it's no longer free though and we have no intention of putting any more than cursory effort into supporting MIPS in the immediate future, if at all.