Ubuntu For Cortex A8


darkowl

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QUOTE

AMD may be rumored to give Intel’s Atom architecture a run for its money in the netbook and mobile Internet device market, but they aren’t the only ones. Today ARM, manufacturer of low-power consumption processors (which are found in smart phones and personal media players like the Archos 5), announced that it’s going full force into netbooks. The company is teaming up with Canonical to optimize the Ubuntu Desktop operating system for ARMv7 architecture, including ARM Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 processor-based systems



see here http://blog.laptopmag.com/look-out-intel-a...-mid-categories

Looks like ARM are working with Canonical to get an optimised ubuntu distro for the A8, this is good news for the pandora.
 
With this news in mind, is there any reason to carry on developing the currently working Ubuntu that we've seen in Youtube videos?

It'd mean the devs can focus more on making the Angstrom distro much better, and only have to tweak a few things to get Ubuntu on Pandora.

Do you think they only announced this because the OMAP can now do 256MB RAM? After all, Ubuntu's a lot easier to port with that amount of RAM.
 
mazza558 said:
With this news in mind, is there any reason to carry on developing the currently working Ubuntu that we've seen in Youtube videos?

It'd mean the devs can focus more on making the Angstrom distro much better, and only have to tweak a few things to get Ubuntu on Pandora.

Do you think they only announced this because the OMAP can now do 256MB RAM? After all, Ubuntu's a lot easier to port with that amount of RAM.
Click to expand...

They only announced this, because ARM wants to get a piece of the netbook-market and pay Canonical to officially support ARMv7 with Ubuntu.
I'm pretty sure this will help to get Ubuntu working on the pandora, still the kernel will probably need to be patched to support sgx, wifi and maybe some other things. Also, it seems like Ubuntu-ARM is aimed to ~9" lcds with a higher resolution then the pandora, so some elements of the default GUI may be oversized for pandora, too. Hopefully, they will also port the Ubuntu-MID-edition to ARMv7.
 
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This is actually pretty interesting from a Pandora point of view. ARM and Canonical together can't make a netbook, they need OEMs to take the reference architecture and actually make products to sell to consumers. This is similar to how Intel produced its Atom line and then a bunch of well-known and lesser known names produced a gaggle of roughly similar machines.

However, those Atom machines could run XP, and MSFT seems to be bending over backwards to help now that it's obvious that there's a potential inroad for Linux here. For the ARM architecture though they'd need to ship Windows CE, which hasn't been well recieved when others have tried it:

http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/25/windows...oks-a-bad-name/

Will manufacturers actually take a risk on a non-x86, and therefore Linux-only netbook, regardless of what could be some stunning battery/performance differences? Some have in the past, but they're hardly big names:

http://www.gadgetreview.com/2008/09/the-98...ote-laptop.html

I notice no hardware partner was named in the press release, just vague mentions of good relations with phone companies, which, somewhat bizarrely may leave the Pandora as a premier hardware solution in the near future. If there are still some dev units kicking around I think a phone call to Canonical could provide a good home for a couple of them. (One final thought: once you decide that you're not going to run Windows XP, some other decisions, like using a smaller, higher dpi, touch-sensitive screen with some custom gui and apps to match start to make a lot more sense, another trail that Pandora is blazing).
 
When they say Coretex A8, it includes the graphics hardware too, right?

Perhaps getting some official support from that direction could be the most beneficial.
 
mazza558 said:
With this news in mind, is there any reason to carry on developing the currently working Ubuntu that we've seen in Youtube videos?

It'd mean the devs can focus more on making the Angstrom distro much better, and only have to tweak a few things to get Ubuntu on Pandora.

Do you think they only announced this because the OMAP can now do 256MB RAM? After all, Ubuntu's a lot easier to port with that amount of RAM.
Click to expand...
The OMAP could always DO more than the 128 MB RAM the Pandora originally came with. It was a budget-decision of the Pandora devs to go that route, not a limitation of the chipset.
 
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Gilrad said:
When they say Coretex A8, it includes the graphics hardware too, right?
Click to expand...
They're a bit vague on that point, but they repeatedly refer to ARM-based, ARM-technology based, or ARM-processor based (as opposed to 100% entirely ARM solutions) so it sounds to me like ARM aren't going to introduce a new and specifically netbook-only platform but instead work on supporting existing solutions like TI's OMAP as used in the Pandora, so that the entire ARM ecosystem can benefit from the work.
 
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for the time, the pandora crew should focus on getting angstrom as light-weight and fast to boot as possible.
then, on people demand, get this optimized ubuntu on the pandora.
angstrom is more than enough for most of the users, because they'll mostly use it as a media player, browser (firefox) and the tons of emulators tuned for it.
other than that, ubuntu can wait.
 
mali said:
That ARM-hype will grow huge :)
And the winner is....... ;)
Click to expand...
Everyone! By diversifying the market it'll force software developers to embrace cross platform design decision, even if the x86 and Windows remains king of the desktop market.
 
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Sounds like the ARM-UBUNTU Team could need a finished Pandora. ;)
AFAIK there are not so many ARM-based "netbook-like" Devices out there so I think, these Devs could be very happy with a Pandora. :)
 
fusion_power said:
Sounds like the ARM-UBUNTU Team could need a finished Pandora. ;)
AFAIK there are not so many ARM-based "netbook-like" Devices out there so I think, these Devs could be very happy with a Pandora. :)
Click to expand...
Even if I'd like them using a pand' for their work. I'm sure that they will feel better with a BeagleBoard setup.
 
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sebt3 said:
Even if I'd like them using a pand' for their work. I'm sure that they will feel better with a BeagleBoard setup.
Click to expand...
A finished Pandora would be an *excellent* showcase though. Displaying the potential for light weight net books on an actual product.
 
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mazza558 said:
efegea said:
QUOTE
The top model in the latter family, the OMAP3530, is said to decode HD video at 30 frames per second, and also sports an OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics accelerator, TI says.
Wow!Yeah, I saw that too - pretty cool if true!It's nothing new. They've been claiming (and demonstrated, I believe) 720p playback on the 3530 from the beginning. If we had their codec, we'd be doing it on the Pandora already.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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Gilrad said:
When they say Coretex A8, it includes the graphics hardware too, right?
What graphics hardware does the Cortex-A8 have? As far as I'm aware it has a few nice instructions (including DSP ones), but very little in the actual graphics hardware department. Thats why TI grabbed the SGX core and thew it on the die along with the Cortex core. This distribution seems mainly targetted at "Cortex A8" based systems, rather than the OMAP in particular.
Click to expand...
 
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Gilrad said:
When they say Coretex A8, it includes the graphics hardware too, right?
Click to expand...
Indirectly;

QUOTE
he ARMv7 port of Ubuntu will target system-on-chips (SoCs) based on ARM's Cortex-A processor cores. ..*CLIP*.. TI, which uses ARM's processors in its SoCs rather than licensing the ARMv7 architecture and creating its own, seems to have the only shipping ARMv7-based parts so far, with its Cortex-A8 based OMAP3 SoC family.
 
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