Hi,
Am 05.02.2014 um 14:04 schrieb Michael Mrozek:
Hi,
well, the official release has certainly lead to some effects.
Besides two people who contacted me as they want to invest (haven't checked how much yet) and two more who would like to officially distribute it, someone working for Qualcomm has contacted me to let me know it should be possible for us getting one of their SoCs as well.
Well, the question is, if we can get dev boards,
I think we already considered to use the DevBoard which is the "DragonBoard" (what a nice coincidence to DragonBox, DragonFly :):
all needed technical details and a good price within a short timeframe, should we consider switching to Qualcomm?
We haven't started to integrate the OMAP5 onto our PCB yet, and the Snapdragon 800 seems impressive... and has OpenSource GPU drivers available.
It is funny with the Freedreno that the main driving person is an TI employee:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=qualcomm_freedreno&am...
Maybe this is something for a statement for the discussion about an "IT" petition :)
But if I look here:
http://freedreno.github.io/ http://bloggingthemonkey.blogspot.de/
indicates that it is still work in progress.
http://www.qualcomm.com/snapdragon/processors/800
What do you think? Nikolaus, you should probably know whether it would be possible technically.
I have no details but like with the modems those SoCs are to some extent exchangeable. Because everyone wants the same features from them: * CPU * Display * RAM * USB3.0 + other ports * some I2C, SPI, GPIOs etc.
One thing has to be considered: the Snapdragon is designed as a complete SoC including UMTS/LTE and WLAN/BT. So we have to take care to get a (cheaper?) version without these functions.
The reason is that we can't implement a system based on these fully integrated chips including radio for two reasons:
a) we need some firmware that runs on the CPU - and most likely limits us to Android and we get the same and even more heavy discussions as with the "closed" GPU b) we need our own certifications for everything
So I would still stay with external 3G module + external WLAN/BT module, even if Qualcomm will try to convince us to user their fully integrated chips.
notaz, does it have all the stuff we need for software? (Linux drivers should be available, but does it have Neon and 2D acceleration we can use?)
For the MIPI display we could most likely use the Sony Xperia Z driver I have found yesterday :)
Just to make sure: We don't know yet if we can get it - but the question is: IF we can get it, would it make sense to switch?
Well, it is not answerable without having it seen and evaluated. The easier to answer question with the current level of information is:
Under which conditions would it make sense to switch?
IMHO: * CPU+GPU performance is at least as good (we really need to benchmark it carefully) * it is not more expensive (assuming we can get it in the low quantities we want) * we can handle the chip in PCB dimensions and production (BGA pitch) * we have enough information to "copy" the Dragonboard circuits
If any of these is worse than with the OMAP5, I would say the "open GPU driver" is not outweighting the downsides.
But we could also ask TI for help to open the SGX drivers... E.g. by permitting Rob Clark to work on it. If they ever want to see an OMAP5 in a consumer device :)
BR, Nikolaus