[Arm-netbook] The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea

[Paul Boddie]

Hello,

I see that Luke's friends/rivals at Olimex are considering the idea of a
laptop based on their "64-bit" development board:

"A64-OLinuXino OSHW 64-bit ARM DIY Laptop idea update"

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/a64-olinuxino-oshw-64-bit-arm-diy-
laptop-idea-update/

Their blog post about the board:

"We work on A64-OLinuXino the first Open Source Hardware 64-bit development
board"

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/we-work-on-a64-olinuxino-the-first-
open-source-hardware-64-bit-development-board/

The baffling thing about this "64-bit ARM" stuff, apart from the apparent lack
of vendor cooperation for Linux kernel development...

"One of the problem is that A64 is quite new and no any Linux-Sunxi support,
as nobody have seen A64 development boards yet. SO it may pass several months
until A64-OLinuXino run anything else than Android 5.1"

...is that the principal benefit of bringing "64-bit" to ARM - addressing more
than 2GB RAM - is absent from this design. Indeed, I've only seen one ARM-
based board - and not even a "64-bit" one [1] - which had 4GB RAM, let alone
more than that. And I imagine that the 4GB RAM is divided between the cores on
that Freescale i.MX6 board. (From what I've heard, Freescale is somewhat
better than Allwinner with regard to support and documentation, contrary to
claims in comments on the Olimex blog.)

Anyway, I thought this was worth a quick perusal.

Paul

[1] http://solid-run.com/freescale-imx6-family/hummingboard/hummingboard-
specifications/

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[Troy Benjegerdes]

I think my response to stuff like this now is:
"Show me the KiCAD design files and a board I can get in the mail
next week"

So far, my experience with Allwinner is it's great if you like
reverse engineering, but if you actually want to ship a product
use something that comes with decent documentation and industrial
part grades, which is either freescale or TI at this point.

I need an open-hardware design I can use for a tractor/combine
auto-guidance system, and it needs to have industrial temp ranges
and a 5 year minimum availibility lifetime.

Post by Paul Boddie
Hello,
I see that Luke's friends/rivals at Olimex are considering the idea of a
"A64-OLinuXino OSHW 64-bit ARM DIY Laptop idea update"
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/a64-olinuxino-oshw-64-bit-arm-diy-
laptop-idea-update/
"We work on A64-OLinuXino the first Open Source Hardware 64-bit development
board"
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/we-work-on-a64-olinuxino-the-first-
open-source-hardware-64-bit-development-board/
The baffling thing about this "64-bit ARM" stuff, apart from the apparent lack
of vendor cooperation for Linux kernel development...
"One of the problem is that A64 is quite new and no any Linux-Sunxi support,
as nobody have seen A64 development boards yet. SO it may pass several months
until A64-OLinuXino run anything else than Android 5.1"
...is that the principal benefit of bringing "64-bit" to ARM - addressing more
than 2GB RAM - is absent from this design. Indeed, I've only seen one ARM-
based board - and not even a "64-bit" one [1] - which had 4GB RAM, let alone
more than that. And I imagine that the 4GB RAM is divided between the cores on
that Freescale i.MX6 board. (From what I've heard, Freescale is somewhat
better than Allwinner with regard to support and documentation, contrary to
claims in comments on the Olimex blog.)
Anyway, I thought this was worth a quick perusal.
Paul
[1] http://solid-run.com/freescale-imx6-family/hummingboard/hummingboard-
specifications/
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--
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Troy Benjegerdes 'da hozer' ***@hozed.org
7 elements earth::water::air::fire::mind::spirit::soul grid.coop

Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel,
nor try buy a hacker who makes money by the megahash


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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by Troy Benjegerdes
"Show me the KiCAD design files and a board I can get in the mail
next week"
So far, my experience with Allwinner is it's great if you like
reverse engineering, but if you actually want to ship a product
use something that comes with decent documentation and industrial
part grades, which is either freescale or TI at this point.

the problem with freescale is that they're _way_ behind, and that's
ok because most of their customers are in the automotive and
engineering industry, so they can tolerate the higher pricing.

the problem with TI is that they are also way behind, and for the
"higher spec" parts - those that are designed for mass-volume such as
the OMAP4 and OMAP5, they flatly refuse to open those up. that leaves
everyone else with the crap such as single-core Cortex A8 processors
that are over 2x the price of a china equivalent.

*but*... butbutbut... both freescale and TI (as you rightly note
below) do long-term supply (they have to), with industrial temperature
ranges, and that in and of itself is attractive to certain niche
markets that are happy to pay the premium for it.

the delays in both TI and freescale's design chain however means that
it will be several years before we see an arm64 from freescale. you
_might_ see an arm64 SoC from TI, soon, but it will almost certainly
be a cartelled one that you or i simply will not be able to gain
access to.

Post by Troy Benjegerdes
I need an open-hardware design I can use for a tractor/combine
auto-guidance system, and it needs to have industrial temp ranges
and a 5 year minimum availibility lifetime.

then yes, you want the [incredibly expensive, relatively] freescale
or TI parts. especially for the industrial temperature ranges: you
simply won't find a china-based fabless semiconductor company doing an
SoC that is within industrial temperature ranges. at all.

l.

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[Hrvoje Lasic]

Post by Troy Benjegerdes
I need an open-hardware design I can use for a tractor/combine
auto-guidance system, and it needs to have industrial temp ranges
and a 5 year minimum availibility lifetime.

but it doesn't mean that you wont need to change ram/flash or possibly some
other component of design. it also doesn't mean that industrial temperature
ranges that you have in mcu are present in all other components you use,
especially in open hardware design.

[joem]

Post by Paul Boddie
Hello,
I see that Luke's friends/rivals at Olimex are considering the idea of a

More on it at
http://www.cnx-software.com/2015/11/10/allwinner-a64-datasheet-and-user-manual-released/

KiCAD design of the schematic is available along with
datasheets.

Reading the datasheet, the device is capable of addressing 3GB RAM,
though I am not sure any performance improvements are gained because
the L1 cache is only 32k :(

With 64 bit words to chew, the cache is only about 4K words.
Down from the 8K words in a 32 bit ARM :( :( :(

Still, the graphics ought to be quicker with the hardware present
in the chip and ability to move data in larger chunks.
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[GaCuest]

Post by joem

Post by joem
Still, the graphics ought to be quicker with the hardware present

in the chip and ability to move data in larger chunks.

Use the same MALI 400 MP2 that Allwinner A20. There should be 
no differences (or not much) in the graphics part.

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