ODROID-XU's ARM big.LITTLE A7 + A15 Octa-Core

[phoronix]

Phoronix: ODROID-XU's ARM big.LITTLE A7 + A15 Octa-Core

The ODROID-XU is the latest exciting ARM development board. Rather than aiming for low-cost like the Raspberry Pi, the ODROID-XU currently offers maximum performance when it comes to open ARM development boards. The ODROID-XU is based on ARM's big.LITTLE design and incorporates a quad-core Cortex-A15 for maximum performance or in its low-power state there's a quad-core Cortex-A7. The ODROID-XU also has with its Samsung Exynos 5 Octa also has a PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU, 2GB of LPDDR3 memory, and USB 3.0 connectivity.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=19254

[Adarion]

> ... has a PowerVR ...

I stopped reading here and lost all interest in this product.

[johnc]

> ... has a PowerVR ...

I stopped reading here and lost all interest in this product.

The Exynos 5420 has a Mali GPU so maybe there will be an update eventually.

They made a video of Ubuntu running on the XU and it seemed to do surprisingly well.

[smitty3268]

Intel Atom D525

I'm not as familiar with all the CPUs out there as i used to be. The D525 looks like it came out 3.5 years ago, as a dual core + HT Atom. I think it was a 2nd gen atom?

It'd be nice to compare this with one of the new BayTrail Atoms that came out recently, or one of the more recent low end AMD APUs.

[droidhacker]

For a few $$ less, IFC6410 has an APQ8064T and Adreno 330. No brainer here.

FWIW, this so-called "biglittle" thing is just a (crappy) hack to get around an incompetent job in producing energy efficient high performance chips.

[Popolon]

> ... has a PowerVR ...

I stopped reading here and lost all interest in this product.

One of more closed driver, that's probably because of the weird organized hardware, with driver that is more a workaround than a driver after some rumors .

Really wrong idea to buy a device with such a graphics bug. Will never get benefits of what opensource communities does to improve hw management over arm incomplete work and android limitations.

[Popolon]

For a few $$ less, IFC6410 has an APQ8064T and Adreno 330. No brainer here.

FWIW, this so-called "biglittle" thing is just a (crappy) hack to get around an incompetent job in producing energy efficient high performance chips.

Do not agree at all, Cortex A15 is already very efficient, at least more than any x86 or amd64 (in regards of computation power bu energy used), Cortex a7 is still more, but also far less powerfull.

[Popolon]

Phoronix: ODROID-XU's ARM big.LITTLE A7 + A15 Octa-Core

The ODROID-XU is the latest exciting ARM development board. Rather than aiming for low-cost like the Raspberry Pi, the ODROID-XU currently offers maximum performance when it comes to open ARM development boards. The ODROID-XU is based on ARM's big.LITTLE design and incorporates a quad-core Cortex-A15 for maximum performance or in its low-power state there's a quad-core Cortex-A7. The ODROID-XU also has with its Samsung Exynos 5 Octa also has a PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU, 2GB of LPDDR3 memory, and USB 3.0 connectivity.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=19254

After looking at flags used, could be interesting to use -cpu=cortex-a15 with gcc 4.8.x, it manage better cortex-a15 and cortex-a7, that is the thirst generation of cortex A. Cortex-A7 is 100% compatible with Cortex-A15, just less powerfull. -march=armv7-a is compatible with the 3 generations of Cortex A, and then less efficient. In some case, where not huge precision is needed, it could be interesting to use neon, as GCC 4.8 has better neon auto-vectorization. Can be activated with : -mfpu=neon-vfpv4 (require the -funsafe-math-optimizations flag too).

Some recomandations about gcc flags here :

http://blogs.arm.com/software-enablement/933-arm-cortex-a-processors-and-gcc-command-lines/

Just a question, do you use IKS or GTS? This can be verified, for example with htop during intensive multitask operation, the 8 cores should be used at full with GTS, only 4 with IKS.

http://www.linaro.org/linaro-blog/2013/07/10/big-little-software-update/

[guido12]

I'm not as familiar with all the CPUs out there as i used to be. The D525 looks like it came out 3.5 years ago, as a dual core + HT Atom. I think it was a 2nd gen atom?

It'd be nice to compare this with one of the new BayTrail Atoms that came out recently, or one of the more recent low end AMD APUs.

Michael bought a Bay Trail T notebook (Asus Transformer T100). Hopefully, it arrives soon for testing. Low power AMD Kabini and Temash APU testing would be nice too.

On a side note, does anybody know of any mini boards running on Bay Trail or Kabini/Temash with dual GbE? Something in the Nano-ITX size range. I've seen some ARM boards but getting an ARM based system up and running stable with recent software is out of my skill set.

[intellivision]

> ... has a PowerVR ...

I stopped reading here and lost all interest in this product.

Speak for yourself, I don't intend on doing anything that can't be done from the terminal with my board.
PowerVR makes literally no difference to me.