Linux 3.5 On The TI OMAP4 PandaBoard ES

The Linux 3.5 kernel for Texas Instruments OMAP4 devices has finally been uploaded into the Quantal repository for Ubuntu 12.10. With the upgraded kernel release, here are some new benchmarks of the popular PandaBoard ES compared to earlier Ubuntu 12.10 development snapshots, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, and Ubuntu 11.10 from the dual-core Cortex-A9 ARMv7 development hardware.

Ubuntu 12.10 already features some performance improvements for this OMAP4 hardware thanks to moving from the GCC 4.6 to GCC 4.7 compiler. Ubuntu 12.10 for OMAP4 was also earlier on the Linux 3.4 kernel compared to Linux 3.2 in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, but now they're finally onto the Linux 3.5 stable kernel. Ubuntu 11.10, Ubuntu 12.04, and the Ubuntu 12.10 development snapshots were tested in their stock configurations and done using clean installations at the time. All of this ARM Linux benchmarking is handled in an automated manner using the Phoronix Test Suite and OpenBenchmarking.org.

Unfortunately with the Ubuntu 12.10 ARMv7 OMAP4 snapshot from 21 August, the Unity desktop is broken now due to the Unity desktop changes. Ubuntu 12.10 from 21 August for the OMAP4460 PandaBoard ES was with the Linux 3.5.0-208-omap4 kernel, GCC 4.7.1, and X.Org Server 1.13.0 RC4.