Qualcomm Announces DragonBoard 410c With 64-bit ARMv8 SoC

[curaga]

You've never checked out HardKernel's ODROID boards then?

And do they get full USB 3 speeds? Many ARM boards are limited by their internal buses such that even USB 2 speeds are not fully reached.

[memeka]

2.5" HDDs give around 60 MB/s reads. Faster internet is available even here (finally), they are selling 100/100 fiber.

Laptop drives also cost more per GB and offer only smaller capacities.

yes, they are more expensive, but less power consumption.
you also need to have both ends on fiber (where you are, and home) to get the speed.
if you are at an internet cafe or halfway across the globe, you won't get 100.

[curaga]

The only benchmark I could quickly find for the odroid xu-3 with usb3, cnx-software's, shows its usb 3 connection does not even reach full usb 2 speed. So much for that then.

http://www.cnx-software.com/2014/11/21/odroid-xu3-lite-development-board-android-setup-and-benchmarks/

[ssvb]

the Olimex boards look good, however they use an AllWinner CPU, and we now know that AllWinner are evil :-(

What are you smoking? Allwinner is one of the best SoC's out there in terms of software freedom. There is hardware documentation available from the vendor which covers most of the things. There are also (messy) kernel and bootloader sources available from the vendor too, which can be nevertheless used to help better understanding the documentation and implement better drivers. You can have a 100% free software without any proprietary blobs right now, and even enjoy hardware accelerated video playback (the cedar vpu had been reverse engineered). As an interesting exercise, you can try to compare this with the level of free software support that you get from Qualcomm.

[droidhacker]

What are you smoking? Allwinner is one of the best SoC's out there in terms of software freedom. There is hardware documentation available from the vendor which covers most of the things. There are also (messy) kernel and bootloader sources available from the vendor too, which can be nevertheless used to help better understanding the documentation and implement better drivers. You can have a 100% free software without any proprietary blobs right now, and even enjoy hardware accelerated video playback (the cedar vpu had been reverse engineered). As an interesting exercise, you can try to compare this with the level of free software support that you get from Qualcomm.

I hope that I just missed the sarcasm, because if it wasn't there, then you are obviously retarded. If there was no sarcasm intended, then continue reading...

Qualcomm chips can be operated without blobs using all open source software. In fact, aside from the adreno, all that open source software is actually maintained by qualcomm themselves.

I'm not talking about cell radios, but the actual SoC's, like APQ80x4, for example.

Add Freedreno to that, and you have a working free/open system.

Compare that to the allwinner UNdocumented, CLOSED SOURCE and GPL-violating binary crap, that does not even work, plus the tiny bit of incomplete/misleading and not-just-messy, but INSANE source that they throw in because they think it will fool retards.... somewhat different picture gets painted when considered from an educated point of view.

[ssvb]

Qualcomm chips can be operated without blobs using all open source software. In fact, aside from the adreno, all that open source software is actually maintained by qualcomm themselves.

I'm not talking about cell radios, but the actual SoC's, like APQ80x4, for example.

OK, let's start with the very basic essentials. Can you provide a link to the complete blob free bootloader sources for the IFC6410 board? And could you please share the information about where to find a reasonably complete APQ8064 SoC technical reference manual? Naturally, signing an NDA or any other legally binding agreements is not an option.

Are you saying that everything other than just the cell radio is really 100% free software?

Add Freedreno to that, and you have a working free/open system.

Freedreno is only a part of the whole system. And arguably not the most important one.

Compare that to the allwinner UNdocumented, CLOSED SOURCE and GPL-violating binary crap, that does not even work, plus the tiny bit of incomplete/misleading and not-just-messy, but INSANE source that they throw in because they think it will fool retards.... somewhat different picture gets painted when considered from an educated point of view.

You are talking nonsense. And most likely just parroting somebody else, but do not have any real opinion of your own. Please get the facts right before making ridiculous claims.

For a completely 100% blob free bootloader for the Allwinner A10/A13/A20/A23/A31 based devices, check the latest mainline U-Boot bootloader: http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot.git;a=summary
For the SoC documentation, check https://github.com/allwinner-zh/documents

For a 100% blob free Linux kernel, you can check either the mainline kernel (I hope you are not going to argue that there are some blobs there?) or the sunxi-3.4 branch. You can find all the instructions in the linux-sunxi wiki: http://linux-sunxi.org/Mainline_Kernel_Howto and http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_Kernel

And for the 100% blob free hardware video decoding acceleration, check https://github.com/linux-sunxi/libvdpau-sunxi

Now regarding the GPL compliance status of the Allwinner A20 SoC (which is used in the Banana Pi and many Olimex development boards). You can have a look at the http://linux-sunxi.org/A20#GPL_Violations information in the wiki. The only complaint about the in-kernel blobs used to be the libnand library, which implements access to NAND by emulating a block device instead of using the MTD framework in the kernel (which still has some problems with MLC NAND by the way). The libnand library used to be open source earlier (and an older version of it is used in the legacy sunxi-3.4 kernel branch). Then it was shipped as a binary library in some A20 SDK releases. Then it has become free software again: https://github.com/allwinner-zh/linu...15fadad4239c0e. The practical value of this release is a bit questionable though, because a different MTD based NAND driver is being developed for the mainline kernel.

Allwinner SoCs have excellent free software support. That's why a few minor practicalities (such as this libnand thing) are sticking out, resulting in some noise just because people really have very high expectations. This noise is sometimes picked up by loudmouth bullshitters.

If you want some better targets to criticise for being CLOSED SOURCE and GPL-violating binary crap, then I suggest you to take a look at NVIDIA (they are still shipping kernel blobs in this time and age). And Intel based devices are almost all shipped with proprietary BIOS. You will have a tough time finding FSF approved hardware in general.

[speculatrix]

What are you smoking? Allwinner is one of the best SoC's out there in terms of software freedom. There is hardware documentation available from the vendor which covers most of the things. There are also (messy) kernel and bootloader sources available from the vendor too, which can be nevertheless used to help better understanding the documentation and implement better drivers. You can have a 100% free software without any proprietary blobs right now, and even enjoy hardware accelerated video playback (the cedar vpu had been reverse engineered). As an interesting exercise, you can try to compare this with the level of free software support that you get from Qualcomm.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Allwinner-GPL-Violate-Proof

[ssvb]

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...-Violate-Proof

Since when is Phoronix a trustworthy source of information? It has always been very much inaccurate and opinionated. Yes, Phoronix is very fast to report something, but you always have to verify the facts yourself.

In this particular case, the news is about the proprietary media decoder library living in the userland. Many other SoC vendors offer proprietary blobs for this stuff and it does not make Allwinner stand out. What makes it newsworthy is that somebody from Allwinner was apparently careless/stupid enough to statically link the LGPL licensed FFmpeg library with this proprietary library. There is an ongoing discussion with Allwinner about how to resolve this problem (move FFmpeg to a shared library? or maybe open source the whole thing?). And there is also an inflow of poorly informed morons in the linux-sunxi mailing list, apparently coming from Phoronix, who seem to think that their hate e-mails with blanket threats and insults are helpful.

And again, the free software support on Allwinner hardware is very good. At least if compared with the competitors. But nothing in this world is perfect.

[speculatrix]

What makes it newsworthy is that somebody from Allwinner was apparently careless/stupid enough to statically link the LGPL licensed FFmpeg library with this proprietary library. There is an ongoing discussion with Allwinner about how to resolve this problem (move FFmpeg to a shared library? or maybe open source the whole thing?). And there is also an inflow of poorly informed morons in the linux-sunxi mailing list, apparently coming from Phoronix, who seem to think that their hate e-mails with blanket threats and insults are helpful.
And again, the free software support on Allwinner hardware is very good. At least if compared with the competitors. But nothing in this world is perfect.

thanks for taking the time to explain the situation. I genuinely appreciate your effort in enlightening us over the issue. I am pleased to be corrected.

[robclark]

OK, let's start with the very basic essentials. Can you provide a link to the complete blob free bootloader sources for the IFC6410 board?

fwiw, the bootloader is open source.. I suspect what you are thinking of is the rpm (resource power manager) firmware.

Anyways, at the end of the day, who wins the 'most open' prize depends on what you're priorities are. To me, the fact that there is a coprocessor sort of thing helping to control regulators and that sort of thing, it doesn't really get in the way at all. The board ships w/ the rpm fw, and in theory you don't ever really need to touch it. It is basically just BIOS.

Where-as userspace blobs are a bigger impediment for running something other than the vendor provided android. With an open src graphics driver, you can simply install whatever distro (assuming it doesn't package too ancient of a mesa version) and you are good to go. Run whatever window manager you want, whatever games, etc. Hell, you can even run freecad if you want a credit card sized cad workstation :-P

So on snapdragon, you have open gpu and video codec usespace stuff, but some firmware blobs. With allwinner you have more or less the opposite. If you are the type of person who just wants a serial console, then you'd probably favor allwinner instead.

(Although I guess eventually allwinner SoC's will get complex enough to split out a pm coproc and then you are in the same boat. If omap didn't go poof, later generations would have probably had something similar, afaiu.)