CompuLab Utilite: A Tiny, Low-Power, Low-Cost, ARM Linux Desktop

Written by Michael Larabel in Computers on 3 February 2014 at 05:09 AM EST. Page 3 of 4. 28 Comments.

The Utilite arrived from Israel with Ubuntu 12.04 ARMv7 on the device and was running the GNOME fallback session by default, but CompuLab also advertises Unity desktop support for those interested. Using the Utilite was one of the snappiest ARM Linux desktop experiences I've encountered after the Samsung ARM Chromebook with Cortex-A15 cores via the Exynos 5 Dual.

The Vivante GPU driver was pre-installed so the desktop experience was great, dual-head worked, and overall it was a great experience. No problems were encountered in running Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on the i.MX6 platform. With being based on Ubuntu 12.04, some of the desktop packages are already fairly old on the desktop front, but hopefully CompuLab will be providing a new Utilite image for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS upon its release.

For those curious about the performance of the Utilite in various benchmarks, I have posted some benchmark results to OpenBenchmarking.org at 1401270-PL-UBUNTULIN37. The CompuLab Utilite was benchmarked against the Atom Z530 CompuLab Fit-PC2, Tegra 2 CompuLab Trim-Slice, Intel Core i7 3517UE Ivy Bridge CompuLab Intense-PC, Intel Core i3 370M ASRock 3D Vision NetTop, and Intel Core i3 330M ASRock NetTop. It's a mix of both ARM desktops and low-end NetTop/desktop computers. Click that OpenBenchmarking.org link for all of the systems' hardware and software information.

CompuLab Utilite i.MX6

Obviously, the Core i3 systems still do a little better than the Utilite on raw performance, especially with the Core i7 Ivy Bridge CompuLab Intense-PC, but at least it puts the overall performance into perspective. Something important worth pointing out is that right now the Linux kernel image has the i.MX6 SoC running at 1.0GHz quad-core rather than 1.2GHz. CompuLab explained, "We have found issues in the Freescale GPU management code that cause strange behavior in some use-cases with high OpenGL-ES load. Other functionality is not affected by these issues. As we are still working to resolve the GPU behavior, our current kernel is set to 1GHz by default." The kernel can force the SoC into a higher-state by running sudo fw_setenv video "cm_fx6_v4l_msize=128M vmalloc=256M arm_freq=1200". When there is a fix, the kernel will be updated accordingly. We will also push out new benchmarks on Phoronix with these tests having been from 1.0GHz.

CompuLab Utilite i.MX6
CompuLab Utilite i.MX6

Originally, the plan was also to include some performance-per-Watt results, but from the WattsUp USB-based power meter I wasn't able to get too accurate results. The Utilite was indeed consuming between four and eight watts during all of the testing, but accuracy concerns with this USB-based AC power meter to a high precision made me decide against publishing that data.

CompuLab Utilite i.MX6

The CompuLab Utilite Pro performance was generally always beating out the Atom-based Fit-PC2 and Tegra2-based Trim-Slice. If factoring in the power consumption with the Utilite consuming just eight Watts at peak for the entire system, this i.MX6 system would be a strong competitor to the Intel competition. The Core i3 330M and i3 370M for instance each have a max TDP of 35 Watts for the CPU alone, which would be more than four Utilite computers running full load and including all of its components. Again, check out the rest of the results on OpenBenchmarking.org and there's also other CompuLab CM-FX6 (Utilite Pro) benchmark results.

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