Qualcomm Snapdragon MDP MSM8660

Beyond the new data visualizations and other plans for Lillesand, Phoronix Test Suite 3.4 will contain much greater support for Google's Android operating system and there will also be greater compatibility with ARM tests using our automated testing framework. A horde of ARM-based testing is also just out on the horizon at Phoronix.com. This is all thanks to the cooperation of Qualcomm's Innovation Center; they recently sent over the Snapdragon MDP MSM8660 for doing this work and it is an interesting and powerful phone.

The MSM8660 is Qualcomm's "Mobile Development Platform" for Snapdragon. The Snapdragon SoC is ARMv7-based and similar to the ARM Cortex-A8, but is much more powerful. The MSM8660 MDP uses Qualcomm's third-generation Snapdragon technology. This mobile phone has a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, 3.6-inch WVGA multi-touch display, Adreno 220 GPU, a 13-megapixel camera, 1080p HD video decode/encode support, stereoscopic 3D playback support via HDMI, 1GB of RAM, 16GB integrated flash memory, and an external micro-SD port for expansion.

The specifications are quite impressive, but this unlocked mobile development platform does not come cheap. The unsubsidized rate on the MSM8660 MDP from Qualcomm is $1350 USD and is exclusively sold by BSquare. On the software side, the MSM8660 MDP has Android 2.3 Gingerbread pre-loaded. With this phone being meant for third-party application developers and manufacturers, the Android platform on this phone is fortunately unlocked. The phone is also loaded with Qualcomm's Deep Sea 3D UI and various extra applications for debugging and application development.

Being worked on first at Phoronix with the Snapdragon MSM8660 MDP is getting the Phoronix Test Suite running well under Android using SL4A as Google's Scripting Layer for Android and PFA. It should already work for the most part but is just a matter of creating a new Android launcher to get the Phoronix Test Suite running and then to make a few updates for proper system software/hardware parsing using Android's different interfaces. There is also various test profiles that can then be made to work under ARMv7 Android.

In order to more cleanly get various compiler tests and other workloads running on the hardware directly, I will be working on a Debian/Ubuntu (or anything else) chroot for the device. If anyone has any MSM8660 chroot experience, please let me know. After that point, there are many Qualcomm ARM benchmarks planned for publishing on Phoronix.com.

Thanks again to Qualcomm Innovation Center for supplying the Snapdragon MDP. Look for more good things to come in Phoronix Test Suite 3.4-Lillesand when officially released in September and for some ARM benchmarks on the way.