Date: Thu, 09 Apr 2009 21:03:21 +0100 From: Duncan Barclay <dmlb@dmlb.org> To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@telenix.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, Lars Engels <lars.engels@0x20.net>, Vincent Hoffman <vince@unsane.co.uk> Subject: Re: do we have support for the Beagle Board? Message-ID: <49DE5489.5060201@dmlb.org> In-Reply-To: <49DE2449.8050007@telenix.org> References: <49DD0DD2.8080806@telenix.org> <20090409085601.b54eb5y31ckwcwww@0x20.net> <49DDB2DA.9090409@unsane.co.uk> <49DE2449.8050007@telenix.org>
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Chuck Robey wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Vincent Hoffman wrote: > >> On 9/4/09 07:56, Lars Engels wrote: >> >>> Quoting Chuck Robey <chuckr@telenix.org>: >>> >>> >>>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >>>> Hash: SHA1 >>>> >>>> I am truly impressed with that new handhelp computer, the Pandora. I >>>> read >>>> somewhere (I'm trying to find where I saw this) that the Pandora is very >>>> compatible with the BeagleBoard. I was just wondering if any of the >>>> work being >>>> done for the ARM on FreeBSD has been ported to the Pandora? >>>> >>>> I don't know enough about it, *yet*, but I'm working on it. Having >>>> such a great >>>> tiny machine running FreeBSD would be incredible. FreeBSD would be >>>> my first >>>> choice, if I'm going to get a choice. >>>> >>>> >>> What is Pandora? >>> >> I think he means >> http://openpandora.org/ >> Which does look quite nice. >> > > Correct. I've been daydreaming about getting a nice handheld for a long time > now, I dunno, maybe a decade now, but at LEAST since Sharp put out the units > which really started the entire idea. The Pandora, it's the first one I've seen > that really gets to a point that I've been happy with. > > I wouldn't even consider something that didn't have a minimum of 640x480. I > also wanted a keyboard, even if it needed to be of a "chicklet" variety, but it > needed to be pretty close to something that could be described as a QWERTY > keyboard. I wanted a lot of RAM, lot of flash, and enough speed and power to > host it's own compiler. Up until now, I just didn't see anything else out there > that came close to meeting my minimums. Well, Pandora *way* more than meets my > minimums, and it does it at a small fraction of what I thought something like > that's going to cost. > > I know very well that I can't afford this at the moment, but I went ahead and > got on the list to get one of these (it only caost me, base, $330). They info > about this is scattered all over, I don't *think* that there is anything like a > published spec on this, so grabbing the info on the Pandora means spending a LOT > of time on Google. I think everything is out there, just extremely poorly > organized. I've located the fact that the processor is a variant of the ArmV7, > a OMAP3530, which means that it's a 600Mhz processor integrated with a version > of TI's venerable 320-family of DSP processors. > > Software wise, it's even better. It was designed using public newsgroups, and > making maximal use of public software. I'm not sure, but I think some parts of > it might be limited in distribution, things like NDAs might be involved here. I > don't like that, but it's still geatly better than any of it's competitors. TI > has made available software written for the DSP processor implementing the > latest version of OpenGL (ES?), so that the Pandora sports the best video 3D > output you could have dreamed about. It runs a very recent version of Linux, I > think that's 2.6.26. I'd REALLY like to get one of the BSD's here, I don't yet > know what the status of that is. Up until recently, OpenBSD had the best > support for the ARM, but I know works been done for FreeBSD, so I need to check > that out. > > If it is a OMAP 3530, then it has an hardware OpenGL ES 2.0 core, that can do something like 10million triangles/second. It also has hardware acceleration for video decoding, and can mix and match them to two outputs (one 720p, one analogue). The CPU is a Cortex-A8, which is super-scaler and has floating point and SIMD. The OMAP reference manual is available from the TI website, it's a couple of thousand pages though! I've been evaluating these for work recently, and would really like a box like the Pandora too. > You begin to understand why I'm *really* looking forward to getting the Pandora > delivered to me, in about a month of two. This stuff is really exciting, isn't it? > > If you want to know more, start at openpandora.org, but expect to have to spend > a lot of time getting the info together. I wish this weren't true, but unless > I've really missed a lot, then the info just isn't organized very well. If > anyone knows more about the things I'm interested in, please, talk to me. > Here's a few items ... about making a gcc crosscompiler, what's the --target > string? What kind of floating point does it use, what's the actual name used to > describe it? What's the status of FreeBSD's ARM stuff, does any of it work for > the relatively new ArmV7 (I think it's called the TI OMAP3530, with the DSP > being a Cortex A8). Same info for OpenBSD. > The DSP is not a Cortex, it's the 64x series of TI DSP. The Cortex is Arm's latest CPU. Arm instruction sets are labeled as ArmV5, V6, V7 etc. Then, Arm develop CPU cores that implement these: ArmV5 ARM9xx such as an Arm926 processor ArmV6 ARM1176 CPUs ArmV7 ARM Cortex-A8, Cortex-A9s etc. These core's are then licensed to chip manufacturers for them to use. Duncan
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