Freescale iMX53 Quick Start board
Steve McIntyre
We've got a number of discount vouchers for these, ready to give away
to any deserving folks. Normal price is USD 149, but the voucher saves
USD 50. See
http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB
for more details about the hardware. We're about to purchase a number
of these for buildds for the Debian armhf port, and they look like a
reasonable cheap dev board for a variety of purposes.
If you'd like a voucher, mail me. Be aware: these have a limited life
and expire at the *end of August*.
Cheers,
--
Steve McIntyre
steve.m...@linaro.org
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Phil Endecott
Steve McIntyre <steve.mcintyre <at> linaro.org> writes:
> Hi folks,
>
> We've got a number of discount vouchers for these
Too late for me...
> We're about to purchase a number
> of these for buildds for the Debian armhf port
Hmm. Are you sure it's the best choice? It has a single Cortex A8 (like
the old Beagle Board). The Panda Board has a dual Coretex A9. I've not
benchmarked them, but I would expect the Panda to be a lot faster for
CPU-bound tasks. The iMX53 has the advantage of SATA if you expect to be
I/O limited, but if I were building a "farm" I think I'd seriously consider
NFS and negligible local storage.
My choice of the iMX53 was based mainly on its video features (it has
analogue VGA out, which the Panda doesn't) and more than a bit of
prejudice because I seemed to be the interested only person at CELF last
year who didn't get a free Panda.
Anyway, if you do go with the iMX53, do keep us informed. I'm currently
working on mechanical/electrical things e.g. a box and power supply. Note
that the board seems to have very little capacitance on its 5V power input,
so it can "brown out" if you connect something (via USB or otherwise) that
has non-trivial inrush current. There is also the fact that it powers-on
"off" until you press a button, which I imagine is probably not the behaviour
that you'll want.
Cheers, Phil.
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Lennart Sorensen
> Hi Steve,
>
> Steve McIntyre <steve.mcintyre <at> linaro.org> writes:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > We've got a number of discount vouchers for these
>
> Too late for me...
>
> > We're about to purchase a number
> > of these for buildds for the Debian armhf port
>
> Hmm. Are you sure it's the best choice? It has a single Cortex A8 (like
> the old Beagle Board). The Panda Board has a dual Coretex A9. I've not
> benchmarked them, but I would expect the Panda to be a lot faster for
> CPU-bound tasks. The iMX53 has the advantage of SATA if you expect to be
> I/O limited, but if I were building a "farm" I think I'd seriously consider
> NFS and negligible local storage.
make + NFS = nightmare in many cases.
> My choice of the iMX53 was based mainly on its video features (it has
> analogue VGA out, which the Panda doesn't) and more than a bit of
> prejudice because I seemed to be the interested only person at CELF last
> year who didn't get a free Panda.
>
> Anyway, if you do go with the iMX53, do keep us informed. I'm currently
> working on mechanical/electrical things e.g. a box and power supply. Note
> that the board seems to have very little capacitance on its 5V power input,
> so it can "brown out" if you connect something (via USB or otherwise) that
> has non-trivial inrush current. There is also the fact that it powers-on
> "off" until you press a button, which I imagine is probably not the behaviour
> that you'll want.
I was wondering how their power control is done. Obviously a SATA drive
would need external power.
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Phil Endecott
> On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 04:07:06PM +0000, Phil Endecott wrote:
>> Hi Steve,
>>
>> Steve McIntyre <steve.mcintyre <at> linaro.org> writes:
>> > Hi folks,
>> >
>> > We've got a number of discount vouchers for these
>>
>> Too late for me...
>>
>> > We're about to purchase a number
>> > of these for buildds for the Debian armhf port
>>
>> Hmm. Are you sure it's the best choice? It has a single Cortex A8 (like
>> the old Beagle Board). The Panda Board has a dual Coretex A9. I've not
>> benchmarked them, but I would expect the Panda to be a lot faster for
>> CPU-bound tasks. The iMX53 has the advantage of SATA if you expect to be
>> I/O limited, but if I were building a "farm" I think I'd seriously consider
>> NFS and negligible local storage.
>
> make + NFS = nightmare in many cases.
Well I use NFS almost exclusively for everything every day, and I've
never experienced any "nightmares".
You do need to have time synchronised everywhere. I use ntp.
>> My choice of the iMX53 was based mainly on its video features (it has
>> analogue VGA out, which the Panda doesn't) and more than a bit of
>> prejudice because I seemed to be the interested only person at CELF last
>> year who didn't get a free Panda.
>>
>> Anyway, if you do go with the iMX53, do keep us informed. I'm currently
>> working on mechanical/electrical things e.g. a box and power supply. Note
>> that the board seems to have very little capacitance on its 5V power input,
>> so it can "brown out" if you connect something (via USB or otherwise) that
>> has non-trivial inrush current. There is also the fact that it powers-on
>> "off" until you press a button, which I imagine is probably not the behaviour
>> that you'll want.
>
> I was wondering how their power control is done. Obviously a SATA drive
> would need external power.
I've chosen to use an SSD in part because it requires only 5V, so you
can just fork from a single 5V PSU to the board and the SSD. I believe
(but am not certain) that 2.5" HDDs also don't need 12V. Although the
SATA power connector also has pins for 3.3V, nothing currently uses
them. There doesn't seem to be a problem with applying the power to
the drive before the board is on; anyone building a product would want
to check the SATA specs and see if this is officially condoned.
Regards, Phil.
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Lennart Sorensen
> Well I use NFS almost exclusively for everything every day, and I've
> never experienced any "nightmares".
I find NFS timestamps are not accurate enough for make in many cases.
I have seen many failures when using NFS and running make.
> You do need to have time synchronised everywhere. I use ntp.
Time sync isn't enough it seems.
> I've chosen to use an SSD in part because it requires only 5V, so
> you can just fork from a single 5V PSU to the board and the SSD. I
> believe (but am not certain) that 2.5" HDDs also don't need 12V.
> Although the SATA power connector also has pins for 3.3V, nothing
> currently uses them. There doesn't seem to be a problem with
> applying the power to the drive before the board is on; anyone
> building a product would want to check the SATA specs and see if
> this is officially condoned.
Yeah a 2.5" SATA drive would be 5V only as well.
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
<lsor...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 05:25:19PM +0100, Phil Endecott wrote:
>> Well I use NFS almost exclusively for everything every day, and I've
>> never experienced any "nightmares".
>
> I find NFS timestamps are not accurate enough for make in many cases.
> I have seen many failures when using NFS and running make.
seen this too. in doing embedded builds using a larger box as the
root filesystem, i found that those errors went away when using the
kernel-version of nfs server.
l.
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David Given
Hash: SHA1
On 08/05/11 12:35, Steve McIntyre wrote:
[...]
> http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB
Oo. Very nice. Cortex A8, 1GB RAM, SATA, ethernet, *and* reasonably
priced... if only it had an extra ethernet socket it'd be an ideal
replacement for my current house server (a SheevaPlug). [*]
What's Freescale's shipping and handling like? All attempts to find out
just throws me up against a registration wall.
[*] Not voucher related, but I would be running Debian on it.
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 08/05/11 12:35, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> [...]
>> http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB
>
> Oo. Very nice. Cortex A8, 1GB RAM, SATA, ethernet, *and* reasonably
> priced...
yeah. can't wait for the Cortex A9 version. really looking forward to it.
l.
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Phil Endecott
> What's Freescale's shipping and handling like?
Don't buy it from Freescale; their website is unusable. There are two or three
distributors who sell it, and their websites are not quite as awful. I got mine
from Mouser for £111 inclusive of postage and all tax and duty.
Phil.
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David Given
Hash: SHA1
On 08/06/11 01:37, Phil Endecott wrote:
[...]
> Don't buy it from Freescale; their website is unusable. There are two or three
> distributors who sell it, and their websites are not quite as awful. I got mine
> from Mouser for £111 inclusive of postage and all tax and duty.
Much better; ta.
Are there any decent-looking Cortex A9 boards out or upcoming which
support ethernet and SATA? So far I've found:
PandaBoard --- $180, ethernet, no SATA.
Samsung Origen --- $250, no ethernet, no SATA.
Igloo Snowball --- $209, ethernet, no SATA (but other than that a very
nice looking device).
Trimslice --- $199, ethernet, may have SATA (they mention it a lot but
it's unclear whether there's an actual socket or not). Comes in a box!
Anything else worth investigating?
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Phil Endecott
> support ethernet and SATA? So far I've found:
>
> PandaBoard --- $180, ethernet, no SATA.
>
> Samsung Origen --- $250, no ethernet, no SATA.
>
> Igloo Snowball --- $209, ethernet, no SATA (but other than that a very
> nice looking device).
>
> Trimslice --- $199, ethernet, may have SATA (they mention it a lot but
> it's unclear whether there's an actual socket or not). Comes in a box!
>
> Anything else worth investigating?
Last discussed in this thread:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.ports.arm/9778
I'm not aware of anything new since then.
Cheers, Phil.
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 08/06/11 01:37, Phil Endecott wrote:
> [...]
>> Don't buy it from Freescale; their website is unusable. There are two or three
>> distributors who sell it, and their websites are not quite as awful. I got mine
>> from Mouser for £111 inclusive of postage and all tax and duty.
>
> Much better; ta.
>
> Are there any decent-looking Cortex A9 boards out or upcoming which
> support ethernet and SATA? So far I've found:
> Anything else worth investigating?
i know of 3 other "outsiders" 2 of which i know have Cortex A9s and
one of which i suspect might - i've asked them on everyone's behalf if
they'd be interested in putting their CPUs into this format. all of
the three will have both Ethernet as well as SATA-II. two of the CPUs
are designed for the Set-Top box market (so they have to have SATA-II
to tick all the boxes) and the other one just... well, it just has
SATA-II (but ironically, not HDMI afaicmo. weird, that).
l.
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Marcin Juszkiewicz
> Igloo Snowball --- $209, ethernet, no SATA (but other than that a very
> nice looking device).
Also lack USB Host port - all you have is OTG one.
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Jeremiah Foster
Hash: SHA1
On Aug 6, 2011, at 14:35, David Given wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On 08/06/11 01:37, Phil Endecott wrote:
> [...]
>> Don't buy it from Freescale; their website is unusable. There are two or three
>> distributors who sell it, and their websites are not quite as awful. I got mine
>> from Mouser for £111 inclusive of postage and all tax and duty.
>
> Much better; ta.
>
> Are there any decent-looking Cortex A9 boards out or upcoming which
> support ethernet and SATA? So far I've found:
>
> PandaBoard --- $180, ethernet, no SATA.
>
> Samsung Origen --- $250, no ethernet, no SATA.
>
> Igloo Snowball --- $209, ethernet, no SATA (but other than that a very
> nice looking device).
>
> Trimslice --- $199, ethernet, may have SATA (they mention it a lot but
> it's unclear whether there's an actual socket or not). Comes in a box!
Trimslice does have SATA. It is oddly placed under the board so it is hard to see and they put a small Sandisk SSD in the SATA slot. Looks like it is SATA 1, but I'd need to dig into the specs to be certain. You'll have to remove at least one of the panels to get at the SATA ports but that is part of the fun isn't it? :-)
Regards,
Jeremiah
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David Given
[...]
> Trimslice does have SATA. It is oddly placed under the board so it is hard to see and they put a small Sandisk SSD in the SATA slot. Looks like it is SATA 1, but I'd need to dig into the specs to be certain. You'll have to remove at least one of the panels to get at the SATA ports but that is part of the fun isn't it? :-)
Is that on all models?
They seem to be very, very cagey about releasing actual information ---
I saw a post by someone at Compulab saying they weren't going to post
scans of the PCB because the layout was confidential! --- but it appears
that the SATA port is actually connected via USB internally and so,
really, doesn't count.
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Jeremiah Foster
Hash: SHA1
On Aug 8, 2011, at 13:10, David Given wrote:
> Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> [...]
>> Trimslice does have SATA. It is oddly placed under the board so it is hard to see and they put a small Sandisk SSD in the SATA slot. Looks like it is SATA 1, but I'd need to dig into the specs to be certain. You'll have to remove at least one of the panels to get at the SATA ports but that is part of the fun isn't it? :-)
>
> Is that on all models?
I just have a "developers" model. Here's a link to a couple pictures of the machine I have FWIW;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_foster/6021909246/
>
> They seem to be very, very cagey about releasing actual information ---
> I saw a post by someone at Compulab saying they weren't going to post
> scans of the PCB because the layout was confidential! --- but it appears
> that the SATA port is actually connected via USB internally and so,
> really, doesn't count.
That may be the case in fact. Is there something like lspci or similar which would confirm that?
Regards,
Jeremiah
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Andrew McGlashan
Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> I just have a "developers" model. Here's a link to a couple pictures of the machine I have FWIW;
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_foster/6021909246/
Grrr, no good, I don't want to have a flickr account and to see the pic,
you need to be signed in. Please give us a "normal" public link.
Thanks ;-)
>> They seem to be very, very cagey about releasing actual information ---
>> I saw a post by someone at Compulab saying they weren't going to post
>> scans of the PCB because the layout was confidential! --- but it appears
>> that the SATA port is actually connected via USB internally and so,
>> really, doesn't count.
>
> That may be the case in fact. Is there something like lspci or similar which would confirm that?
That is very sad.
I think we need a good comparison / feature / selection page -- choose
the requirements, then see the result:
USB 2.0 ports ports yes / no how many [ ]
USB 3.0 ports ports yes / no how many [ ]
Fast Ethernet ports yes / no how many [ ]
Gigabit Ethports yes / no how many [ ]
SATA I
SATA II
SATA III
eSATA
and so on .....
At least this will help research on what board is best for specific
requirements.
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Broadband Solutions now including VoIP
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Phil Endecott
> I think we need a good comparison / feature / selection page -- choose
> the requirements, then see the result:
I wish we were so overwhelmed with options that this were necessary....
Phil.
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Phil Endecott
> that the SATA port [on the Trimslice] is actually connected via USB
I don't know what they've done on the Trimslice. My understanding of the Tegra
is that it doesn't have SATA but it does have PCIe, so in principle that could
be used with a controller chip to provide fast SATA. See e.g.
http://developer.nvidia.com/node/19106
Cheers, Phil.
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David Given
[...]
> I just have a "developers" model. Here's a link to a couple pictures of the machine I have FWIW;
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_foster/6021909246/
Seems to be locked --- when I try to view the image it prompts me for a
login.
[...]
> That may be the case in fact. Is there something like lspci or similar which would confirm that?
Both lspci and lsusb ought to work.
I've found this, which claims to be a TrimSlice bootup dmesg:
It doesn't mention SATA anywhere, and does show a mass storage USB device...
What's it actually like to use in practice? What's the SSD performance like?
Steve McIntyre
>
>Steve McIntyre <steve.mcintyre <at> linaro.org> writes:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> We've got a number of discount vouchers for these
>
>Too late for me...
>
>> We're about to purchase a number
>> of these for buildds for the Debian armhf port
>
>Hmm. Are you sure it's the best choice? It has a single Cortex A8 (like
>the old Beagle Board). The Panda Board has a dual Coretex A9. I've not
>benchmarked them, but I would expect the Panda to be a lot faster for
>CPU-bound tasks. The iMX53 has the advantage of SATA if you expect to be
>I/O limited, but if I were building a "farm" I think I'd seriously consider
>NFS and negligible local storage.
We were pondering the panda, yes. We've got a table of the possible
build machine hardware options at
http://wiki.debian.org/ArmHardFloatBuildd
However, there is a fair amount of anecdotal evidence for problems on
the panda under heavy load at the moment. Jon Masters told me last
week that the Fedora folks are having major trouble with instability,
and others have similar tales. Also: panda availability is currently
approximately zero I'm told. The iMX53 is the next best option for us,
I feel. Especially with the discount vouchers we have, it's looking
very cheap.
>My choice of the iMX53 was based mainly on its video features (it has
>analogue VGA out, which the Panda doesn't) and more than a bit of
>prejudice because I seemed to be the interested only person at CELF last
>year who didn't get a free Panda.
Aww... :-/
>Anyway, if you do go with the iMX53, do keep us informed. I'm currently
>working on mechanical/electrical things e.g. a box and power supply. Note
>that the board seems to have very little capacitance on its 5V power input,
>so it can "brown out" if you connect something (via USB or otherwise) that
>has non-trivial inrush current. There is also the fact that it powers-on
>"off" until you press a button, which I imagine is probably not the behaviour
>that you'll want.
Yup, I'm aware of at least some of those. Thanks for the info, and
we'll keep folks informed as to how things are going.
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Steve McIntyre
>On 08/05/11 12:35, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>[...]
>> http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=IMX53QSB
>
>Oo. Very nice. Cortex A8, 1GB RAM, SATA, ethernet, *and* reasonably
>priced... if only it had an extra ethernet socket it'd be an ideal
>replacement for my current house server (a SheevaPlug). [*]
>
>What's Freescale's shipping and handling like? All attempts to find out
>just throws me up against a registration wall.
I'll let you know. :-)
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Phil Endecott
>
> David Given <dg <at> cowlark.com> writes:
> > it appears
> > that the SATA port [on the Trimslice] is actually connected via USB
> > internally and so, really, doesn't count.
>
> I don't know what they've done on the Trimslice.
Ah, I do now and David is right:
http://trimslice.com/web/trim-slice-pro-specifications
SATA is connected via USB. There is also a USB MUX; doing this makes it
possible to connect the device to a computer and for it to appear as a USB
storage device.
The PCIe interface is used to provide gigabit ethernet.
Jeremiah Foster
On Aug 8, 2011, at 16:34, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Jeremiah Foster wrote:
>> I just have a "developers" model. Here's a link to a couple pictures of the machine I have FWIW;
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_foster/6021909246/
>
> Grrr, no good, I don't want to have a flickr account and to see the pic, you need to be signed in. Please give us a "normal" public link. Thanks ;-)
Sure. Here's a link: http://jeremiahfoster.com/trimslice/
Click on the thumbs for a larger pic.
>>> They seem to be very, very cagey about releasing actual information ---
>>> I saw a post by someone at Compulab saying they weren't going to post
>>> scans of the PCB because the layout was confidential! --- but it appears
>>> that the SATA port is actually connected via USB internally and so,
>>> really, doesn't count.
>> That may be the case in fact. Is there something like lspci or similar which would confirm that?
>
> That is very sad.
>
> I think we need a good comparison / feature / selection page -- choose the requirements, then see the result:
>
> USB 2.0 ports ports yes / no how many [ ]
> USB 3.0 ports ports yes / no how many [ ]
> Fast Ethernet ports yes / no how many [ ]
> Gigabit Ethports yes / no how many [ ]
> SATA I
> SATA II
> SATA III
> eSATA
>
> and so on .....
>
> At least this will help research on what board is best for specific requirements.\
Makes sense to me, would be quite useful for a number of projects since the Fedora and Mandriva folks are also looking at creating or updating their ARM ports.
Regards,
Jeremiah
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Jeremiah Foster
Hash: SHA1
On Aug 8, 2011, at 17:32, David Given wrote:
> Jeremiah Foster wrote:
> [...]
>> I just have a "developers" model. Here's a link to a couple pictures of the machine I have FWIW;
>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremiah_foster/6021909246/
>
> Seems to be locked --- when I try to view the image it prompts me for a
> login.
>
> [...]
>> That may be the case in fact. Is there something like lspci or similar which would confirm that?
>
> Both lspci and lsusb ought to work.
$ lspci
00:00.0 Non-VGA unclassified device: nVidia Corporation Device 0bf0 (rev a0)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)
$ lsusb
- -bash: lsusb: command not found
Couldn't find the lsusb package in the Ubuntu repos that are currently being used;
deb http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports maverick main universe
Note that nvidia is not part of Linaro and is not exactly the biggest fan of free software.
> I've found this, which claims to be a TrimSlice bootup dmesg:
>
> http://pastebin.com/3YtRAWKX
Here's mine;
http://pastebin.com/853C7R5G
>
> It doesn't mention SATA anywhere, and does show a mass storage USB device...
>
> What's it actually like to use in practice? What's the SSD performance like?
The CPU is peppy, very nice machine. I could see it being a desktop replacement in some cases, or a machine in between a thin client and a desktop. A little buggy perhaps and lacking software due to the fact that the OS is a fork of a fork of Debian and not necessarily maintained. I haven't connected a screen to it yet.
Overall I'd have to say this is a pretty nice piece of kit.
Regards,
Jeremiah
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Steve McIntyre
>On Aug 8, 2011, at 16:34, Andrew McGlashan wrote:
>>
>> I think we need a good comparison / feature / selection page -- choose the requirements, then see the result:
>>
>> USB 2.0 ports ports yes / no how many [ ]
>> USB 3.0 ports ports yes / no how many [ ]
>> Fast Ethernet ports yes / no how many [ ]
>> Gigabit Ethports yes / no how many [ ]
>> SATA I
>> SATA II
>> SATA III
>> eSATA
>>
>> and so on .....
>>
>> At least this will help research on what board is best for specific requirements.\
Definitely. We started a similar page at
http://wiki.debian.org/ArmHardFloatBuildd
to help us track what to use for Debian. Please feel free to extend /
improve on the information there!
>Makes sense to me, would be quite useful for a number of projects
>since the Fedora and Mandriva folks are also looking at creating or
>updating their ARM ports.
The Mageia folks are targetting v5t (and softfp ABI) rather than v7 at
this point - see discussion on the cross-distro list.
Cheers,
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Phil Endecott
> Sure. Here's a link: http://jeremiahfoster.com/trimslice/
Right, so that's a half-size SATA SSD (JEDEC MO-297). Nice that they're using a
standard form-factor with a connector. Would a full-size 2.5" drive fit? It
looks like it might hit the USB connector.
Can you tell us what hdparm -T and hdparm -t report?
(What's the story with the case?)
Cheers, Phil
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
<spam_from_...@chezphil.org> wrote:
> I don't know what they've done on the Trimslice. My understanding of the Tegra
> is that it doesn't have SATA but it does have PCIe, so in principle that could
> be used with a controller chip to provide fast SATA.
single-lane PCI-e is still only gigabit, phil, and SATA-II is 3.0
gb/s. so it still really doesn't cut the mustard. you'd need a 4x
PCI-e to meet the SATA-II specification, and that would mean you'd
have a) lots of pins b) lots of heat. c) an expensive system.
you really really want a SoC that already has the required interfaces
built-in. if they're built-in, you aren't driving some wires at mad
speeds and wasting heat to do it.
l.
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
<jere...@jeremiahfoster.com> wrote:
>> I think we need a good comparison / feature / selection page -- choose the requirements, then see the result:
>>
>> USB 2.0 ports ports yes / no how many [ ]
>> USB 3.0 ports ports yes / no how many [ ]
>> Fast Ethernet ports yes / no how many [ ]
>> Gigabit Ethports yes / no how many [ ]
>> SATA I
>> SATA II
>> SATA III
>> eSATA
>>
>> and so on .....
>>
>> At least this will help research on what board is best for specific requirements.\
make sure that power consumption (and rough price) are included. i
think you'll find it's a big eye-opener right now, for anything that
has ports over 1gbit (of any kind). translation: if you want an ARM
processor, forget SATA-III, USB3, multi-lane PCI-e and multiple
Gigabit Ethernet for at least another... 18-24 months, and even then
you'll find they only come on systems with a 5 watt+ power budget.
which aren't really "embedded" processors any more, really, are they.
l.
p.s. yes marvell have a spec for a multi-gigabit ethernet,
multi-SATA-II, multi-PCI-e ARM processor. power requirements: TEN
watts.
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Marcin Juszkiewicz
> single-lane PCI-e is still only gigabit, phil, and SATA-II is 3.0
> gb/s. so it still really doesn't cut the mustard. you'd need a 4x
> PCI-e to meet the SATA-II specification
There are many PCIe SATA controllers with x1 slot - Sil3132 based for
example.
And even 1Gb/s gives you ~100MB/s which is more then most of ARM SoCs
can achieve with storage.
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Jeremiah Foster
On Aug 9, 2011, at 16:21, Phil Endecott wrote:
> Jeremiah Foster <jeremiah <at> jeremiahfoster.com> writes:
>> Sure. Here's a link: http://jeremiahfoster.com/trimslice/
>
> Right, so that's a half-size SATA SSD (JEDEC MO-297). Nice that they're using a
> standard form-factor with a connector. Would a full-size 2.5" drive fit? It
> looks like it might hit the USB connector.
I'm almost certain it wouldn't fit. I put one up next to the board and it overlaps the ethernet port and the usb ports.
>
> Can you tell us what hdparm -T and hdparm -t report?
$ sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
Timing buffered disk reads: 66 MB in 3.05 seconds = 21.65 MB/sec
$ sudo hdparm -T /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 442 MB in 2.00 seconds = 220.73 MB/sec
> (What's the story with the case?)
heh. Just a couple pieces of plexiglass with "TrimSlice" etched into it. The production cases are different.
Regards,
Jeremiah
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
> On 09/08/11 16:46, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>> single-lane PCI-e is still only gigabit
>>
>
>
> generation" is 5 gigabit. Also significant is the max-payload-size
> capabilities of either end of the link (lspci -vv). A lot of consumer
> stuff tends to be 128byte only, which adds overhead...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#PCI_Express_1.0a
dang. then i'm glad i raised this - thanks tim. i was always under
the impression it was 1gbits.
SATA-II 3gbits/sec isn't that far off of 2.5.
well, that just leaves power usage as a concern.
l.
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
> Are there any decent-looking Cortex A9 boards out or upcoming which
> support ethernet and SATA? So far I've found:
>
> PandaBoard --- $180, ethernet, no SATA.
>
> Samsung Origen --- $250, no ethernet, no SATA.
>
> Igloo Snowball --- $209, ethernet, no SATA (but other than that a very
> nice looking device).
>
> Trimslice --- $199, ethernet, may have SATA (they mention it a lot but
> it's unclear whether there's an actual socket or not). Comes in a box!
>
> Anything else worth investigating?
ok... yes, i can ask.
question (for everyone): if there existed a board which used a
single-core 800mhz Cortex A9, maximum hard limit of 512mb RAM, but
also had SATA-II and 10/100 Ethernet, would it be of interest, and how
much would you pay for it? similar spec / design / size / interfaces
as the pandaboard, origen etc. just with a single-core Cortex A9
rather than dual-core.
the CPU i have in mind is the AML-8726-M (which is fantastic but is
hardware-limited to 512mb RAM) and i am in contact with an ODM/OEM
whom i believe i could persuade to create such a board if there is
sufficient interest in purchasing it. i've already explained to them
that there are benefits to them i.e. Free Software Developers en-masse
writing software based around the board etc. etc.
btw when responding please don't take the piss on a price you'd be
happy to pay! apart from anything it has to be enough to encourage
them to go ahead with the board. the beagleboard price (A8, 720mhz,
512mb) is a fair guide. unlike x86 systems the CPU isn't the major
component cost with these embedded boards.
l.
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Tim Small
> single-lane PCI-e is still only gigabit
>
AFAIK, single-lane "1st generation" PCIe is 2.5 gigabit, and "2nd
generation" is 5 gigabit. Also significant is the max-payload-size
capabilities of either end of the link (lspci -vv). A lot of consumer
stuff tends to be 128byte only, which adds overhead...
Tim.
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Jeff Hoogland
Trimslice just started a opensource developer program. They'll give you a unit for 175usd plus shipping.
--
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http://JeffHoogland.com
Gordan Bobic
All that effort just to get native SATA? I really don't think it's
worth it.
What use case do you have in mind? Most of my ARM systems, even for
desktop use, get by really well on SD cards (SanDisk and Pretec if you
have a choice) and USB sticks (I find the ones based on the Kingston
controller handle random-writes particularly well), especially if you
switch to using nilfs2 for non-root fs and write a few lines of shell
for a cron job to handle killing/spawning nilfs_cleanerd.
If you really need SATA, then there is this:
http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-guruplugdetails.aspx
Granted, it's in a box, but they are cheap and you can always dismantle
it and put the board in whatever chassis is convenient for you.
Gordan
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Arnaud Patard
guruplug is kirkwood so armv5t(e) so it can't be used for an armhf
buildd (which requires armv7)
>
> Granted, it's in a box, but they are cheap and you can always
and noisy ...
Arnaud
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
>> question (for everyone): if there existed a board which used a
>> single-core 800mhz Cortex A9, maximum hard limit of 512mb RAM, but
>> also had SATA-II and 10/100 Ethernet, would it be of interest, and
>> how
>> much would you pay for it? similar spec / design / size / interfaces
>> as the pandaboard, origen etc. just with a single-core Cortex A9
>> rather than dual-core.
> All that effort just to get native SATA? I really don't think it's
> worth it.
it's fitting in with some existing plans that are already underway.
so there's a window of opportunity for free software developers to
take advantage of, that will likely be closed within a few weeks as
they finalise and proceed with their plans.
> If you really need SATA, then there is this:
> http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-guruplugdetails.aspx
512mb RAM (DDR2 800mhz mind you), 1.2ghz Marvell Kirkwood (not Cortex
A9, which was david's question - kirkwoods are pretty damn good
though, having an ARM "compatible" instruction set and had superscalar
out-of-order execution well before Cortex A9s ever had it).
eSATA-II, 3gb/sec and _two_ gigabit ethernets, no less. whoopee-doo.
ahh, are these the little boxes that massively overheat if you start
using them for anything beyond a toy, by chance? :)
so, there you go, david - get one of those and a fire extinguisher :)
l.
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Gordan Bobic
The overheating is muchly exaggerated. The white ones - same CPU/ARM,
but no eSATA plumbed in (you can solder it on, though), have no fan in
them. I have one, and it's regularly used for a few days' worth of
compiling jobs at a time, and yes, it gets quite warm, but after over a
year of hammering it hasn't failed. The ones I linked above have a fan
and I am not aware of any PSU failure issues due to heat.
Anyway, glad I could save you a lot of effort in finding suitable
hardware. :)
Gordan
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Gordan Bobic
Do you really need HF for what you're trying to do, though?
>> Granted, it's in a box, but they are cheap and you can always
>
> and noisy ...
Well, if noise is an issue you can get one of these instead:
http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-22-sheevaplug-dev-kit-us.aspx
No fan, thus silent, but you will have to solder on the eSATA
connector.
Gordan
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David Given
[...]
> The overheating is muchly exaggerated. The white ones - same CPU/ARM,
> but no eSATA plumbed in (you can solder it on, though), have no fan in
> them. I have one, and it's regularly used for a few days' worth of
> compiling jobs at a time, and yes, it gets quite warm, but after over a
> year of hammering it hasn't failed. The ones I linked above have a fan
> and I am not aware of any PSU failure issues due to heat.
Actually, I've got a Sheevaplug. (I even tried Bitcoin mining on it
once: I got 0.1 khashes per second...)
It's *almost* excellent. What's wrong with it is that the USB chipset is
a bit dodgy and under heavy loads will produce sporadic failures and
other weirdnesses, such as devices dropping off the bus, I/O errors,
etc. Recently the whole device has started locking up every couple of
weeks as the root filesystem vanishes. (I have a firm rumour from Some
Guy I Met At A Party that this is a chronic issue with the Marvell USB
chipset.)
I've looked at the GuruPlug, which would be ideal except for the heat
and noise problems, and I've looked at the DreamPlug, which is slightly
less ideal but expensive. Currently the SheevaPlug SATA is the most
suited for my purposes out of that family.
But given that the Kirkwood chipset is quite slow (it's a descendent of
the StrongARM family), and Cortex devices are now just as cheap if not
cheaper and quite a lot more powerful, I'm interested in upgrading to
one of them. Right now the iMX53 looks my best bet, though I'm really
hankering after an A9...
PS. *Please* don't cc me if you're mailing the list! I don't need two
copies! What happened to 'reply to list' buttons in mailers?
Lennart Sorensen
> ok... yes, i can ask.
>
> question (for everyone): if there existed a board which used a
> single-core 800mhz Cortex A9, maximum hard limit of 512mb RAM, but
> also had SATA-II and 10/100 Ethernet, would it be of interest, and how
> much would you pay for it? similar spec / design / size / interfaces
> as the pandaboard, origen etc. just with a single-core Cortex A9
> rather than dual-core.
I would think a 1GHz single core Cortex A8 with 1GB ram and SATA 1 would
be preferable to 512MB ram and 200MHz less speed. Not sure how the A8
and A9 cores compare though. Not having enough ram always sucks.
SATA 1 is still plenty for most harddisks these days. 100Mbit ethernet
is OK in general, even though gigabit is always nice.
> the CPU i have in mind is the AML-8726-M (which is fantastic but is
> hardware-limited to 512mb RAM) and i am in contact with an ODM/OEM
> whom i believe i could persuade to create such a board if there is
> sufficient interest in purchasing it. i've already explained to them
> that there are benefits to them i.e. Free Software Developers en-masse
> writing software based around the board etc. etc.
Personally if I was buying one (and I am thinking of doing that), the
choice between the i.MX53 with 1GB ram versus something with 512MB ram,
I would get the i.MX53.
> btw when responding please don't take the piss on a price you'd be
> happy to pay! apart from anything it has to be enough to encourage
> them to go ahead with the board. the beagleboard price (A8, 720mhz,
> 512mb) is a fair guide. unlike x86 systems the CPU isn't the major
> component cost with these embedded boards.
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Len Sorensen
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Phil Endecott
Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl <at> lkcl.net> writes:
> question (for everyone): if there existed a board which used a
> single-core 800mhz Cortex A9, maximum hard limit of 512mb RAM, but
> also had SATA-II and 10/100 Ethernet, would it be of interest, and how
> much would you pay for it? similar spec / design / size / interfaces
> as the pandaboard, origen etc. just with a single-core Cortex A9
> rather than dual-core.
>
> the CPU i have in mind is the AML-8726-M (which is fantastic but is
> hardware-limited to 512mb RAM) and i am in contact with an ODM/OEM
> whom i believe i could persuade to create such a board if there is
> sufficient interest in purchasing it.
This sort of question should always be considered in the context of the lead
time, i.e. "in 9 months time when TI and NVidia and Freescale (etc.) have
announced their next generation chips and boards, would you still be interested
in a board with an 800 MHz Coretex A9, 512 MB RAM etc.?".
Looking at the various things I have done over the last few years:
- I have had a couple of "NFS server"-like projects, where respectable network
and disk I/O speeds have been most important. (I can't agree with Gordan
Bobic's claim that SD cards are good enough for most applications.) Your
proposed board doesn't quite suit that because it doesn't have gigabit ethernet.
- I have done a couple of "display" applications, where video output in various
formats and respectable software support for that has been most important.
Today, almost everyone (including this AML chip with Mali graphics) is in the
same boat: there is good hardware and good drivers, but the drivers are all
non-free. If someone wants to stand out in that market they know what they have
to do. (These projects have also benefited from lots of RAM.)
- I have done a couple of commercial projects where a fast interface to some
custom (e.g. FPGA) logic was most important. I think PCIe is probably the only
realistic choice for that today. The AML chip doesn't help for this.
So to be honest, I would not expect a board based on that chip to be much use to
me. But I know I'm far from typical of anything...
Cheers, Phil
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Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
<spam_from_...@chezphil.org> wrote:
> Hi Luke,
wotcha mr endecott
> This sort of question should always be considered in the context of the lead
> time, i.e. "in 9 months time when TI and NVidia and Freescale (etc.) have
> announced their next generation chips and boards, would you still be interested
> in a board with an 800 MHz Coretex A9, 512 MB RAM etc.?".
hell no... unless it was either a) available in 4-6 weeks b) was part
of a kit that could be upgraded c) was price-reduced massively to
reflect the lower amount of RAM and CPU speed.
a) _could_ happen
b) could also happen (see links below for examples)
c) ain't gonna happen, fact.
links to stuff wot is modularly upgradeably spiffing:
* DM3730 http://www.kitarm.com/news/330-kitarm-release-tablet-solution-with-omap3-dm3730-cortex-a8-dsp-dual-core.html
* Samsung Enyxos
http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G129705564426
* Samsung S5PC110
http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/products/prdt_info.php?g_code=G129690436790
* etc
> Looking at the various things I have done over the last few years:
>
> - I have had a couple of "NFS server"-like projects, where respectable network
> and disk I/O speeds have been most important. (I can't agree with Gordan
> Bobic's claim that SD cards are good enough for most applications.) Your
> proposed board doesn't quite suit that because it doesn't have gigabit ethernet.
whoops :)
> - I have done a couple of "display" applications, where video output in various
> formats and respectable software support for that has been most important.
> Today, almost everyone (including this AML chip with Mali graphics) is in the
> same boat: there is good hardware and good drivers, but the drivers are all
> non-free. If someone wants to stand out in that market they know what they have
> to do.
yes. stop censoring people on forum.arm.com who point this out, for
a start. (yes, ARM employees who are on this list: your colleagues
responsible for forum.arm.com are censoring people who call for the
MediaTek-licensed MALI hardware to be openly documented just like AMD
/ ATI are doing).
> - I have done a couple of commercial projects where a fast interface to some
> custom (e.g. FPGA) logic was most important. I think PCIe is probably the only
> realistic choice for that today. The AML chip doesn't help for this.
it doesn't. so.. let's hope AML's next version has that...
> So to be honest, I would not expect a board based on that chip to be much use to
> me. But I know I'm far from typical of anything...
well, the point is to find something that covers the needs of the
people who actually will write the software. duh.
marvell tried (and are behind the times, restrict things to NDAs and so on).
TI bless 'em keep trying (but focus on mass-volume hand-helds, which
don't obviously have PCI-e or gigabit ethernet!)
Freescale try (but always seem to be 18 months behind)
Samsung go for mass-market and won't speak to mere mortals...
it really is quite ridiculous that the very people who could help
these bloody companies to lessen the absolutely critical burden of
development (software) are excluded because these CPU manufacturers
aren't creating SoCs that are of interest to us! madness...
l.
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