Post by thread:[OT] Can anyone confirm Raspberry Pi shipping ?

I have read few articles about this device but still not very clear what can you do with this? Only learning programming with some Logo style language? Or can you browse the internet with it? Can you use/install SkyPe and OpenOffice on it? Thanks, Tamas On 5 March 2012 16:45, <spam_OUTalan.b.pearceTakeThisOuTstfc.ac.uk> wrote: {Quote hidden}> > Last Wednesday ( 2012m02d29 ) RaspberryPi.org had a big to-do where they > claimed to > > take orders for RaspberryPi modules. Several sales websites crashed as > a result. > > Rumours have abounded... claims of 1 million enquiries about ordering > the module. > > There are rumours of multiple manufacturing efforts. I have no idea > what is true. > > > > My question to the PIClist is..... has anyone you know received a > *production* > > RaspberryPi module or been promised a firm shipping date for March ? I > am trying to > > figure out if they actually shipped or will ship any product ...... I > have > > twittered them repeatedly and while they do respond by calling me a > troll and a > > pessimist, they will not talk about whether they have shipped > anything.... there is > > evidence of ~ 10 prototypes. > > Shipping 10 prototypes is much different from shipping 10,000 or more > production > > units..... > > The only info I saw was that shipping was 30 days away ... > > I don't know if that is for the first 10k units, or subsequent orders ... > > > -- > Scanned by iCritical. > >

On 5/3/2012 5:59 PM, Tamas Rudnai wrote: > I have read few articles about this device but still not very clear what > can you do with this? Only learning programming with some Logo style > language? Or can you browse the internet with it? Can you use/install SkyPe > and OpenOffice on it? It is basically a big ARM chip (with video hardware), RAM, some boot-flash, and a memory card. It runs Linux, but probably not on par (speedwise) with your current desktop. AFAIK (and what interests me most) is that you can also use it bare-metal, as a low-cost processor board, using every language that can target ARM (uncluding all GCC variations). -- Wouter van Ooijen -- ------------------------------------------- Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: http://www.voti.nl consultancy, development, PICmicro products docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: http://www.voti.nl/hvu C++ on uC blog: http://www.voti.nl/erblog

On 5 March 2012 17:11, Wouter van Ooijen <.....wouterKILLspam@spam@voti.nl> wrote: > It is basically a big ARM chip (with video hardware), RAM, some > boot-flash, and a memory card. It runs Linux, but probably not on par > (speedwise) with your current desktop. AFAIK (and what interests me > most) is that you can also use it bare-metal, as a low-cost processor > board, using every language that can target ARM (uncluding all GCC > variations). > I see, I did not looked at it as a kind of demo board, but it is definitely a good idea. Are you planning to use the hardware in your lectures once it will be more easier available? Tama

Wouter van Ooijen zei ... > It is basically a big ARM chip (with video hardware), RAM, some Well, actually, the ARM processor is a tiny part of the huge video chip. > boot-flash, and a memory card. It runs Linux, but probably not on par > (speedwise) with your current desktop. It isn't exactly a slouch, though. Apparently with the fancy video chip it is quite adept at playing video games. Since the target is kids this is an important feature. At FUDcon they showed it playing Quake quite acceptably. You probably wouldn't take a handful of them and call it a server farm, tho. It is my understanding that it will ship with Fedora, so the normal gcc toolchain will be readily available. Fedora expects to make ARM a primary architecture by Fedora 18, so all >10,000 packages will be available hassle-free. The ARM effort is close now, so almost all the packages are available. They just didn't make it under the wire for Fedora 17, whose Alpha shipped Tuesday. --McD

It seems to me that after you have the working prototype that it should not take long to build. PC boards, parts, assemble, Test (maybe?) Not knowing instruction set, architecture, available software or intended additional documentation I think I ordered one with RS but I did not get anything in the way of a confirmation. Bare metal is fine with me if there is enough information about the interfacing details. If it takes a year to sort it out I can accept that. In fact, the Project has such good intentions that if I just plain lose $50, I will be more concerned about the folks trying to put this together. The price is like an Arduino with a lot more promise! On 3/5/2012 12:11 PM, Wouter van Ooijen wrote: {Quote hidden}> On 5/3/2012 5:59 PM, Tamas Rudnai wrote: >> I have read few articles about this device but still not very clear what >> can you do with this? Only learning programming with some Logo style >> language? Or can you browse the internet with it? Can you use/install SkyPe >> and OpenOffice on it? > It is basically a big ARM chip (with video hardware), RAM, some > boot-flash, and a memory card. It runs Linux, but probably not on par > (speedwise) with your current desktop. AFAIK (and what interests me > most) is that you can also use it bare-metal, as a low-cost processor > board, using every language that can target ARM (uncluding all GCC > variations). > -- John Ferrell W8CCW Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. Mark Twain (1835 - 1910), Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894)

Wouter just wrote that down -- basically a computer sized of a credit card -- no fancy boxing, looks like a demo board, but you can attach your TV as a screen and your existing keyboard and mouse to it and you get a Linux based computer. All for 25 pounds (without the TV and the keyboard and the mobile phone charger which powers it)! Tamas On 5 March 2012 19:35, <jimKILLspamjpes.com> wrote: > > I admit that I am a little naive on the Raspberry Pi. > What is it? and what is all the excitement about? > > Regards, > > Jim > > > ---{Original Message removed}

We're seriously considering trying one as a thin client in our local school - our current system already uses VMs running on Fedora, so it seems it should be possible to just drop one of these in. The main requirement for a thin client like this is ability to handle the video processing, and it seems these should be pretty capable for that - the original idea was just a bit of a joke to see if it was possible, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes, given that a brand new one of these is significantly cheaper than the s/h PCs we currently use. Chris On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 4:59 PM, Tamas Rudnai <EraseMEtamas.rudnaispam_OUTTakeThisOuTgmail.com> wrote: > I have read few articles about this device but still not very clear what > can you do with this? Only learning programming with some Logo style > language? Or can you browse the internet with it? Can you use/install SkyPe > and OpenOffice on it? > > Thanks, > Tama

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 8:25 PM, Alex Harford <harfordspam_OUTgmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 11:04 AM, John Ferrell <@spam@jferrell13KILLspamtriad.rr.com> wrote: >> In fact, the Project >> has such good intentions that if I just plain lose $50, I will be more >> concerned about the folks trying to put this together. >> >> The price is like an Arduino with a lot more promise! > > One person at Olimex does not think it is so promising: > > http://www.thebackshed.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4748&PN=1 Well they would say that wouldn't they! A lot of the gripe appears to be regarding the ability to deliver at that price - when as pointed out, the two largest electronics distributors in the UK are happily taking orders at that price (and the "handling charge" comment is spurious - nothing like that appeared in my basket on Farnell). Chri

It does look like performance is pretty decent, even for non-video tasks. The drivers for handing off rendering to the special accelerator part of the CPU are coming along as well. Last I heard there were still some parts of X that weren't accelerated yet (window moves?). Anyway, I'm sure those will get implemented and polished pretty quickly. I think on a watt-per-performance basis (as far as machines capable of running a full Linux distro) this is doing pretty damn good. IIRC there are Debian-based distros that are also pretty close to baked for ARM. Should be a very interesting year for embedded/small Linux! Mine should ship in early May. :-) -Pete On Mar 5, 2012, at 11:15 AM, KILLspammcdKILLspamis-sixsigma.com wrote: {Quote hidden}> Wouter van Ooijen zei ... >> It is basically a big ARM chip (with video hardware), RAM, some > > Well, actually, the ARM processor is a tiny part of the huge video chip. > >> boot-flash, and a memory card. It runs Linux, but probably not on par >> (speedwise) with your current desktop. > > It isn't exactly a slouch, though. Apparently with the fancy video chip > it is quite adept at playing video games. Since the target is kids this > is an important feature. At FUDcon they showed it playing Quake quite > acceptably. You probably wouldn't take a handful of them and call it a > server farm, tho. > > It is my understanding that it will ship with Fedora, so the normal gcc > toolchain will be readily available. Fedora expects to make ARM a primary > architecture by Fedora 18, so all >10,000 packages will be available > hassle-free. The ARM effort is close now, so almost all the packages are > available. They just didn't make it under the wire for Fedora 17, whose > Alpha shipped Tuesday. > > --McD > > > -

On Mon, Mar 05, 2012 at 12:35:13PM -0700, RemoveMEjimTakeThisOuTjpes.com wrote: > > I admit that I am a little naive on the Raspberry Pi. > What is it? Sub 50$ USD computer. ARM processer with 256MB of RAM. > and what is all the excitement about? Full HDMI video Open platform Runs Linux Full speed USB Fits in the palm of your hand It's the next generation of plug computer and like all computing technology it gets smaller, faster, better, and cheaper each generation. The applications are endless. Print servers that you stick to the back of printer. Media servers or clients for every TV in the house. Wireless Monitoring/automation. Car computers that can plug into the electrical jack of the car... Endless. The Foundation is looking to get development computers back into the hands of kids again to noodle and develop. But by partnering with big box electronics distributors, we'll all get an opportunity to benefit while contributing to the primary goal as the foundation gets a slice of every sale. BAJ > > Regards, > > Jim > > > ---{Original Message removed}

On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 3:02 PM, Byron Jeff <spamBeGonebyronjeffspamBeGonemail.clayton.edu> wrote: > On Mon, Mar 05, 2012 at 12:35:13PM -0700, TakeThisOuTjimEraseMEspam_OUTjpes.com wrote: >> >> I admit that I am a little naive on the Raspberry Pi. >> What is it? > > Sub 50$ USD computer. ARM processer with 256MB of RAM. > >> and what is all the excitement about? > > Full HDMI video > Open platform Kinda sorta. You still need a binary blob for the video acceleration and if the codec isn't supported you're out of luck. But still a fantastic project and I'd love to get one.

part 1 1727 bytes content-type:text/plain; charset="iso-8859-15" (decoded quoted-printable) On Mon, 5 Mar 2012, Byron Jeff wrote: {Quote hidden}> On Mon, Mar 05, 2012 at 12:35:13PM -0700, RemoveMEjimTakeThisOuTjpes.com wrote: >> >> I admit that I am a little naive on the Raspberry Pi. >> What is it? > > Sub 50$ USD computer. ARM processer with 256MB of RAM. > >> and what is all the excitement about? > > Full HDMI video > Open platform > Runs Linux > Full speed USB > Fits in the palm of your hand > > It's the next generation of plug computer and like all computing technology > it gets smaller, faster, better, and cheaper each generation. > Ok, so how many MIPS we talking about here? I've seen 700MHz mentioned but some time ago I seem to remember reading there was trouble getting instructions out of memory fast enough to feed a 60MHz ARM. Does the 700MHz translate to ARM MIPS or is it more to do with the video DAC? I must admit I'm a bit curious as to why Broadcom hasn't made data sheets readily available. I've heard the story about how they don't want to bother with small customers but that doesn't feel right. I mean, if you (as a manufacturer) are looking for any kind of customer you want engineers to know how wonderful your chips are and come knocking on your door. You don't really want to make it hard for them to evaluate your product AND you REALLY don't want to make them jump through hoops like signing NDAs before they've tied themselves in. The one thing that keeping data sheets obscure does give you though is it does keep errata out of the public eye. Maybe I'm just cynical. And another thing - why do we keep hearing $35 and �35 as if the two currencys are interchangable? Regards Sergio Masci part 2 181 bytes content-type:text/plain; name="ATT00001.txt" (decoded base64) -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist

On 6 March 2012 00:27, smplx <smplxEraseME.....allotrope.net> wrote: > Ok, so how many MIPS we talking about here? Have a look at http://elinux.org/RPi_Performance for some performance metrics. > I've seen 700MHz mentioned MIPS != Clock speed. > but some time ago I seem to remember reading there was trouble getting > instructions out of memory fast enough to feed a 60MHz ARM. Does the 700MHz > translate to ARM MIPS or is it more to do with the video DAC? I think you're getting a bit confused here. 60MHz is about the maximum access rate for the flash memory typically used in microcontroller style ARM chips. Since most microcontroller ARM chips--though not all--don't have fast caches, this more or less limits the clock frequency to about 60MHz. Some chips (the STM32 line comes to mind) will grab multiple instructions from flash in one cycle by using massively wide buses to break that limit. The Broadcom behemoth on the R-Pi will have a nice big chunk of fast, SRAM cache from which it pulls its instructions from, avoiding the bottle-neck when accessing non-volatile memory. The video DAC will run at a completely different rate, determined by the composite video format used (NTSC, PAL, etc). > I must admit I'm a bit curious as to why Broadcom hasn't made data sheets > readily available. I've heard the story about how they don't want to bother > with small customers but that doesn't feel right. I mean, if you (as a > manufacturer) are looking for any kind of customer you want engineers to > know how wonderful your chips are and come knocking on your door. The companies with the sortof buying power that will keep Broadcom interested will probably already know about the chips (sales calls, newsletters, etc). > You don't > really want to make it hard for them to evaluate your product AND you REALLY > don't want to make them jump through hoops like signing NDAs before they've > tied themselves in. The one thing that keeping data sheets obscure does give > you though is it does keep errata out of the public eye. Maybe I'm just > cynical. > -- Brendan Gillatt http://www.brendangillatt.co.u

On Tue, 6 Mar 2012 12:40:15 +0000, you wrote: >On 6 March 2012 00:27, smplx <EraseMEsmplxallotrope.net> wrote: >> Ok, so how many MIPS we talking about here? > >Have a look at http://elinux.org/RPi_Performance for some performance metrics. > >> I've seen 700MHz mentioned > >MIPS != Clock speed. Actually on ARM it's pretty close {Quote hidden}>> but some time ago I seem to remember reading there was trouble getting >> instructions out of memory fast enough to feed a 60MHz ARM. Does the 700MHz >> translate to ARM MIPS or is it more to do with the video DAC? > >I think you're getting a bit confused here. 60MHz is about the maximum >access rate for the flash memory typically used in microcontroller >style ARM chips. Since most microcontroller ARM chips--though not >all--don't have fast caches, this more or less limits the clock >frequency to about 60MHz. Some chips (the STM32 line comes to mind) >will grab multiple instructions from flash in one cycle by using >massively wide buses to break that limit. The new NXP LPC18xx devices use large RAM and booting from external SPI flash to get 180MHz. >The Broadcom behemoth on the R-Pi will have a nice big chunk of fast, >SRAM cache from which it pulls its instructions from, avoiding the >bottle-neck when accessing non-volatile memory. I think the Braodcom chip only has a minimal bootloader in on-chip memory - everything else runs in RAM (DDR3?) , on a chip mounted on the CPU package >> I must admit I'm a bit curious as to why Broadcom hasn't made data sheets >> readily available. I've heard the story about how they don't want to bother >> with small customers but that doesn't feel right. I mean, if you (as a >> manufacturer) are looking for any kind of customer you want engineers to >> know how wonderful your chips are and come knocking on your door. They have released data on the ARM IO peripherals - the GPU is supported via a binary blob driver

On 3/5/2012 2:35 PM, RemoveMEjimEraseMEEraseMEjpes.com wrote: > I admit that I am a little naive on the Raspberry Pi. > What is it? and what is all the excitement about? > > Regards, > > Jim If you want to see the potential of the Raspberry Pi all you have to do is look at the Roku X product, it uses the same chip and provides video streaming, wifi, bluetooth and has enough processor power to play games like angry birds. We don't get the wifi or bluetooth but for $25 that is still a lot of processing ability. Mark

> I see, I did not looked at it as a kind of demo board, but it is definitely > a good idea. Are you planning to use the hardware in your lectures once it > will be more easier available? If it gets reliably available we might make it mandatory for the students to buy one. It could be used from bare metal programming in assembler up to scripting robot arm movements in Python using ROS (a Linux-based robotics OS). -- Wouter van Ooijen -- ------------------------------------------- Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: http://www.voti.nl consultancy, development, PICmicro products docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: http://www.voti.nl/hvu C++ on uC blog: http://www.voti.nl/erblog

>> It is basically a big ARM chip (with video hardware), RAM, some > > Well, actually, the ARM processor is a tiny part of the huge video chip. That's another way to see it. I am mainly interested in bare-metal programming (without Linux), and I understand that the documentation for the video will not be available soon, so it is (at the moment) out of my field of interest. >> boot-flash, and a memory card. It runs Linux, but probably not on par >> (speedwise) with your current desktop. > > It isn't exactly a slouch, though. IIRC it is a 300MHz ARM? The initial Jal for Linux was done on a 33 MHz 486. I guess it will be acceptable for all but the most demanding stuff. -- Wouter van Ooijen -- ------------------------------------------- Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: http://www.voti.nl consultancy, development, PICmicro products docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: http://www.voti.nl/hvu C++ on uC blog: http://www.voti.nl/erblog

>> The price is like an Arduino with a lot more promise! > > One person at Olimex does not think it is so promising: > http://www.thebackshed.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4748&PN=1 What he says is that he does not believe the price to be realistic. The big IF is whether the Pi will be reliably available in the future for the current price. If it is, the Olimex argument is disproven. -- Wouter van Ooijen -- ------------------------------------------- Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: http://www.voti.nl consultancy, development, PICmicro products docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: http://www.voti.nl/hvu C++ on uC blog: http://www.voti.nl/erblog

> I must admit I'm a bit curious as to why Broadcom hasn't made data > sheets readily available. I have the datasheet for the BCM2835 peripherals (ARM/graphics chip, but the GPU is *not* part of this document). That's all I need for bare-metal embedded work. > And another thing - why do we keep hearing $35 and £35 as if the two > currencys are interchangable? Add E 35 to the mix. But any price below E50/GBP50/USD50 makes me drool. -- Wouter van Ooijen -- ------------------------------------------- Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: http://www.voti.nl consultancy, development, PICmicro products docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: http://www.voti.nl/hvu C++ on uC blog: http://www.voti.nl/erblog

Yes, It seems to me Olimex is realistic. Most of all saying "it all seems now to look like cheap advertising for Broadcom for their processor." I do not think that publishing BCM2835 ARM Peripherals datasheet will be enough for the deveopers to make programs for Raspberry. Broadcom is known as a company( at least for me) that does not care about small companies or individual programmers. While ATMEL does. So Arduino is much better, at least in that openess. But I would not want anyone to think I do not wish success to Raspberry. ( Bible, Luke 6:38) Anyway my question is: If they really wanted to help others by developing cheap computer, why they did not choose a really open solution( like ATMEL or similar)? {Quote hidden}> >> The price is like an Arduino with a lot more promise! > > > > One person at Olimex does not think it is so promising: > > www.thebackshed.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=4748&PN=1 > > What he says is that he does not believe the price to be realistic. > The big IF is whether the Pi will be reliably available in the future > for the current price. If it is, the Olimex argument is disproven. > > -- > > Wouter van Ooijen > > -- ------------------------------------------- > Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: http://www.voti.nl > consultancy, development, PICmicro products > docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: http://www.voti.nl/hvu > C++ on uC blog: http://www.voti.nl/erblog > > -

> Anyway my question is: > If they really wanted to help others by developing cheap computer, why > they did not choose a really open solution( like ATMEL or similar)? > What ATMEL solution comes even close to the Broadcom for running Linux? Including HDMI output, etc. etc. FWIW: My take on this is that it is an excellent idea. I'd like to see the Broadcom stuff open-sourced, but a binary blob is better than the alternative with other platforms, even if it probably restricts you to using Linux rather than bare iron. -- Bob Ammerman RAm Systems

On Tue, 6 Mar 2012, Brendan Gillatt wrote: > On 6 March 2012 00:27, smplx <RemoveMEsmplxspam_OUTKILLspamallotrope.net> wrote: >> Ok, so how many MIPS we talking about here? > > Have a look at http://elinux.org/RPi_Performance for some performance metrics. > >> I've seen 700MHz mentioned > > MIPS != Clock speed. Wow, what a surprise! I remembered this differently so I just had to go take a look. Seems you're right. I thought this RISC processor executed 1 instruction per CPU cycle (maybe 2 cycles depending on memory access). Turns out it can take several cycles depending on the specific instruction. That'll teach me to belive the hype I read :-) Regards Sergio Masc

jana1972@centrum.cz wrote: > I do not think that publishing BCM2835 ARM Peripherals datasheet will be > enough for the deveopers to make programs for Raspberry. > The thing runs linux so you don't really need to get down and dirty with the hardware if you don't want to. > Broadcom is known as a company( at least for me) that does not care > about small companies or individual programmers. > While ATMEL does. So Arduino is much better, at least in that openess. > The ardunio is a completely different product from the Pi, About the only thing the two have in common is that they both have a huge ammount of hype surrounding them > Anyway my question is: > If they really wanted to help others by developing cheap computer, why > they did not choose a really open solution( like ATMEL or similar)? > The did consider a microcontroller based option but decided that for thier target application a "mobile phone SOC" would be a better fit than a microcontroller. Unfortunately none of the mobile phone SOCs are very open. Some manufacturers release arm side documentation more freely than others but afaict none of them release details of the GPU. Afaict a broadcom part was chosen because they had people on the inside who could negotiate a good deal for relatively small volumes

----- Original Message ----- From: "Bob Ammerman" <RemoveMEpicramTakeThisOuTspamroadrunner.com> To: "Microcontroller discussion list - Public." <EraseMEpiclistspamspamBeGonemit.edu> Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 1:26 PM Subject: Re: [OT] Can anyone confirm Raspberry Pi shipping ? {Quote hidden}>> Anyway my question is: >> If they really wanted to help others by developing cheap computer, why >> they did not choose a really open solution( like ATMEL or similar)? >> > What ATMEL solution comes even close to the Broadcom for running Linux? > Including HDMI output, etc. etc. > > FWIW: My take on this* is that it is an excellent idea. I'd like to see > the > Broadcom stuff open-sourced, but a binary blob is better than the > alternative with other platforms, even if it probably restricts you to > using > Linux rather than bare iron. > > -- Bob Ammerman > RAm Systems *this == Raspberry PI

> I remembered this differently so I just had to go take a look. Seems > you're right. I thought this RISC processor executed 1 instruction per CPU > cycle (maybe 2 cycles depending on memory access). Turns out it can take > several cycles depending on the specific instruction. Be careful: a pipelined processor (which the ARM9 is) will take several clock cycles to complete an instruction (from staring the instruction to completing it), but can (at full speed) complete one instruction each clock cycle! (because each stage of the pipeline can be working on a different instruction) -- Wouter van Ooijen -- ------------------------------------------- Van Ooijen Technische Informatica: http://www.voti.nl consultancy, development, PICmicro products docent Hogeschool van Utrecht: http://www.voti.nl/hvu C++ on uC blog: http://www.voti.nl/erblog

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 12:27 AM, smplx <RemoveMEsmplxKILLspamallotrope.net> wrote: > And another thing - why do we keep hearing $35 and £35 as if the two > currencys are interchangable? Because people are easily confused, consumer electronics available for a given number of $ often does translate to the same number of £s by the time it reaches the UK, but mainly because it's a UK product but priced in $ so people get easily confused. Certainly I've not seen anything official mentioning £35 and the price I'm seeing quoted is £21.60 Chris

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 5:56 PM, <jana1972STOPspamspam_OUTcentrum.cz> wrote: > Broadcom is known as a company( at least for me) that does not care > about small companies or individual programmers. > While ATMEL does. So Arduino is much better, at least in that openess. You're talking apples and oranges. Arduino doesn't have anything like the capability of RP (and in a similar sense, RP doesn't have some of the capabilities of Arduino). If you have a current project which works well on Arduino, it's unlikely porting to RP will gain you anything, but then there's no way you can use Arduino to do lots of things RP can. > Anyway my question is: > If they really wanted to help others by developing cheap computer, why > they did not choose a really open solution( like ATMEL or similar)? What other platforms have similar capability? Do ATMEL make anything which could be used to make something like RP (ie including the built in GPU)? Genuine question, as I'm not really all that up on the capabilities of different chip families at that level. Of course, like a lot of people you're missing the point that this isn't a cheap computer for hobbyists (who might otherwise use a microcontroller, arduino etc.), it's aimed to get kids into coding, and for that purpose it doesn't need to be a really open solution - the public availability is just a spin off. I understand one of the people behind the project also works with Broadcom processors in his day job - personally if I was designing something like this, I'd be inclined to use a platform I was really familiar with. Chri

Atmel produces several ARM926 CPUs, notably the SAM9G45, SAM9G46, SAM9M10 and SAM9M11. All of them run up to 400MHz, support large amounts of SDRAM or DDR2-SDRAM, have two host and one device Hi-speed USB 2.0 ports, besides 2 SPI, 5 UART, 10/100 Ethernet, 2 SD/MMC, graphic LCD output, CMOS camera interface, 10-bit ADC, PWM and a lot more. The SAM9M10 and SAM9M11 also have video decoder. Freescale also have nice powerful CPUs. Isaac Em 6/3/2012 18:09, Chris McSweeny escreveu: {Quote hidden}> On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 5:56 PM, <spamBeGonejana1972STOPspamEraseMEcentrum.cz> wrote: >> Broadcom is known as a company( at least for me) that does not care >> about small companies or individual programmers. >> While ATMEL does. So Arduino is much better, at least in that openess. > You're talking apples and oranges. Arduino doesn't have anything like > the capability of RP (and in a similar sense, RP doesn't have some of > the capabilities of Arduino). If you have a current project which > works well on Arduino, it's unlikely porting to RP will gain you > anything, but then there's no way you can use Arduino to do lots of > things RP can. > >> Anyway my question is: >> If they really wanted to help others by developing cheap computer, why >> they did not choose a really open solution( like ATMEL or similar)? > What other platforms have similar capability? Do ATMEL make anything > which could be used to make something like RP (ie including the built > in GPU)? Genuine question, as I'm not really all that up on the > capabilities of different chip families at that level. > > Of course, like a lot of people you're missing the point that this > isn't a cheap computer for hobbyists (who might otherwise use a > microcontroller, arduino etc.), it's aimed to get kids into coding, > and for that purpose it doesn't need to be a really open solution - > the public availability is just a spin off. I understand one of the > people behind the project also works with Broadcom processors in his > day job - personally if I was designing something like this, I'd be > inclined to use a platform I was really familiar with. > > Chris

> Atmel produces several ARM926 CPUs, notably the SAM9G45, SAM9G46, > SAM9M10 and SAM9M11. With the cheapest being about $12/1 at Digikey or about 1/3 of the cost of the RP. Does anyone offer a means of providing 1080p video capability that is easily (enough) integrated and reasonably documented, that could be used to give similar video capabilities to that of the RP at a price that would allow equal or cheaper than RP devices to be built ? This does not mean that such a system could compete with an RP functionally as there are many other factors, but reasonable video in an accessible and well costed device seems to be a major lack.

Em 6/3/2012 22:54, RussellMc escreveu: >> Atmel produces several ARM926 CPUs, notably the SAM9G45, SAM9G46, >> SAM9M10 and SAM9M11. > With the cheapest being about $12/1 at Digikey or about 1/3 of the > cost of the RP. > > Does anyone offer a means of providing 1080p video capability that is > easily (enough) integrated and reasonably documented, that could be > used to give similar video capabilities to that of the RP at a price > that would allow equal or cheaper than RP devices to be built ? This > does not mean that such a system could compete with an RP functionally > as there are many other factors, but reasonable video in an accessible > and well costed device seems to be a major lack. But certainly the Broadcom chip is more expensive in small quantities than it is in very large (10s of thousands) quantities. Isaac

On 6 March 2012 13:09, Mike Harrison <EraseMEmikeEraseMEwhitewing.co.uk> wrote: >>MIPS != Clock speed. > > Actually on ARM it's pretty close I disagree. While I hate quoting Wikipedia, it handily lists various typical MIPS/MHz figures for ARM cores: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ARM_microprocessor_cores. The various cores have very differing MIPS/MHz and even a casual glance at the instruction set datasheet will tell you that some instructions take longer to execute than others on the same core. Further, large caches imply large delays when a cache miss occurs. The amount of misses the cache stumbles over depends on the code being executed. So, depending on the task at hand the MIPS/MHz figure will certainly move around. {Quote hidden}>>> but some time ago I seem to remember reading there was trouble getting >>> instructions out of memory fast enough to feed a 60MHz ARM. Does the 700MHz >>> translate to ARM MIPS or is it more to do with the video DAC? >> >>I think you're getting a bit confused here. 60MHz is about the maximum >>access rate for the flash memory typically used in microcontroller >>style ARM chips. Since most microcontroller ARM chips--though not >>all--don't have fast caches, this more or less limits the clock >>frequency to about 60MHz. Some chips (the STM32 line comes to mind) >>will grab multiple instructions from flash in one cycle by using >>massively wide buses to break that limit. > > The new NXP LPC18xx devices use large RAM and booting from external SPI flash to get 180MHz. I'm not familiar with the LPC18xx series but that sounds interesting. The STM32F4 line uses a fairly simple and modest sized cache called an ART to improve speed to around those levels. >>The Broadcom behemoth on the R-Pi will have a nice big chunk of fast, >>SRAM cache from which it pulls its instructions from, avoiding the >>bottle-neck when accessing non-volatile memory. > > I think the Braodcom chip only has a minimal bootloader in on-chip memory - everything else runs in > RAM (DDR3?) , on a chip mounted on the CPU package But the core itself will not be issued instructions from external DRAM. The latency would probably (I have no solid figures here) limit the core to less than 100MHz. The core will get its instructions from an on-die SRAM cache (http://www.arm.com/products/processors/classic/arm11/ indicates a size of between 4K and 64K). Ultimately those instructions will come from non-volatile storage (whether that's the bootloader, from an SD card, over the net, etc). -- Brendan Gillatt http://www.brendangillatt.co.uk

> Atmel produces several ARM926 CPUs, notably the SAM9G45, SAM9G46, > SAM9M10 and SAM9M11. > > All of them run up to 400MHz, support large amounts of SDRAM or DDR2-SDRAM, have two > host and one device Hi-speed USB 2.0 ports, besides > 2 SPI, 5 UART, 10/100 Ethernet, 2 SD/MMC, graphic LCD output, CMOS camera interface, > 10-bit ADC, PWM and a lot more. > > The SAM9M10 and SAM9M11 also have video decoder. > > Freescale also have nice powerful CPUs. I don't see anything mentioned there that will drive HDMI, which seems to be a requirement of the Raspberry Pi, so it can use any local TV or monitor as a display device. The nearest you have there is graphic LCD output, which is fine if you are including a display with the device (assuming it can drive a large enough display), but having a built in display would vastly increase the unit cost. -- Scanned by iCritical.

> > The new NXP LPC18xx devices use large RAM and booting from external SPI flash to > get 180MHz. > > I'm not familiar with the LPC18xx series but that sounds interesting. > The STM32F4 line uses a fairly simple and modest sized cache called an ART to > improve speed to around those levels. > > >>The Broadcom behemoth on the R-Pi will have a nice big chunk of fast, > >>SRAM cache from which it pulls its instructions from, avoiding the > >>bottle-neck when accessing non-volatile memory. Note that the RP will be essentially running from RAM once it has booted, as the only bulk non-volatile storage is an SD card, and you wouldn't want to be running such a device on a 4 bit wide ROM bus ... -- Scanned by iCritical.

Em 7/3/2012 06:47, @spam@alan.b.pearce@spam@spam_OUTstfc.ac.uk escreveu: >> Atmel produces several ARM926 CPUs, notably the SAM9G45, SAM9G46, >> SAM9M10 and SAM9M11. >> >> All of them run up to 400MHz, support large amounts of SDRAM or DDR2-SDRAM, have two >> host and one device Hi-speed USB 2.0 ports, besides >> 2 SPI, 5 UART, 10/100 Ethernet, 2 SD/MMC, graphic LCD output, CMOS camera interface, >> 10-bit ADC, PWM and a lot more. >> >> The SAM9M10 and SAM9M11 also have video decoder. >> >> Freescale also have nice powerful CPUs. > I don't see anything mentioned there that will drive HDMI, which seems to be a requirement of the Raspberry Pi, so it can use any local TV or monitor as a display device. The nearest you have there is graphic LCD output, which is fine if you are including a display with the device (assuming it can drive a large enough display), but having a built in display would vastly increase the unit cost. Just received in a message from Freescale: <http://www.freescale.com/webapp/site_cons.newsletter_metrics.framework?newsletter_id=NL092012&type=CLICKTHROUGH&url=http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?code=IMX6X_SERIES%26tid=NL_0912> These devices seem nice: "The i.MX 6Quad family encompasses a quadcore platform running up to 1.2GHz with 1MB of L2 cache, and 64-bit DDR3 or 2-channel, 32-bit LPDDR2 support. High performance integration of LVDS, MIPI display port, MIPI camera port and HDMI v1.4 makes it an ideal platform for consumer, automotive and industrial multimedia applications." Isaac