NXP i.MX Category - Page 58 of 68 - CNX Software

March 27, 2013May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Mini PCs (MK802+, UG802, GK802 & iStick A200) Linux Performance Comparison

Ian MORRISON (linuxium) has tested Linux with several mini PCs powered by different processors. The main point of his tests was to evaluate the performance difference between running Ubuntu 12.04 natively, or in a chroot in Android using tools such as Complete Linux Installer. I previously tried Linux on Android in ODROID-X, and found the applications start time when running from an low-end SD card pretty dismal, and the graphics performance poor. Ian had a different approach, and decided to use a subset of Phoronix Suite benchmarks to compare different hardware / software combination and posted the results in “mini PCs” G+ community. There’s a lot of data, and analyzing the results is not really straightforward without spending some time looking at the data. In this post, I’ll explain how the tests have been conducted, explain the results and try to draw a conclusion. Mini PCs and other Hardware Under […]

March 26, 2013March 26, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Zealz GK802 Is (Temporary?) Available for $69.99 on GeekBuying

Zealz GK802 is a mini PC based on Freescale i.MX6 Quad processor, with 1GB RAM, 8 to 16 GB internal memory (internal micro SD card). The main selling points of this HDMI dongle is that it’s the only currently available quad core processor (about to change), it’s hackable and unbrickable with easy access to the serial console, full support for Linux with hardware video decoding and 2D/3D acceleration (work in progress), and Freescale has released proper software and hardware development resources for the i.MX6 processor. As mentioned in my review of Hi802 mini PC, the downside is that Vivante GC2000 GPU performance is lower than the Mali-400 MP4 found in Rockchip RK3066 mini PC, and its price (usually above $90) is about double the price of Rockchip RK3066 mini PCs. We can’t do anything for Vivante GC2000 performance, but Roman found a coupon code “FVKIWVAG” on a Russian forum that […]

March 25, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

Ubuntu 11.10 Image for Hi802 / GK802 is Now Available for Download

About 2 weeks ago, Jasbir released an Ubuntu 11.10 image and installation instructions for GK802 and Hi802 mini PCs based on Freescale i.MX6. I could only find time to give it try yesterday and today. I’ll provide the steps I followed to install the image, and my quick first impressions of the stability and performance of this image. Installation Instructions I mainly followed the instructions provided by Jasbir, and run GParted to increased the partition size on my micro SD card. The image is for a 8 GB micro SD, but those instructions should work on 4GB SD card and greater, as the rootfs partition is only 3GB large. Download the Ubuntu 11.10 image, uboot, as well as the kernel image and modules in a Linux PC:

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

Copy the image, uboot and the kernel to the micro SD card by typing the commands below:

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt;
sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt; &amp;&amp; sync
sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/&lt;sd_drive&gt; bs=1048576 seek=1 &amp;&amp; sudo sync

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/<sd_device>

sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/<sd_device> && sync

sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/<sd_drive> bs=1048576 seek=1 && sudo sync

Replace /dev/<sd_device> by your […]

March 3, 2013March 3, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Ubuntu 11.10 on GK802/Hi802 mini PC with 2D/3D and Video Hardware Acceleration

You may remember an Ubuntu 11.10 image was released via Geekbuying early January, but this image would not boot on my Hi802, lacked 2D/3D acceleration, and to my knowledge there hasn’t been any update since then. So hope of proper Linux support on the device was fading, until the community discovered Freescale released patches for i.mx6 HDMI dongles, developers setup the imx6-dongle community, and after a lot of work, mainly by three members: Jasbir, Dmitriy (rz2k) and James, there’s now GPU and VPU support on Ubuntu 11.10. Here’s a summary of the current status: Wifi working. External SD working Matched IOMUX configuration to align with the Android image. Stripped out unnecessary device initialisation from the original HDMI dongle source. Enabled EGL and GLES HW Acceleration in Ubuntu. Unity desktop might be partially HW accelerated (TBC) Jasbir uploaded a video to YouTube to show the progress, and it looks pretty good. […]

March 1, 2013March 1, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Linaro 13.02 Release with Linux Kernel 3.8 and Android 4.2.2

Linaro 13.02 is now available, and features Linux Kernel 3.8 and Android 4.2.2. The biggest news this month is probably the first release of a preliminary ARM64 Debian/Ubuntu Raring image. Other noticeable items include work on ARMv7 KVM, more improvements to OpenEmbedded ARMv8 implementation, as well as big.LITTLE MP implementation, and some modifications to the toolchain for Cortex A7 support. Origen images are not available for download this month, and there’s still no ALIP images since they have disappeared since Linaro upgraded to Ubuntu Quantal. Here are the highlights of this release: Android AOSP master build for Galaxy Nexus has been setup All the platforms have been updated to 4.2.2 Support for lava-test-shell has been added to linaro-android-build-tools. Developer Platform CI bring up: ARMv7 KVM – Add Arndale hypervisor patch to u-boot-linaro. CI bring up: Arndale – Add Arndale image reports to LAVA, Enable and verify UEFI support in the […]

February 26, 2013February 26, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

iWave Systems Announces RainboW-G15S Pico ITX Board Powered by Freescale i.MX6 Duallite/Solo Processor

iWave Systems has just launched the RainboW-G15S, a Pico ITX single board computer featuring Freescale i.MX 6 Solo and Dual Lite processor at Embedded World 2013, in Nuremberg, Germany. This embedded board targets intelligent industrial control systems, industrial human machine interface, ultra portable devices, home energy management systems, and portable medical devices. RainboW-GS15 Specifications: SoC – Freescale i.MX6 Dual Lite/Solo, (Quad /Dual compatible) System Memory – 512MB DDR3 (Expandable up to 2GB) Storage – On-board Micro SD slot, standard SD/SDIO slot, optional eMMC support, and an optional SATA 7-pin connector (Probably just to make the board pretty since i.MX6 Solo and Duallite do not support SATA…) Connectivity – 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet USB – 2x USB Host Connector + micro USB OTG connector Misc – Half mini PCIe card connector, CAN Header Audio & Video interfaces: AC97 Audio Codec with Audio Out Jack & Audio In Header HDMI Port LVDS connector with […]

February 21, 2013March 13, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments

Wandboard Dual Unboxing and Quick Start Guide

I’ve just received Wanboard Dual development board together with an enclosure, and Wi-Fi antenna. This board is powered by Freescale i.MX6 Duallite Cortex A9 processor, and comes with 1GB RAM, HDMI output and Ethernet. There’s also a version based on Freescale i.MX6 Solo with 512 MB RAM. You can refer to my earlier post for more detailed specifications. I’ll start by showing some unboxing pictures of the board, and write a quick start guide (casing assembly, Ubuntu & Android boot, and development). I also planned to run some benchmarks and test videos, as according to a poll on Wandboard website many people want to use it as a media player, but I’ll do that a bit later since the current Android image is not up to the task yet. Wandboard Dual Unboxing The package I received contained 3 boxes: one for Wandboard Dual board, one for the enclosure, and one for […]

February 14, 2013July 21, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Open ARM GPU Drivers FOSDEM 2013 Video and Call to ARM Management

As I previously wrote, FOSDEM organizers are slowly uploading FOSDEM 2013 videos. One of the most interesting talk “Open ARM GPU Drivers” is now available. I’ve also uploaded it to YouTube (embedded below) to give it more exposure. Luc Verhaegen has also written a recent blog post entitled “Hey ARM!” where he announces the release of the modified source for Quake 3 Arena demo, and asks ARM to join them in making an open source driver. Open ARM GPU Drivers @ FOSDEM2013 This session covers the following key points: Problem – Binary drivers are mainly designed to run in Android, and it’s very difficult to have proper GPU drivers for Linux, and companies are not interested to release open source drivers or even just documentation, as they are not convinced it will benefit them in any way. Legal – This is actually the main issue, as open sourcing existing driver […]