Andrea Gallo, Chief Linux Architect in the Smartphone and Tablet Solution organization in ST-Ericsson and part of the Linaro Technical Steering Committee, explains how a common Linux ARM kernel benefits ST Ericsson Snowball development platform. Abstract: Last March, the ARM Linux community got shaken by the complaints by Linus Torvalds for its lack of proper structure and organization. This is totally true and mainly due to the large number of different SoC vendors, each one integrating the ARM IP’s in a slightly different variant. Linaro immediately accepted the challenge to drive the kernel alignment of the ARM community and most ARM Linux experts got together and agreed on the way forward as early as May 2011 at the Developers’ summit in Budapest. ST-Ericsson is a founding member of Linaro and some key ST-Ericsson engineers are assigned to Linaro and specifically to this kernel alignment working force. In the speech, Andrea […]
Embedded Linux Optimization Techniques – ELCE 2011
Benjamin Zores, Alcatel-Lucent, describes different optimization techniques (focusing on hardware choice and software architecture) that can be used to improve the performance of embedded linux at Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2011. Abstract: This presentation provides a series of techniques that can be used for Linux embedded systems fine-grain tuning and performances optimization. Embedded systems are, by definition, always limited in terms of resources while people keep on trying to use desktop-oriented software on top of it. This talk presents a series of tips that can be used to actually measure, find and isolate bottlenecks in your system, whether it is by complete system profiling or software architecture optimization. Focus is also made on the traditional caveats that need to be avoided for your system not to be slow by design. You can also download the presentation slides. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before […]
Energy Efficiency of ARM Architecture for Cloud Computing Applications
Following “Pandaboard Cloud Cluster Running Google App Engine” post, there were some questions regarding the actual power efficiency of ARM servers vs Intel (Xeon) servers and some commenters questioned the performance of ARM chips. I’ve found a thesis evaluating how the energy efficiency of the ARMv7 architecture based processors Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A8 compares – in applications such as a SIP Proxy and a web server (Apache2) – to Intel Xeon processors. The focus of this thesis is to compare the energy efficiency between the two architectures rather than pure performance where the Xeon largely outperforms ARM processors, although a cluster of ARM servers could be used instead to reach the same processing power. Depending on the application, benchmarks indicate energy efficiency of 3-11 times greater for the ARM Cortex-A9 in comparison to the Intel Xeon. The full thesis (74 pages) is available below. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in […]
Linaro Android Tutorial with the Pandaboard
Zach Pfeffer, the tech lead of the Linaro Android working group, gave a tutorial about Linaro Android at Linaro Connect Q4.11. During this tutorial, attendees were shown how to download a recent build for the pandaboard, how to make a bootable SD card image using the linaro-android-media-create command and how to boot the board with it. The full setup was composed of a Pandaboard connected to a HDMI monitor with a keyboard and mouse connected to the board as well as serial to USB cable to connect to the development machine. He also used an SD card reader to generate the bootable Android image. The images are available at Android Linaro Build Service. There are quite a few build named after the supported board (e..g panda for pandaboard, snowball for ST Ericsson Snowball etc..) and the kernel version (tracking = latest linaro kernel, staging = stable linaro kernel). Then an […]
All You Need to Create a Beaglebone Clone
The Beagleboard community has released Beaglebone Rev 3 hardware design files so that other people can now modify the hardware and/or create a clone. Here are the files: Schematics (PDF) Schematics (Orcad) [update] Bill of materials Gerber files Allegro files (PCB layout) System Reference Manual [update] To open Allegro files, you’ll need to download Cadence Allegro FREE Viewer or purchase one of Cadence PCB Design software if you don’t have it yet. The schematics are only provided in PDF format for now, so you would be able to modify them unless you reproduce the PDF one. Since TI has now released the Orcad schematics you’d also be able to make a custom board by modifying the schematics. Please note that those files comes with the following disclaimer: These design materials are *NOT SUPPORTED* and DO NOT constitute a reference design. THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE DESIGN MATERIALS, TO THE […]
Linaro 11.10 Release with Linux Kernel 3.1
Linaro has just released version 11.10 based on Linux Kernel 3.1. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Audio playback and recording works on LEB-panda. TJBench into all Android builds benchmarked against the original Android libjpeg implementation: TomGall/LibJpegTurbo All strict-aliasing violations in 2.3.5 have been fixed and sent to AOSP. (for build optimization) Linaro Gerrit is integrated with Android Build Service for change verification as part of Continuous Integration effort. Tip toolchain tracked and released against all targets for 11.10. iMX53 will now boot with a 3.0 or later Android Kernel. The multimedia test application has been extended to cover encoding and give better benchmark results. Linaro’s Android distribution can now base builds off a tip toolchain build. Linaro’s 11.09 toolchain has been benchmarked. USB camera (UVC) now works on linaro-android builds. Developer Platform The Linux Linaro packages are now generated and validated in a continuous integration loop. New […]
Xibo Digital Signage on ARM (Full Version)
Last month, I wrote a post showing how to run Xibo Open Source Digital Signage in a BeagleBoard/Overo emulator. That version could communicate with Xibo server, download the required files, display pictures and (maybe) play videos with the real hardware. However, it had serious limitation as Text, RSS and web pages could not be displayed. I’ve now fixed those issues and the full Xibo 1.3.1 can run on ARM platform. First, you need to follow the instructions given in Xibo Digital Signage on ARM (Beagleboard / Overo), although we’ll need to modify something with libavg compilation (see below). Then cross-compile berkelium for ARM using Linaro toolchain. Add libbrowser-node to libavg plugin directory and build libavg again. Also copy the Berkelium header files in to src/test/plugin (i.e. src/test/plugin/berkelium) or add the include file path to CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS.
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bzr branch lp:~browsernode-team/+junk/berkelium-browsernode cp berkelium-browsernode/plugin/* ~/edev/beagleboard/libavg-1.6.0/src/test/plugin cd ~/edev/beagleboard/libavg-1.6.0 make make install |
Create libberkeliumwrapper.so:
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cd ~/edev/beagleboard/libs/lib touch a.cpp arm-linux-gnueabi-g++ -c a.cpp -o a.o arm-linux-gnueabi-g++ a.o -shared -L/home/jaufranc/edev/beagleboard/berkelium -llibberkelium -o libberkeliumwrapper.so |
Copy the required files to the qemu image: sudo mount -o […]
Pandaboard Cloud Cluster Running Google App Engine
Noritsuna Imamura showed an ARM cloud cluster built with 6 Pandaboards at Linaro Connect Q4.11. Noritsuna is a member of the Open Embedded Software Foundation (OESF), a Japanese organization that support Open Source embedded software. The cluster is made of 6 panda boards with a total 6 GB of RAM (1GB per board) that runs the Google App Engine (http://code.google.com/appengine/) in Ubuntu/Linaro 11.09 release. The middleware used is TyphoonAE, a full-featured and productive serving environment to run Google App Engine (Python) applications. This type of server hosts web applications such as Rietveld (used in the demo below) to be run on (thin) clients. There are also plenty of other software (required by Google App Engine) that runs in this ARM cloud such as MySQL, Apache2, memcached and more. In the video, a power meter shows that the cluster consumes about 35 W in low activity mode. Norisuna had a comparison […]