gpu News - Page 27 of 30 - CNX Software

June 3, 2013January 15, 2014 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

ARM Announces Cortex-A12 processor, Mali-T622 GPU and Mali-V500 VPU

Right before Computer 2013, ARM has made a single announcement for 4 new products for smartphones: Cortex A12 core, Mali-T622 GPU, Mali-V500 video processor unit, and POP IP technology. Cortex A12 processor, with 40 percent more performance than Cortex-A9, positions itself between Cortex A9 and A15 offerings, and brings virtualization, big.LITTLE processing, and up to 1TB addressable memory to mid-range devices. Combined with the new Mali-T622 GPU, it will offer GPU Compute and OpenGL 3.0 solution. Add the new Mali-V500 video IP solution to complete the SoC for tomorrow’s, 2015 more exactly, mid-range smartphones and tablets between $200 and $350. Cortex A12 will have the following key features: Architecture – ARMv7-A Cortex Multicore – 1-4X SMP within a single processor cluster Multiple coherent processor clusters through AMBA 4 technology Support ARM Thumb-2 TrustZone security technology NEON Advanced SIMD DSP & SIMD extensions VFPv4 Floating point Hardware virtualization support Large Physical […]

May 7, 2013May 29, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Vivante GC4000 is The Best Mobile GPU… When It Comes to Accuracy

Most of the time, mobile GPU comparisons involve benchmarks such as Antutu, Nenamark 2, etc…, or people may consider which games will be able to run smoothly with a particular device, but we seldom compare image quality, for the simple reason it’s usually more difficult to achieve. YOUi Labs has just done that, however, by running the shader code below on several hardware platforms, mainly Android tablets, with the most common mobile GPUs, and used the results obtained with a Desktop PC GPU, Nvidia Geforce GT 630M, has a reference.

precision highp float;
uniform vec2 resolution;
void main( void )
{
      float x = ( 1.0 – ( gl_FragCoord.x / resolution.x ));

      float y = ( gl_FragCoord.y / resolution.y ) * 26.0;
      float yp = pow( 2.0, floor(y) );
      float fade = fract( yp + fract(x) );
      if(fract(y) &lt; 0.9)
          gl_FragColor = vec4( vec3( fade ), 1.0 );
    else
          gl_FragColor = vec4( 0.0 );
}

precision highp float;

uniform vec2 resolution;

void main( void )

{

float x = ( 1.0 – ( gl_FragCoord.x / resolution.x ));

float y = ( gl_FragCoord.y / resolution.y ) * 26.0;

float yp = pow( 2.0, floor(y) );

float fade = fract( yp + fract(x) );

if(fract(y) < 0.9)

gl_FragColor = vec4( vec3( fade ), 1.0 );

else

gl_FragColor = vec4( 0.0 );

}

Here are the results: The worst GPUs are Mali-400 MP4 in Exynos 4412 and Geforce ULP in Tegra 3, which can respectively only show 5 and 8 lines before degradation, and the top two GPUs are Qualcomm Adreno 225 in MSM8660A, and Vivante GC4000 in HiSilicon K3V2 processor. Imagination Technologies SGX544 and ARM Mali-T604 also provide decent results, but […]

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

Libhybris Let You Use Android Drivers & HW Libraries in Linux

One of the main issues with Linux on ARM is the lack of proper GPU drivers for the platform, as most silicon manufacturers now only focus on Android drivers which are not compatible with the Linux kernel, because Android is based on Bionic C library, whereas Linux is based on glibc or its variants. There are two ways to solve this issue: Open Source GPU drivers. This would be the ideal solution, as you would just be able to cross-compile the drivers for the proper, as well as fix bugs without having to ask the silicon manufacturer to fix the driver for you. Bionic to Glibc library. Such library acts like libdl, and allows to load Bionic library and overrides some symbols from bionic with glibc based ones. This is exactly what libhybris does. Ubuntu Touch is capable of using Android GPU drivers to run Ubuntu thanks to this library, […]

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 21, 2013March 21, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

SECO mITX GPU DevKit Features Nvidia Tegra 3, Supports CUDA 5

SECO mITX GPU DEVKIT is a GPU computing development kit that provides a Mini-ITX Qseven 2.0 carrier board (SECO mITX Carrier Board) with a Nvidia Tegra 3 powered Qseven SoM (QuadMo747-X/T30). The carrier board provides a PCI-e x16 connector (PCI Express x4) intended to allow the connection of CUDA 5 enabled desktop graphics boards. Embedded Control Europe reports that the platform will support Nvidia Kayla platform. The main specifications of the platform are as follows: CPU – Nvidia Tegra 3 Quad-Core ARM Cortex A9 GPU – TBD. But you should be able to insert Nvidia graphics card via the PCI-e x16 connector (PCI Express x4) on the mini-ITX board Memory – 2 GB Storage – 4 GB eMMC + 1x SATA 2.0 Connector Network – 1x Gigabit Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 + 1 OTG port Display – HDMI The platform will support Linux Ubuntu , as well as […]

March 21, 2013March 21, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Nvidia Updates its Tegra Roadmap with Parker 64-Bit ARM SoC, Unveils Kayla CUDA Development Platform

Nvidia has given an update about the roadmap for its Tegra processor at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. Tegra 4 will still be followed by Logan (Tegra 5) as planned with a Kepler GPU and support for CUDA and OpenGL 4.3, but “Stark” has been replaced by “Parker” (Tegra 6) which will be the first 64-Bit Tegra processor based on Denver CPU, Maxwell GPU and make use of Finfet transistors. Logan will be available in 2014, and Parker should be available in 2015 with 100 times more performance than Tegra 2. With this kind of performance, the separation line between desktop and mobile processors will be gone. Nvidia also unveiled Kayla (“Logan’s girlfriend”), a development platform for CUDA and OpenGL based on Tegra 3 quad-core ARM processor and a Kepler GPU connected via a PCI express slot. Jen-Hsun Huang (above) showcased Kayla performance by running real-time ray […]

March 4, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

FXI Technologies Cotton Candy HDMI Stick To Fully Support Both Android and Ubuntu

FXI Technologies was the first company to ever show an HDMI TV dongle when they unveiled the Cotton Candy in November 2011. Since then, many Chinese companies started to provide similar products at lower cost, and the company further improved the Cotton Candy, which is still powered by Exynos 4210 (dual core Cortex A9), by making it even smaller, and getting rid of the internal flash in the process. As a memory refresher, here are the specifications of the Cotton Candy: SoC – Samsung Exynos 4210 dual core Cortex A9 + Mali-400MP4 System Memory – 1GB DRAM Storage – No flash, up to 64GB microSD Video Output – HDMI Connectibity Wifi 802.11b/g/n Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR USB – USB 2.0 male connector for power and connection to devices that supports USB mass storage + microUSB Video Codecs- 480p/720p/1080p Decode of MPEG4-SP/H.263/H.264 AVC/MPEG-2/VC1 Audio Codecs – MP3, AAC, AAC+, Real Audio […]

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. […]