snowball News - Page 2 of 3 - CNX Software

April 27, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro 12.04 Release with Kernel 3.4 and Android 4.0.4

Linaro has just released version 12.04 based on Linux Kernel 3.4-rc3 and Android 4.0.4_r1.1. This release already provides Ubuntu 12.04 LTS images for Pandaboard, Snowball, Origen and Versatile Express, and all community builds (nano, ALIP…) are based on Ubuntu Precise Pangolin as well. This should provide significant performance boosted compared to Ubuntu 11.10 thanks to hard-float support and other optimization (See Phoronix Benchmarks). A lot of work since to have gone into big.LITTLE implementation, HTML5 is now supported in Firefox, and it seems Linaro is still working on ARMv6 as they provided VP8 optimizations and improved the toolchain for this architecture. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Finished Snowball Multimedia enablement. Updated all builds to AOSP ICS 4.0.4_r1.1. Switched all builds to 4.7. Updated base toolchain components MPFR and GMP. Ported htop to Android. Ported stressapptest to Android for big.LITTLE Testing. Implemented and ran weekly big.LITTLE tests. Integrated […]

March 30, 2012March 30, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro 12.03 Release with Kernel 3.3-rc3

Linaro has just released version 12.03 based on Linux Kernel 3.3-rc3 and Android 4.0.3. Among the key points, hardware video decode in now supported in Origen (Android), Android runs in A15/A7 platforms, libav AAC optimization provides about 2x performance improvement and QEMU supports Samsung Exynos 4240 and Calxeda Highbank (work done upstream). Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro Android has support for DS-5 version 5.9. Hardware accelerated Multimedia is now integrated on Origen. EEMBC, denbench and coremark have been ported to Android and are running in LAVA. android.net ConnectivityManager unit tests have been built and integrated in all builds. Hardware decode of H264 and MPEG4, 1080P and 30 FPS is enabled on Origen. Origen now has 1080p HDMI Graphics and Video Support. Android runs on A15, A7 and A15/A7 fast models. ARM’s big.LITTLE has been tested running Android using a set of unit tests. Kernels of prebuilt […]

February 24, 2012February 24, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro 12.02 Release with Kernel 3.3-rc

Linaro has just released version 12.02 based on Linux Kernel 3.3-rc and Android 4.0.3. Among the key points, they have started to work on Freescale i.MX6 SabreLite board, included libav 0.8 to Ubuntu images which provides up to 160% performance improvement while playing real-media videos and XBMC is available via PPA. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro Android can now be built with current GCC 4.7 snapshots. A 4.7 based toolchain build preview is also available. Linaro Android can boot on iMX6 Sabrelite boards. All test result spreadsheets have been streamlined and are now easier to use. Bluetooth enablement have been completed for the Origen board. A Prototype of using camera on Snowball was made. Presentations Given by Linaro Android Team this cycle “Binary Blobs Attack!!!” – Embedded Linux Conference. “What Android and Embedded Linux can learn from each other” – Embedded Linux Conference. “Integrating Projects Using […]

January 27, 2012January 27, 2012 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linaro 12.01 Release with Kernel 3.2 – Android 4.0.3

Linaro has just released version 12.01 based on Linux Kernel 3.2 and Android ICS upgraded to 4.0.3. A lot of work has been done to have video hardware decoding on OMAP 4 (in GStreamer) enabling Pandaboard to run Ubuntu TV and XBMC with Video HW acceleration. Prebuilt binaries for Linaro GCC and Linaro GDBare now available which means you don’t need to use Ubuntu with Linaro Toolchain. It has been tested with Debian 6.0.2, Fedora 16, openSUSE 12.1 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 5.7 and should run on any Linux Standard Base 3.0 compatible distribution. Windows binaries are also available and known to work on Windows XP Pro SP3, Windows Vista Business SP2 and Windows 7 Pro SP1. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro’s ICS has been upgraded to 4.0.3. Linaro Android ICS builds are now optimized using -O3 with the Linaro Toolchain. Click through builds […]

December 23, 2011December 24, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Linaro 11.12 Release with Kernel 3.1.5

Linaro has just released version 11.12 based on Linux Kernel 3.1.5 and further support for Android 4.0 including graphics hardware acceleration on Snowball and Origen development boards. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro ICS is built with the Linaro toolchain. Linaro ICS is running on all supported boards. DS-5 with Gator is supported in all Linaro Andoid ICS builds. The latest version of libpng (1.5.7) has been integrated in Linaro ICS. An AOSP master build is now available from linaro. ARM® Mali™ Hardware Accelerated Graphics is supported on Origen and Snowball. libjpeg-turbo has been integrated into all Andoid ICS builds. Developer Platform The linux-linaro and lt-panda kernel packages are now automatically generated by the CI build scripts DS-5 with Gator is supported in all Ubuntu LEB builds. XBMC packages, with Gstreamer and OpenGLES support, are now available at the Ubuntu Overlay (supporting only Panda initially) U-Boot-Linaro is […]

December 21, 2011December 23, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Graphics Hardware Acceleration for Android 4.0 on Origen and Snowball Development Boards

Last week, Linaro Android team announced that graphics hardware acceleration (2D and 3D) was coming to Android 4.0 for ST Ericsson Nova A9500 Snowball and Samsung Exynos 4210 Origen development boards. They have now release 2 videos to show the progress on the implementation. The first video (around 5 minutes) showcases Samsung Origen development board running Linaro’s build of Android ICS with 2D and 3D demo. The second video (1:21) shows 2D hardware acceleration on ST Ericsson Snowball board. Snowball Android 4.0 daily snapshots and instructions are available at https://android-build.linaro.org/builds/~linaro-android/staging-snowball/ and Origen builds at https://android-build.linaro.org/builds/~linaro-android/staging-origen/ The official December 2011 releases should also come pretty soon are available at http://releases.linaro.org/11.12/android/. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011. www.cnx-software.com

December 15, 2011December 15, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Android 4.0 Hardware Graphics Acceleration Coming to More Platforms

The Linaro Android Platform Team has just posted a weekly update to their progress. They are going to release 11.12 very soon with hardware graphics acceleration to 2 of their members development boards: ST Ericsson Nova A9500 Snowball and Samsung Exynos 4212 Origen boards. So if you have any boards or products based on those processors you should be able to get an hardware optimized version very soon. Hardware acceleration is already available on all OMAP4 platform such as Pandaboard, since this was the default Android ICS target. They also introduced support for the ARM DS-5 debugger, an Eclipse plug-in to help developer create high performance performance and low power native software by integrating a graphical debugger for code generated for the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) and a basic version of the ARM Streamline performance analysis tool. Here’s a list of this week achievements: Key Points for wider discussion […]

December 11, 2011 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

5th Linux BSP Release for Snowball Development Board

Igloo Community – the team developing for ST Ericsson Snowball Nova A9500 development board – has released the fifth version of the Linux BSP for the board and this version nearly fully support all features of the board. It can be downloaded at http://igloocommunity.org/download/linaro/images/20111209/. ChangeLog since last release: Based on Linaro Ubuntu 11.11 desktop filesystem Accelerometer and barometer support for all board revisions GPS support Enhancements to the default kernel config (NFS, /proc/config.gz support) Enhanced display support Add support for new connectivity module versions Main supported features: Based on Linux 3.0.0 and the Linaro Ubuntu desktop file system HDMI/DVI-D display support Graphics acceleration with the Mali 400 GPU Bluetooth support GPS support Ethernet and Wireless connectivity microSD card support Sensors (accelerometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, barometer) Limited USB OTG host functionality Features to be included in future releases: Multimedia acceleration Better USB OTG host support Known issues: USB OTG host mode is […]