We're still struggling with the Raspberry Pi and yet another lovely device is announced, the PengPod Linux tablet:
http://www.pengpod.com/products/pengpod700 http://www.pengpod.com/products/pengpod1000
Pengpods have an Allwinner A10 chip with ARM cortex-a8 CPU. Same single core CPU as in the earliest iPad. A10 specs:
http://www.allwinnertech.com/product/a10.html
ARM cortex-a8 reportedly has two coprocessors which can both do floating point operations: the non-pipelined VFPv3 unit and the pipelined NEON unit for integer and 32 bit float SIMD processing. You must convince the compiler to do the bulk of the work on the NEON unit, for speed. That is a matter of compiler flags and coding habits. See for example this (old) article:
http://pandorawiki.org/Floating_Point_Optimization
Though PengPod will be more powerful than Raspberry Pi, in terms of hardware it is still a toy like iPad and Android tablets, which could never attract my interest. So what makes me looking forward to the PengPod so much? It must be the operating system. Good old GNU tools, Synaptic, and all the packages so helpful to use a computer in the way you want it. Such tiny devices, still able to run a full Linux, it's just cute.
Katja
Is it me or does this email read like you have some financial interest in selling this pad?
Anyway, just to let you know, _all_ allwinner A10 tablets/tvsticks/settopboxes can run linux without much effort at all. Not really any point in a 'boxed linux' version of it..
7" tablets with allwinner a10 cost about 70 usd on ebay.
I have been playing with a cubieboard a lot this last week ( http://cubieboard.org/ ) and although its not a holy grail, its a really nice toy.
-- buZz
Isn't this just a rebranded chinese tablet?
They also sell one of those linux-on-a-stick devices with their own logo over it. Not a particularly special device anyway.
drmr
ps; Interesting that you point to the pandorawiki. someone on their forums recently also promoted these tablets
On Mon, Dec 24, 2012 at 12:45 AM, Bastiaan van den Berg buzz@spacedout.nl wrote:
Is it me or does this email read like you have some financial interest in selling this pad?
Yeah it sounds like spam. Let me add a bit more.
<spam> What I like about this crowdfunded project is the intention to develop open source drivers and deliver a fully functional Linux tablet. The hardware designers and manufacturers didn't give a shit about that. Android happens to be most convenient for them so that is what we get. Open source drivers, why? A previous Linux tablet effort was apparently stalled, read this:
http://lwn.net/Articles/504865/
This could still happen to the PengPod as well. If a Linux-oriented hardware project succeeds, it makes me happy.
</spam>
Anyway, just to let you know, _all_ allwinner A10 tablets/tvsticks/settopboxes can run linux without much effort at all. Not really any point in a 'boxed linux' version of it..
Sounds like you're experienced with these. I'm curious, did you manage to compile and install Pd or Pd-extended on them? Is it possible to get duplex audio I/O with Pd? (still a problem with the Pi). Do you need to use a real time kernel to get decent sound from Pd? Is a real time kernel for ARMv7 available at all?
Thanks, Katja
7" tablets with allwinner a10 cost about 70 usd on ebay.
I have been playing with a cubieboard a lot this last week ( http://cubieboard.org/ ) and although its not a holy grail, its a really nice toy.
-- buZz
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
On Mon, Dec 24, 2012 at 11:34 PM, katja katjavetter@gmail.com wrote:
Anyway, just to let you know, _all_ allwinner A10 tablets/tvsticks/settopboxes can run linux without much effort at all.
Not
really any point in a 'boxed linux' version of it..
Sounds like you're experienced with these. I'm curious, did you manage to compile and install Pd or Pd-extended on them? Is it possible to get duplex audio I/O with Pd? (still a problem with the Pi). Do you need to use a real time kernel to get decent sound from Pd? Is a real time kernel for ARMv7 available at all?
Could try a pd-extended compile, there is also just the normal debian versions of this. Beagleboard/Pandaboard/IGEPv2/Cubieboard all share the same core and many users.
There seem to be realtime support since 3.0.27 for ARMv7.
-- buZz
On 12/24/2012 06:32 PM, Bastiaan van den Berg wrote:
On Mon, Dec 24, 2012 at 11:34 PM, katja katjavetter@gmail.com wrote:
Anyway, just to let you know, _all_ allwinner A10 tablets/tvsticks/settopboxes can run linux without much effort at all.
Not
really any point in a 'boxed linux' version of it..
Sounds like you're experienced with these. I'm curious, did you manage to compile and install Pd or Pd-extended on them? Is it possible to get duplex audio I/O with Pd? (still a problem with the Pi). Do you need to use a real time kernel to get decent sound from Pd? Is a real time kernel for ARMv7 available at all?
Could try a pd-extended compile, there is also just the normal debian versions of this. Beagleboard/Pandaboard/IGEPv2/Cubieboard all share the same core and many users.
There seem to be realtime support since 3.0.27 for ARMv7.
Hopefuilly some of these open hardware projects will spend the effort to get the audio drivers right, so that there isn't the massive latency like with Android.
There is now a Debian source package as part of the nightly builds, so it should be much easier to build Pd-extended on Debian these days. After downloading the two tarballs:
http://autobuild.puredata.info/auto-build/latest/Pd-extended_0.43.4~20121224... http://autobuild.puredata.info/auto-build/latest/Pd-extended_0.43.4~20121224...
You basically just need to do this:
tar xjf Pd-extended_0.43.4~20121224-source.tar.bz2 cd pd-extended tar xjf ../Pd-extended_0.43.4~20121224-source.debian.tar.bz2 debuild -uc -us --lintian
.hc
On Tue, Dec 25, 2012 at 1:16 AM, Hans-Christoph Steiner hans@at.or.at wrote:
Hopefuilly some of these open hardware projects will spend the effort to get the audio drivers right, so that there isn't the massive latency like with Android.
Reportedly, Android's latency issues where for a large part due to the audio mixer, which has been improved recently:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2012/07/android-high-performance-audio-in-4-1-...
Pd under Linux has the advantage of talking straight to ALSA. But even when absolute latency time would be reasonably low, the instantaneous load of a program respective to CPU/system speed may still justify longer buffers. For example: Pd's testtone can do with 10 ms latency on my no so new Linux laptop, but when running a moderately complex patch it must be 20 ms, and when I measure real throughput latency that's already 30 ms. And that laptop cannot do without realtime kernel when audio goes via USB. Therefore I guess a realtime kernel could also make a difference when running Pd on an ARM device.
Maybe Bastiaan can check throughput latency with Pd on the Cubieboard? I've attached a (vanilla) patch for sample-precise throughput latency measurement.
Katja
There is now a Debian source package as part of the nightly builds, so it should be much easier to build Pd-extended on Debian these days. After downloading the two tarballs:
http://autobuild.puredata.info/auto-build/latest/Pd-extended_0.43.4~20121224... http://autobuild.puredata.info/auto-build/latest/Pd-extended_0.43.4~20121224...
You basically just need to do this:
tar xjf Pd-extended_0.43.4~20121224-source.tar.bz2 cd pd-extended tar xjf ../Pd-extended_0.43.4~20121224-source.debian.tar.bz2 debuild -uc -us --lintian
.hc
Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list
From: Bastiaan van den Berg buzz@spacedout.nl To: pd-list pd-list@iem.at Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2012 6:45 PM Subject: Re: [PD] PengPod Linux tablet, hopefully coming soon
Is it me or does this email read like you have some financial interest in selling this pad?
Anyway, just to let you know, _all_ allwinner A10 tablets/tvsticks/settopboxes can run linux without much effort at all. Not really any point in a 'boxed linux' version of it..
Can I run a modern GNU/Linux distro on the hardware you mentioned, and all the hardware will work and is supported with stable drivers including wifi, multi-touch control, audio, and whatever gpu is on these models?
-Jonathan
On Tue, Dec 25, 2012 at 6:26 PM, Jonathan Wilkes jancsika@yahoo.com wrote:
Can I run a modern GNU/Linux distro on the hardware you mentioned, and all the hardware will work and is supported with stable drivers including wifi, multi-touch control, audio, and whatever gpu is on these models?
Yes, actually, most of it is just in the normal mainline kernel.
-- buZz
-
Bastiaan van den Berg -
dreamer -
Hans-Christoph Steiner -
Jonathan Wilkes -
katja