4 ms·

Novena contains 4x Cortex A9 CPU, thet is much less power and not enough power for more serious work :(

by satai 11y ago

random778 11y ago
I would argue that it's really powerful for certain, niche applications. Having an FPGA onboard is awesome. Now if we can get software everyone uses (office apps, browsers, and the big ones, not specialized ones 1% of people use) maybe the Novena will be fine. We should get that anyway so mid/low-range smartphones can replace the PC for most people.
- satai 11y ago
  You are right, it has it's own (sadly small) niche. But it's hardly comparable to Librem.
david-given 11y ago
I just benchmarked my shiny new Asus Chromebook Flip (4-core ARM) against my ludicrously overpowered desktop (12-core Xeon E5-1650). I ran povray --benchmark, so it was a float-heavy number-crunching exercise. The figures were about 1500 CPU-seconds for the desktop and 3000 CPU-seconds for the Chromebook. Of course, wall-clock time was significantly less for the desktop due to having many more cores, but that's showing that per-core, the high-end Intel was only about twice as fast as the ARM. I do development work on the Chromebook, via a Debian chroot inside Crouton. And you know what? It's fine. It's probably the fastest laptop I've ever owned. The filesystem's a little slow, but compilation speeds are perfectly adequate.
- ggreer 11y ago
  I don't think your numbers are correct. My Core i7-4770K (4 cores) runs povray --benchmark faster than your 12 core Xeon: Render Time: Photon Time: 0 hours 0 minutes 1 seconds (1.256 seconds) using 11 thread(s) with 1.456 CPU-seconds total Radiosity Time: No radiosity Trace Time: 0 hours 2 minutes 18 seconds (138.426 seconds) using 8 thread(s) with 1099.214 CPU-seconds total That's POV-Ray 3.7 with no architectural optimizations. I just apt-get installed it. I would be very surprised if the Chromebook's 1.8GHz Cortex-A17 was only 3x slower. Googling around, I see people mentioning numbers like 10,000 CPU-seconds.
  - david-given 11y ago
    I just reran it. I don't have access to the 12x Xeon now, but: 8x i7-3770K: 1123 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 144 seconds) 4x Cortex A17: 3196 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 963 seconds) I just wish it had more cores, but I suspect that Rockchip are raking in money from these things, and I expect we'll get more cores next year. The 12x Xeon was my work machine. I might have to have a word with them about it.
- satai 11y ago
  The issue is Cortex A9 not ARM. Flip has Cortex A12 or Cortex A17.
- satai 11y ago
  (I am not ARM hater, the oposite is true. I admire the work Apple did when designing A9 -not the Cortex one - and I hope I can buy a lightweight laptop with Cortex A72 or Cryo next year. But this doesn't make Novena effort any way usable for heavy web usage or more demanding tasks or comparable with i5 notebooks for work..)
- keenerd 11y ago
  > via a Debian chroot inside Crouton Try a native install on the Flip, it is nice: http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/ http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/
  - ggreer 11y ago
    From that page: > The C100P Flip is the best netbook I have seen in eight years. That's quite the praise! This thing must be really good. > The default ALSA config was completely silent. Enabling Right Speaker Mixer Right/Left DAC fixed that. Supposedly there is a risk of burning out the amp if you thoughtlessly enable every option. Uhh... wow. Well, OK. > After suspend/resume, wifi will not work if the btsdio module was automatically loaded. The best netbook in eight years, yet it can't even suspend/resume properly? What? > The best video output mode is X11 video output. Despite what everyone says about being slow, this is the only driver that doesn't have major desync problems. > Stellarium would run at a buttery smooth 60 FPS for a few minutes and then everything would die. > Chromium will not run on this hardware. > Screen rotation through xrandr doesn't work at all... Then under "Things to Fix": > - HMDI output. Very wonky, usually crashes X11 after a few minutes. > - USB ethernet. The cdc_ether module will load but nothing happens. > - Webcam. Crazy bucket of fail here. Maybe 25% of the time fswebcam can grab a single frame. Good luck with video. > - Multitouch on the panel. No idea how to get that working. To me, —even with the fixes and workarounds you describe— that device sounds like a nightmare to use.
    - david-given 11y ago
      As a counter, ChromeOS will boot from cold in about five seconds. It's got a web browser, file browser, video and music player (with super-slick video quality --- no tearing!), the WiFi just works, there's built in support for mapping the caps key to ctrl, it maintains and updates itself, all the fiddly audio and touchscreen and gestures all just work. And then if I want to use a real OS, I switch to my fullscreen Debian installation running awesome and all my xterms and it all just seamlessly interoperates. Except I don't need NetworkManager or PulseAudio or any of that nonsense because ChromeOS does it all for me. The brightness buttons work! The audio volume buttons work! Suspend and resume works! Everything works! There's even two-way clipboard support! Which works! I've been using Linux for years, and I think this is the first time I have ever had a Linux-based laptop where all this stuff wasn't a total PITA.
tinco 11y ago
Are you seriously saying a machine that can process over a billion instructions per second, four times in parallel is not powerful enough for serious work? What kind of serious work do you do?
- satai 11y ago
  It includes several open firefox tabs and running an IDE and a compiler. Anyway Cortex A9 is barely enough for web surfing if you visit some more demanding pages.
davexunit 11y ago
We use Novenas as build slaves in GNU Guix's build farm and they work well. Is that not serious work?

Novena contains 4x Cortex A9 CPU, thet is much less power and not enough power for more serious work :(

by satai 11y ago

Novena contains 4x Cortex A9 CPU, thet is much less power and not enough power for more serious work :(

I would argue that it's really powerful for certain, niche applications. Having an FPGA onboard is awesome. Now if we can get software everyone uses (office apps, browsers, and the big ones, not specialized ones 1% of people use) maybe the Novena will be fine. We should get that anyway so mid/low-range smartphones can replace the PC for most people.

satai 11y ago
You are right, it has it's own (sadly small) niche. But it's hardly comparable to Librem.

david-given 11y ago

I just benchmarked my shiny new Asus Chromebook Flip (4-core ARM) against my ludicrously overpowered desktop (12-core Xeon E5-1650). I ran povray --benchmark, so it was a float-heavy number-crunching exercise. The figures were about 1500 CPU-seconds for the desktop and 3000 CPU-seconds for the Chromebook. Of course, wall-clock time was significantly less for the desktop due to having many more cores, but that's showing that per-core, the high-end Intel was only about twice as fast as the ARM. I do development work on the Chromebook, via a Debian chroot inside Crouton. And you know what? It's fine. It's probably the fastest laptop I've ever owned. The filesystem's a little slow, but compilation speeds are perfectly adequate.

ggreer 11y ago
I don't think your numbers are correct. My Core i7-4770K (4 cores) runs povray --benchmark faster than your 12 core Xeon: Render Time: Photon Time: 0 hours 0 minutes 1 seconds (1.256 seconds) using 11 thread(s) with 1.456 CPU-seconds total Radiosity Time: No radiosity Trace Time: 0 hours 2 minutes 18 seconds (138.426 seconds) using 8 thread(s) with 1099.214 CPU-seconds total That's POV-Ray 3.7 with no architectural optimizations. I just apt-get installed it. I would be very surprised if the Chromebook's 1.8GHz Cortex-A17 was only 3x slower. Googling around, I see people mentioning numbers like 10,000 CPU-seconds.
- david-given 11y ago
  I just reran it. I don't have access to the 12x Xeon now, but: 8x i7-3770K: 1123 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 144 seconds) 4x Cortex A17: 3196 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 963 seconds) I just wish it had more cores, but I suspect that Rockchip are raking in money from these things, and I expect we'll get more cores next year. The 12x Xeon was my work machine. I might have to have a word with them about it.
satai 11y ago
The issue is Cortex A9 not ARM. Flip has Cortex A12 or Cortex A17.
satai 11y ago
(I am not ARM hater, the oposite is true. I admire the work Apple did when designing A9 -not the Cortex one - and I hope I can buy a lightweight laptop with Cortex A72 or Cryo next year. But this doesn't make Novena effort any way usable for heavy web usage or more demanding tasks or comparable with i5 notebooks for work..)
keenerd 11y ago
> via a Debian chroot inside Crouton Try a native install on the Flip, it is nice: http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/ http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/
- ggreer 11y ago
  From that page: > The C100P Flip is the best netbook I have seen in eight years. That's quite the praise! This thing must be really good. > The default ALSA config was completely silent. Enabling Right Speaker Mixer Right/Left DAC fixed that. Supposedly there is a risk of burning out the amp if you thoughtlessly enable every option. Uhh... wow. Well, OK. > After suspend/resume, wifi will not work if the btsdio module was automatically loaded. The best netbook in eight years, yet it can't even suspend/resume properly? What? > The best video output mode is X11 video output. Despite what everyone says about being slow, this is the only driver that doesn't have major desync problems. > Stellarium would run at a buttery smooth 60 FPS for a few minutes and then everything would die. > Chromium will not run on this hardware. > Screen rotation through xrandr doesn't work at all... Then under "Things to Fix": > - HMDI output. Very wonky, usually crashes X11 after a few minutes. > - USB ethernet. The cdc_ether module will load but nothing happens. > - Webcam. Crazy bucket of fail here. Maybe 25% of the time fswebcam can grab a single frame. Good luck with video. > - Multitouch on the panel. No idea how to get that working. To me, —even with the fixes and workarounds you describe— that device sounds like a nightmare to use.
  - david-given 11y ago
    As a counter, ChromeOS will boot from cold in about five seconds. It's got a web browser, file browser, video and music player (with super-slick video quality --- no tearing!), the WiFi just works, there's built in support for mapping the caps key to ctrl, it maintains and updates itself, all the fiddly audio and touchscreen and gestures all just work. And then if I want to use a real OS, I switch to my fullscreen Debian installation running awesome and all my xterms and it all just seamlessly interoperates. Except I don't need NetworkManager or PulseAudio or any of that nonsense because ChromeOS does it all for me. The brightness buttons work! The audio volume buttons work! Suspend and resume works! Everything works! There's even two-way clipboard support! Which works! I've been using Linux for years, and I think this is the first time I have ever had a Linux-based laptop where all this stuff wasn't a total PITA.

tinco 11y ago

Are you seriously saying a machine that can process over a billion instructions per second, four times in parallel is not powerful enough for serious work? What kind of serious work do you do?

satai 11y ago
It includes several open firefox tabs and running an IDE and a compiler. Anyway Cortex A9 is barely enough for web surfing if you visit some more demanding pages.

davexunit 11y ago

We use Novenas as build slaves in GNU Guix's build farm and they work well. Is that not serious work?