7 ms·

32- and 64-bit ARM Open Hardware Boards

91 points by timthorn 12y ago

sspiff 12y ago
This wasn't completely clear to me from the get-go, but this organization and it's boards are an effort put forward by the Linaro organization. That, to me, makes the product much more relevant and reliable. I wouldn't buy a board from a random startup with no track records of providing support and updates for their devices. Linaro is an engineering non-profit, support by many of the major players, to improve support for the ARM ecosystem. This includes improvements to GCC, LLVM, the Linux kernel, various libc's, AOSP, ... They also provide Ubuntu, Debian and Android RFS images for supported reference boards. I understand that they went with a Mali GPU, since it is the reference GPU design from ARM. However, it is unfortunate that there is no open source driver for this platform. Maybe this will change in the future.
- noodly 12y ago
  > However, it is unfortunate that there is no open source driver for this platform. What about this one: http://malideveloper.arm.com/develop-for-mali/drivers/open-source-mali-gpus-linux-kernel-device-drivers/ http://malideveloper.arm.com/develop-for-mali/drivers/open-s... ?
  - lhl 12y ago
    Sadly, the kernel driver is of limited use since the user-space driver is what does everything. Some more info: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY3OTM http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY3OTM
    - sspiff 12y ago
      Exactly - the open source kernel driver is just a gateway for the user space driver to access the hardware. The real magic is in the closed source, user space driver. I believe Linus has stopped accepting these kinds of Trojan horse drivers into the mainline kernel, unless an open source user space component that does at least handle 2D graphics through it is also available.
  - homarp 12y ago
    The closest to Open Source driver is lima, http://limadriver.org/ http://limadriver.org/ but libv has stopped working on it for now. see http://libv.livejournal.com/tag/lima http://libv.livejournal.com/tag/lima
- limmeau 12y ago
  They use a HiSilicon SoC. Does HiSilicon publish docs?
  - monocasa 12y ago
    No, it doesn't appear that they do publicly.
  - craigjb 12y ago
    They're also near impossible to buy outside of China or NDAs. So it may be open, but I couldn't build one.
- gonzo 12y ago
  George Grey and Bob Booth ride again. (I worked for gcg @ Tadpole in the early-mid 90s.)
rffn 12y ago
How open is this hardware? Are there open specs for Mali? Are there open specs for CSI and DSI? All this is on the board. Available specs are needed to write open source software or at least make it much simpler. I have difficulties to consider a board with missing specification for important parts or connectors to be "open".
- 4ad 12y ago
  Well, then you must have difficulties considering almost any embedded board, because they all have a combination of chips with closed specs, or chips that require blobs to do important things, e.g. boot. Is there a truly open board except the Lemote stuff?
  - rffn 12y ago
    I do not have difficulties considering the existing boards. I would just not call them "open", because specs are missing, blobs for some functions, etc. This board is advertised as open and my critique pointed towards that. Advertising non-open things as open does in my opinion hinder the progress to more open hardware. That's a bad thing.
  - pingswept 12y ago
    The Beaglebone Black is the most open board, so far as I can tell. Here are the PCB sources for the latest revision: http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#Hardware_Files http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#Hardware_Files The datasheet for the AM3558 processor is here, no NDA required: http://www.ti.com/product/AM3358/technicaldocuments http://www.ti.com/product/AM3358/technicaldocuments The bootloader is U-boot, which is open source, based here: http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot The GPU in the AM3558 is a PowerVR SGX530, which is not open source in any sense-- I believe that the Linux driver uses a binary blob (but I'm not 100% sure of that). For comparison, the Raspberry Pi has open schematics (http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Raspberry-Pi-Schematics-R1.0.pdf http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Raspbe...) but not open PCB layout source files. There's a partial datasheet for the processor here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM2835-ARM-Peripherals.pdf http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM283..., but you can't buy the processor from Broadcom unless you're willing to buy 100,000 or so.
userbinator 12y ago
I think the OLinuXino series is the closest to fully-open ARM boards: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-LIME/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-... Unfortunately the GPU is a Mali, so software-wise it's not completely open, but the hardware is fully open-source and the SoC datasheets are available.
- fizixer 12y ago
  Two questions: - ARM licenses its designs so that would make their SoC design not open-source (both CPU and GPU)? (a sub question: they didn't specify in the main page who made the Mali. ARM doesn't make chips itself). - By "software-wise" you mean the GPU driver? the way nVidia and AMD drivers are not open-source. But since people are trying to reverse-engineer those GPUs to make open-source drivers (nouveau and xf86-video-ati respectively), do you think this could be done for Mali too?
rmoriz 12y ago
I'm not convinced. Despite the cpu the specs looks like some 2011ish TI PandaBoard. Slow usb2 i/o and no SATA ports won't be able to compete against low-end development boards (SolidRun HummingBoard or Radxa Rock Pro). While 64bit 8core ARM is something interesting, the low i/o speeds and ports rather limit any "computational" usage. Finally, the main reason not to build products out of the variety of ARM development boards is IMHO the missing CE/FCC certification for retail products. Afaik every board including the Raspberry PIs are only for demo/lab purposes. So if you build some embedded server product you'll do have the bureaucracy and costs. At least they should offer 2-3 FCC/CE ready combinations of boards+cases ready to be deployed in the wild. In my eyes those boards are just an replacement for the Texas Instruments PandaBoards which are discontinued because TI gave up their OMAP business a while ago and the typical low-cost board makers are using cheap dual/quad-core 32bit A8 and A9 IP.
- Kliment 12y ago
  The Rpi and beaglebone and the like are most definitely CE/FCC certified.
  - rmoriz 12y ago
    nope "This evaluation board/kit is intended for use for ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT, DEMONSTRATION, OR EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY"
    - leoc 12y ago
      Seems that the RasPi is: http://www.raspberrypi.org/tag/ce-compliance/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/tag/ce-compliance/ . Apparently they were forced into it by their distributors.
      - deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
      - mark-r 12y ago
        Interesting, the pictures show it being tested without a case. At the frequencies it uses, I would expect it not to pass without some kind of shielding. Do you know if the Raspberry Pi 2 has been tested yet?
jalopy 12y ago
Complete noob (to hardware/ARM stuff) question: Why would I buy this over the much cheaper Raspberry Pi 2? Does it just have a (much?) faster processor?
- sspiff 12y ago
  It's a good question. It has more CPU power, and likely more GPU power as well, but not an order of magnitude more. They main selling point (from my point of view) is for people who want to get their hands on a dev board that has 64-bit ARM. This board also has software support from Linaro, which is very good, but the Raspberry Pi community should offset this advantage.
  - rmoriz 12y ago
    Still they (Linaro) are calling it "Consumer Edition" - so IMHO no market fit.
  - sounds 12y ago
    In addition to sspiff's good info, take a look at the I/O options: https://www.96boards.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/HiKey_User_Guide_Rev0.2.pdf https://www.96boards.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/HiKey_Us... This will likely limit how useful the board can be, because the I/O choices will prevent a good ecosystem from growing up around it.
    - sspiff 12y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this true for all popular ARM boards today? Decent CPU, low power consumption, and terrible I/O performance? I remember the PandaBoard as exceptionally bad, most are better but still pretty slow.
      - sounds 12y ago
        Take a look at the BeagleBone Black. It has pretty decent I/O. The big gaping missing piece, of course, is better video output, but that's sort of in the same bucket as open source GPUs: missing in action.

91 points by timthorn 12y ago

This wasn't completely clear to me from the get-go, but this organization and it's boards are an effort put forward by the Linaro organization. That, to me, makes the product much more relevant and reliable. I wouldn't buy a board from a random startup with no track records of providing support and updates for their devices. Linaro is an engineering non-profit, support by many of the major players, to improve support for the ARM ecosystem. This includes improvements to GCC, LLVM, the Linux kernel, various libc's, AOSP, ... They also provide Ubuntu, Debian and Android RFS images for supported reference boards. I understand that they went with a Mali GPU, since it is the reference GPU design from ARM. However, it is unfortunate that there is no open source driver for this platform. Maybe this will change in the future.

noodly 12y ago
> However, it is unfortunate that there is no open source driver for this platform. What about this one: http://malideveloper.arm.com/develop-for-mali/drivers/open-source-mali-gpus-linux-kernel-device-drivers/ http://malideveloper.arm.com/develop-for-mali/drivers/open-s... ?
- lhl 12y ago
  Sadly, the kernel driver is of limited use since the user-space driver is what does everything. Some more info: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY3OTM http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY3OTM
  - sspiff 12y ago
    Exactly - the open source kernel driver is just a gateway for the user space driver to access the hardware. The real magic is in the closed source, user space driver. I believe Linus has stopped accepting these kinds of Trojan horse drivers into the mainline kernel, unless an open source user space component that does at least handle 2D graphics through it is also available.
- homarp 12y ago
  The closest to Open Source driver is lima, http://limadriver.org/ http://limadriver.org/ but libv has stopped working on it for now. see http://libv.livejournal.com/tag/lima http://libv.livejournal.com/tag/lima
limmeau 12y ago
They use a HiSilicon SoC. Does HiSilicon publish docs?
- monocasa 12y ago
  No, it doesn't appear that they do publicly.
- craigjb 12y ago
  They're also near impossible to buy outside of China or NDAs. So it may be open, but I couldn't build one.
gonzo 12y ago
George Grey and Bob Booth ride again. (I worked for gcg @ Tadpole in the early-mid 90s.)

rffn 12y ago

How open is this hardware? Are there open specs for Mali? Are there open specs for CSI and DSI? All this is on the board. Available specs are needed to write open source software or at least make it much simpler. I have difficulties to consider a board with missing specification for important parts or connectors to be "open".

4ad 12y ago
Well, then you must have difficulties considering almost any embedded board, because they all have a combination of chips with closed specs, or chips that require blobs to do important things, e.g. boot. Is there a truly open board except the Lemote stuff?
- rffn 12y ago
  I do not have difficulties considering the existing boards. I would just not call them "open", because specs are missing, blobs for some functions, etc. This board is advertised as open and my critique pointed towards that. Advertising non-open things as open does in my opinion hinder the progress to more open hardware. That's a bad thing.
- pingswept 12y ago
  The Beaglebone Black is the most open board, so far as I can tell. Here are the PCB sources for the latest revision: http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#Hardware_Files http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack#Hardware_Files The datasheet for the AM3558 processor is here, no NDA required: http://www.ti.com/product/AM3358/technicaldocuments http://www.ti.com/product/AM3358/technicaldocuments The bootloader is U-boot, which is open source, based here: http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot http://www.denx.de/wiki/U-Boot The GPU in the AM3558 is a PowerVR SGX530, which is not open source in any sense-- I believe that the Linux driver uses a binary blob (but I'm not 100% sure of that). For comparison, the Raspberry Pi has open schematics (http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Raspberry-Pi-Schematics-R1.0.pdf http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Raspbe...) but not open PCB layout source files. There's a partial datasheet for the processor here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM2835-ARM-Peripherals.pdf http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/BCM283..., but you can't buy the processor from Broadcom unless you're willing to buy 100,000 or so.

userbinator 12y ago

I think the OLinuXino series is the closest to fully-open ARM boards: https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-LIME/open-source-hardware https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/A20/A20-OLinuXino-... Unfortunately the GPU is a Mali, so software-wise it's not completely open, but the hardware is fully open-source and the SoC datasheets are available.

fizixer 12y ago
Two questions: - ARM licenses its designs so that would make their SoC design not open-source (both CPU and GPU)? (a sub question: they didn't specify in the main page who made the Mali. ARM doesn't make chips itself). - By "software-wise" you mean the GPU driver? the way nVidia and AMD drivers are not open-source. But since people are trying to reverse-engineer those GPUs to make open-source drivers (nouveau and xf86-video-ati respectively), do you think this could be done for Mali too?

rmoriz 12y ago

I'm not convinced. Despite the cpu the specs looks like some 2011ish TI PandaBoard. Slow usb2 i/o and no SATA ports won't be able to compete against low-end development boards (SolidRun HummingBoard or Radxa Rock Pro). While 64bit 8core ARM is something interesting, the low i/o speeds and ports rather limit any "computational" usage. Finally, the main reason not to build products out of the variety of ARM development boards is IMHO the missing CE/FCC certification for retail products. Afaik every board including the Raspberry PIs are only for demo/lab purposes. So if you build some embedded server product you'll do have the bureaucracy and costs. At least they should offer 2-3 FCC/CE ready combinations of boards+cases ready to be deployed in the wild. In my eyes those boards are just an replacement for the Texas Instruments PandaBoards which are discontinued because TI gave up their OMAP business a while ago and the typical low-cost board makers are using cheap dual/quad-core 32bit A8 and A9 IP.

Kliment 12y ago
The Rpi and beaglebone and the like are most definitely CE/FCC certified.
- rmoriz 12y ago
  nope "This evaluation board/kit is intended for use for ENGINEERING DEVELOPMENT, DEMONSTRATION, OR EVALUATION PURPOSES ONLY"
  - leoc 12y ago
    Seems that the RasPi is: http://www.raspberrypi.org/tag/ce-compliance/ http://www.raspberrypi.org/tag/ce-compliance/ . Apparently they were forced into it by their distributors.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - mark-r 12y ago
      Interesting, the pictures show it being tested without a case. At the frequencies it uses, I would expect it not to pass without some kind of shielding. Do you know if the Raspberry Pi 2 has been tested yet?

jalopy 12y ago

Complete noob (to hardware/ARM stuff) question: Why would I buy this over the much cheaper Raspberry Pi 2? Does it just have a (much?) faster processor?

sspiff 12y ago
It's a good question. It has more CPU power, and likely more GPU power as well, but not an order of magnitude more. They main selling point (from my point of view) is for people who want to get their hands on a dev board that has 64-bit ARM. This board also has software support from Linaro, which is very good, but the Raspberry Pi community should offset this advantage.
- rmoriz 12y ago
  Still they (Linaro) are calling it "Consumer Edition" - so IMHO no market fit.
- sounds 12y ago
  In addition to sspiff's good info, take a look at the I/O options: https://www.96boards.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/HiKey_User_Guide_Rev0.2.pdf https://www.96boards.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/HiKey_Us... This will likely limit how useful the board can be, because the I/O choices will prevent a good ecosystem from growing up around it.
  - sspiff 12y ago
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this true for all popular ARM boards today? Decent CPU, low power consumption, and terrible I/O performance? I remember the PandaBoard as exceptionally bad, most are better but still pretty slow.
    - sounds 12y ago
      Take a look at the BeagleBone Black. It has pretty decent I/O. The big gaping missing piece, of course, is better video output, but that's sort of in the same bucket as open source GPUs: missing in action.