Comments on: Variscite’s OMAP4460 SoM now supporting Ubuntu Oneiric

By: Popolon

Popolon — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:54:00 +0000

Galaxy Note use Exynos 4210 (look at en.wikipedia page).

In fact there are 4 Linaro (Linux (Ubuntu/Android) for arm support effort) supported SoC (Freescale i.MX53, ST/Ericsson Nova, Samsung Exynos and TI OMAP). dev board (aka mini-ITX mainboard with cpu, 1Go ram and all standard connectors), can be buy to about from 150$ to 150€. ST/Ericsson Nova and Samusng Exynos series both use Open ARM Mali 400 GPU. OMAP has OpenVR, I don’t know for Freescale one.

Ubuntu, sadly choosen OMAP as mainly supported pandaboard, but this one use PowerVR, Alan Cox is actually working on a working opensource driver for (undocumented/closed) PowerVR on Intel Poulsbo, this could be a base for other PowerVR GPU like OMAP one, there is still lot of missing features (DVFS, thermal management even in closed driver). So looking at the video I believe there is no hardware GPU acceleration at all.

Samsung push themselves open code in Linux for Mali/Exynos support, this is far better.

ARM opened (GPL license) most part of the Mali 400 driver, there are still closed layer managed by SoC builders themselves.

By: Charbax

Charbax — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:59:00 +0000

Not sure if it’s slower than Exynos, and possibly it’d be for a reason of GPU acceleration not yet being fully optimized, I think the Galaxy Note uses Snapdragon MSM8260 with Adreno 220 anyways doesn’t it..

By: Popolon

Popolon — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 18:34:00 +0000

This seems to be really slower than on the Samsung Exynos 4210, perhaps because Sasmung use more open Mali 400, than the closed driver for the PowerVR included in OMAP chips :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCPBmnAydlQ

The SoC of the Galaxy S2 and Galaxy Note are an Exynos too.

By: aguilar

aguilar — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 10:35:00 +0000

It’s interesting for a basic desktop: lots of users don’t need more for a home desktop than run a video player, a web browser, an office suite and see pictures.