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 Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 02:37 PM |
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Joined: Jan 25, 2002
Posts: 148
Location: Ruse , Bulgaria
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Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 02:52 PM |
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Joined: Nov 11, 2003
Posts: 3852
Location: Chicago Illinois USA
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| Well, ain't that cute. Now we need Studio for Android. |
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Discursive design,
Torby
Some days, it's just not worth chewing through the restraints.
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Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 02:58 PM |
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Joined: Jan 25, 2002
Posts: 148
Location: Ruse , Bulgaria
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It seems you can run Ubuntu on this device (Allwinner A10)... 
They say theoretically BOM is less than 20$ !?! |
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Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 03:08 PM |
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Joined: Jan 25, 2002
Posts: 148
Location: Ruse , Bulgaria
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Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 03:27 PM |
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Joined: Jul 18, 2005
Posts: 62220
Location: (using avr-gcc in) Finchingfield, Essex, England
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Quote:
They say theoretically BOM is less than 20$ !?!
But that board is considerably more expensive than, for example, a micro2440 so what's the attraction? (oh and Raspberry Pi of course!) |
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Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 04:08 PM |
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Joined: Jan 25, 2002
Posts: 148
Location: Ruse , Bulgaria
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I don't think it can be compared to a Raspberry Pi or a Olinuxino or a Maximite...
It's different, but still it's cheap and has potential in other ways. |
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Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 04:49 PM |
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Joined: Nov 03, 2010
Posts: 16
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The A10 based devices are very interesting in the sub US$100 HTPC device space. The Mali400 GPU is very close to having an open driver and an XBMC (Xbox Media Center) developer has working prototype code for hardware decoding.
While the RPi's hardware can handle MPEG2 decoding they decided to limit the capabilities to a certain subset of H.264 profiles due to licensing costs. If you want to view a DVB, ATSC or IPTV stream it'll need to be transcoded first. The A10's promise to do MPEG2 natively.
While the RPi struggles to keep up with demand, you have multiple sources for A10 based devices. |
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Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 05:40 PM |
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Joined: Jul 18, 2005
Posts: 62220
Location: (using avr-gcc in) Finchingfield, Essex, England
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The A10's promise to do MPEG2 natively.
But that isn't MPEG4 Part 10 ? Surely anyone doing H.264 AVC/AAC face MPEG_LA licensing issues? Then again if a device sells for $74 rather than $35 or whatever then maybe 1 or 2 of the extra $ is for the MPEG_LA licence?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG_LA |
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Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 06:17 PM |
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Joined: Sep 04, 2002
Posts: 21248
Location: Orlando Florida
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| Speaking of mpeg, Cliff... I found out at the Atmel ToT show that the SAM4 processors have the MAC instructions for doing DSP and the FPU instructions. I suppose these would be heavily used in the mpeg codecs.... but how do you do a MAC in c? A big complicated macro with the asemmbler instruction in it? (forgive me if this question about mpeg and arms is too far out for the thread...) |
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Imagecraft compiler user
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Posted: Jun 20, 2012 - 06:27 PM |
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Joined: Jul 18, 2005
Posts: 62220
Location: (using avr-gcc in) Finchingfield, Essex, England
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But how do you do a MAC in c?
I'd usually rely on the authors of my C compiler to have done the brain work and recognise when a particular sequence can be fitted into a MAC instruction in exactly the same way that you'd expect in any decent AVR C compiler the sequence:
Code:
PORTB |= (1 << 3);
to use an SBI when it can.
I've been working on a chip that amongst four processors includes a TI CMS647x DSP and it's real fun to watch it stepping opcodes in the disassembly window. Unlike a "normal" debugger where you usually have one arrow showing which opcode the CPU is executing in this cycle, on this you see it at times highlight 3, 4 or even 5 parallel opcodes that are all being executed in that cycle. Amazing stuff! Of cours we still write everything in C/C++ and it's the clever compiler authors at TI that have done the magic that makes it spit out such efficient code. |
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Posted: Jun 21, 2012 - 04:46 PM |
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Joined: Nov 03, 2010
Posts: 16
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clawson wrote:
Quote:
The A10's promise to do MPEG2 natively.
But that isn't MPEG4 Part 10 ?
From what I understand, the bulk of ATSC and US Digital Cable channels use MPEG2. MPEG4 Part 10 is approved but rare. Google tells me that there was some issue with ESPNHD 3D content and Tivo devices a couple years ago because certain cable providers switched that channel's encoding to h.264 and Tivo didn't support it.
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Then again if a device sells for $74 rather than $35 or whatever then maybe 1 or 2 of the extra $ is for the MPEG_LA licence?
Oh I wouldn't doubt that. The RPi people insist their mission is to produce cheap computers for educational purposes where cost is a significant barrier. I guess licensing both MPEG2 and MPEG4 didn't fit within their target cost to the end-user. |
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