03-20-2018, 01:59 AM
(This post was last modified: 03-20-2018, 01:46 PM by Brian Beuken.)
Here's a real odd little SBC, a dual core 1.2Ghz Ingenic MIPS CPU, with really fast SGX540 which may be a dual or a quad, they don't say, but the default is 4/2 whatever that means. It's also capable of using OpenGL2.1 if you feel the need! 8GB of nand flash means it does not need the SD card, and it should be a fast access (its slow to boot though) So its a robust little board, and not very expensive to buy, but it is showing its age.
I have the slightly older version of the board, but I don't think its different performance wise from its newer squarer cousin.
And its an odd board indeed, for a start it has a very old version of Debian, Wheezy, which does not seem to have a MIP's version of Bullet available for apt-get. So right now I'm building it as I type.
GDB also needs to be installed with apt-get all other libs are available though.
I have always liked this machine because it comes with prebuilt graphic demos which really are very nice indeed, and totally show off what an ES2.0 system can do. Sadly though it does not actually have any OpenGLES2.0 libs on board as default, so once the bullet is bult I will need to install mesa libs and trust they will work. It will be a shame if it teased me with performance it never intended to provide.
No glmark2-es2 to test performance, so we have to wait to see if we can build the test project which will report the target GPU and give frame rates.
Though I know the SGX540 is a fast GPU I am not sure it can outperform a Raspberry, though should stomp all over Mali 400's. Assuming of the the mesa libs recognise the chip and we get access to the gpu, that's never certain.
But our discovery will have to wait till morning as the build of Bullet Physics is going to take a while so I'm going to leave it running overnight and catch up with this when I have a bit more time
Before heading for bed, I noted that the CI20 comes installed with Debian 7 (Wheezy), but it is possible to install Debian 8, so I will see how I do tomorrow using the built version of Bullet, and if that fails I will re-flash the board with Debian 8 which should allow an apt-get on Bullet (if not I'll set it off building again tomorrow night). Details of distro's are available here https://elinux.org/CI20_Distros#Debian
The makers own site seems to have a lot of dead links so I guess they stopped actively supporting it even though its still for sale at around $60-70
I have the slightly older version of the board, but I don't think its different performance wise from its newer squarer cousin.
And its an odd board indeed, for a start it has a very old version of Debian, Wheezy, which does not seem to have a MIP's version of Bullet available for apt-get. So right now I'm building it as I type.
GDB also needs to be installed with apt-get all other libs are available though.
I have always liked this machine because it comes with prebuilt graphic demos which really are very nice indeed, and totally show off what an ES2.0 system can do. Sadly though it does not actually have any OpenGLES2.0 libs on board as default, so once the bullet is bult I will need to install mesa libs and trust they will work. It will be a shame if it teased me with performance it never intended to provide.
No glmark2-es2 to test performance, so we have to wait to see if we can build the test project which will report the target GPU and give frame rates.
Though I know the SGX540 is a fast GPU I am not sure it can outperform a Raspberry, though should stomp all over Mali 400's. Assuming of the the mesa libs recognise the chip and we get access to the gpu, that's never certain.
But our discovery will have to wait till morning as the build of Bullet Physics is going to take a while so I'm going to leave it running overnight and catch up with this when I have a bit more time
Before heading for bed, I noted that the CI20 comes installed with Debian 7 (Wheezy), but it is possible to install Debian 8, so I will see how I do tomorrow using the built version of Bullet, and if that fails I will re-flash the board with Debian 8 which should allow an apt-get on Bullet (if not I'll set it off building again tomorrow night). Details of distro's are available here https://elinux.org/CI20_Distros#Debian
The makers own site seems to have a lot of dead links so I guess they stopped actively supporting it even though its still for sale at around $60-70
Brian Beuken
Lecturer in Game Programming at Breda University of Applied Sciences.
Author of The Fundamentals of C/C++ Game Programming: Using Target-based Development on SBC's
Lecturer in Game Programming at Breda University of Applied Sciences.
Author of The Fundamentals of C/C++ Game Programming: Using Target-based Development on SBC's