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Mali GPU development boards

guestposter guestposter
Note: This was originally posted on 12th October 2009 at http://forums.arm.com

While there are a variety of Mali GPU licensees currently designing Mali GPUs into their SoCs, there are not necessarily many development boards available to the general public.

In order to provide application developers on Mali GPU-based projects with the hardware they need to get their work done, we would like to gain a strong (and accurate) understanding of what needs to be made available. What are the things you look for in a development platform?
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  • Note: This was originally posted on 3rd December 2009 at http://forums.arm.com

    Thanks Dan for your useful input.

    Regarding (graphics) application development, what sort of environment do you normally work in - I presume you start by developing on PC and then port to embedded platforms. If so, how do you use the system memory (incl. VRAM on your graphics card)?

    Do you also plan on doing on-target compilation? (given 2GB of RAM is a non-negligible cost when targeting for a low-cost entry level embedded device, we need to weigh the actual memory requirements carefully) - so what I'm really saying is, how would 2GB RAM help you develop for this platform, where no less would do for instance and what type of applications do you develop.

    Also, it would be good to know what combination of OS and distribution you are targeting... 

    Cheers
    Saoud Moco/ARM


    Saoud,
          Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, haven't been back to the forums in a while. To answer your question about development platforms. I'm using Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS-X for cross-compiling activities using GNU compilers. At the present time I am deploying on BeagleBoards and SheevaPlugs to prototype my system (along with some Spartan 3AN Xilinx cards). The rest of the system is 100% Java based using processors from Imsys Technologies and aJile Systems. There is no OS in the traditional sense just thread pools executing tasks with master supervisors and state machines. It's an event driven system that spawns execution threads when needed. I started looking at the MALI GPU because I am interested in a non-PCI OpenGL-ES solution for my final product. The reason for the large memory space is that my product renders 3D scenes and objects in order to deliver multimedia content. This means I am dealing with 3D rendering, video, and audio all at the same time. The details of the device are at [url="http://vrmad.epicentertech.com"]http://vrmad.epicentertech.com[/url] although the documents there now are a bit out of date. There's enough there to give you the over-all concept though. I can implement the memory on a FPGA board if it makes your development board too expensive. The system basically divides up a 3D space in multiple regions that have their own mappings into video memory based on the viewer perspective. Basically, I'm looking at using the ARM processors to handle the rendering pipelines and video processing. In the future I will also be developing some derivative products using Google Android and Chrome OS.

    Dan
Reply
  • Note: This was originally posted on 3rd December 2009 at http://forums.arm.com

    Thanks Dan for your useful input.

    Regarding (graphics) application development, what sort of environment do you normally work in - I presume you start by developing on PC and then port to embedded platforms. If so, how do you use the system memory (incl. VRAM on your graphics card)?

    Do you also plan on doing on-target compilation? (given 2GB of RAM is a non-negligible cost when targeting for a low-cost entry level embedded device, we need to weigh the actual memory requirements carefully) - so what I'm really saying is, how would 2GB RAM help you develop for this platform, where no less would do for instance and what type of applications do you develop.

    Also, it would be good to know what combination of OS and distribution you are targeting... 

    Cheers
    Saoud Moco/ARM


    Saoud,
          Sorry for the delay in getting back to you, haven't been back to the forums in a while. To answer your question about development platforms. I'm using Ubuntu Linux and Mac OS-X for cross-compiling activities using GNU compilers. At the present time I am deploying on BeagleBoards and SheevaPlugs to prototype my system (along with some Spartan 3AN Xilinx cards). The rest of the system is 100% Java based using processors from Imsys Technologies and aJile Systems. There is no OS in the traditional sense just thread pools executing tasks with master supervisors and state machines. It's an event driven system that spawns execution threads when needed. I started looking at the MALI GPU because I am interested in a non-PCI OpenGL-ES solution for my final product. The reason for the large memory space is that my product renders 3D scenes and objects in order to deliver multimedia content. This means I am dealing with 3D rendering, video, and audio all at the same time. The details of the device are at [url="http://vrmad.epicentertech.com"]http://vrmad.epicentertech.com[/url] although the documents there now are a bit out of date. There's enough there to give you the over-all concept though. I can implement the memory on a FPGA board if it makes your development board too expensive. The system basically divides up a 3D space in multiple regions that have their own mappings into video memory based on the viewer perspective. Basically, I'm looking at using the ARM processors to handle the rendering pipelines and video processing. In the future I will also be developing some derivative products using Google Android and Chrome OS.

    Dan
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