DS-5 Streamline Performance Analyzer on Allwinner Android 4.0 HDMI Dongle

ARM^® DS-5^TM Streamline Performance Analyzer, part of the ARM DS-5 toolchain, is an useful tool for developers doing system level software optimization for ARM Linux and Android platforms. Streamline makes it easy for platform and app developers to mitigate performance bottlenecks, improve code parallelization, extend battery life, and enhance user experience.With Streamline Performance Analyzer you can:

• Find out where the CPU is spending more time, optimize it and speed up your code
• Monitor actual power, current and voltage, and optimize compute tasks for the best efficiency Analyze and optimize Mali™ GPU, monitor CPU and GPU cache usage and system memory

To use the DS-5 Streamline Performance Analyzer users/developers first have to build DS-5 Gator driver/daemon to setup their own target. It is very inconvenient, especially for those application/app middleware developers who do not care what the target device is and do not have easy access to the kernel headers for their device or do not know how to build a kernel driver.  To resolve this problem and make it easy for developers to use the DS-5 streamline performance analyzer to profile/optimize their program/apps we worked with our key partner, Allwinner Technology, a leading fabless semiconductor company in China, to preloaded ARM DS-5 Gator to their Android 4.0 HDMI Dongle — Rikomagic MK802II MINI PC.

With Gator preloaded on the MINI smart dongle, developers can connect it to any HDMI display device and profile their Android apps/programs directly.

Below are the detailed steps to start DS-5 streamline profiling with this Android MINI dongle.

Steps:

1.  Purchase Rikomagic MK802II MINI PC

Please be aware that you need to leave a message like "developer usage -- ARM DS-5 Gator preloaded needed" or contact online purchase service center when you make the order to be sure you get the correct dongle shipped.

2.  Install dongle USB driver

• Connect the dongle to a display device (TV or monitor) via the HDMI interface and power it up by inserting the micro-USB charger or connect to a PC via micro-USB cable. Make sure the USB connection is set as "USB large storage" as shown in the image below (you can modify it under settings menu).  For basic connection related operation, please see the user menu.

• If you are running Windows, connect the dongle to your PC. After several minutes it will power up and you will see Windows failed to find the correct USB driver  and a new disk named "Rikomagic MK802II" will be mounted as shown in the image below.
• Copy the USB driver "USBDriver_MK802ii.zip" under \ARM-DS-5 directory to your PC and unzip it.

• Right click the unrecognized device "Android" from Windows Device Manager and upgrade the driver manually. Guide the driver installer to find the driver from the package you just unzipped.
• After the driver is installed successfully Windows can recognize the dongles now and you will see "Android Composite ADB Interface."

• Change USB connection mode back to "Media device (MTP)" from the settings menu.
• Make sure USB debugging options are checked.

If you are running DS-5 on Linux, you may have to modify /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules per these instructions, the vendor ID for this device is "18D1" and you can use Linux command "lsusb" to verify it.

If you are running DS-5 Community Edition on a Mac you do not have to configure any drivers.  

3.  Download and install ARM DS-5

• Download the latest DS-5 evaluate professional version with a 30-days free trial or the DS-5 Community Edition for free. Remember you may need create an ARM account to start the downloading process. After the 30-day free trial expires, you can purchase a license, following the ARM DS-5 License Management Guide.

• Or follow the DS-5 CE Install Guidelines to download/install a free Community Edition plug-in for the Eclipse IDE with limited Streamline functionality (this assumes you have Eclipse IDE installed already).

4.  Start DS-5 gator

• Start ADB shell with command "adb shell"

• Enter to  /system/bin dir and you will see DS-5 gator.ko and gatord

• Start DS-5 gator daemon with the command "./gatord &". Now you will see a new process named "./gatord" with command "ps"

5.  Profiling Apps on the Dongle with DS-5 Streamline

• Power up the dongle, connect to your network via Wi-Fi and record the IP address that has been assigned as Streamline using Ethernet to connect the target. Make sure your PC is connected to the network.

If Ethernet is not available, you can also use ADB to forward the TCP port from Dongle to your local host over a USB connection. The ADB command to forward the Streamline port to your local host is:

adb forward tcp:8080 tcp:8080

In this case, you should enter "127.0.0.1" or "localhost" as the dongle IP address in following steps.

• Start "Eclipse for DS-5" from the desktop shortcut or Windows -> Programs
• Open the Streamline data view. If this is not visible, please select: Window -> show view -> other -> " ARM Streamline" and open "ARM Streamline Data"
• Enter the dongle's IP address (10.164.6.154 at this case) at "ARM Streamline Data" view as shown below:

• Following the instructions: ARM DS-5 Using ARM Streamline , you can now start profiling apps on the dongle . Below are a series of example screen shots of profiling reports for your reference:

  Conclusion:

ARM DS-5 Streamline is a powerful and cost-efficient solution for software profiling and performance analysis of apps/programs on Android and ARM Linux platforms. This article gives you a simple solution to start with Streamline profiling easily.  For more about ARM DS-5 and how to use Streamline, please access the ARM Streamline web pages and the ARM DS-5 info center. 

If you prefer Android/Linux and would like to setup the DS-5 streamline environment for your own target (perhaps your android device), please refer to the step-by-step blog, Setting Up Android Mobile Phone to Use ARM Streamline for Profiling.

Should you have any problems, please feel free to leave comments on the blog below.