nVidia – The new MeeGo Battle Ground
We have seen the tech wars developing on different hardware platforms between the various operating systems but Android and ChromeOS have been snuggled up with nVidia as their exclusive playing ground. Due to closed sourced video drivers video hardware acceleration was a major obstacle for anyone to overcome. Well that was yesterday and today is today and that obstacle is no more.
nVidia have now released a set of video drivers enabling MeeGo ports to run unhindered on the numerous Tegra 2 tablets out there such as the Advent Vega, Adam, Asus Transformer, Motorola Xoom and also the new range of Tegra 2 handsets just being released like the LG Optimus 2x. This is no longer an exclusively Android area but somewhere we see MeeGo dominating in the coming months / years. Why Dominate ? MeeGo is an Open Source Operating System with many keen developers eager to develop for hardware that may be unsupported by Google Android in the near future.
This story began with vgrade getting sent a set of hardfp video drivers built for the Tegra 2 chip via compulab inside their trimslice product. These drivers are now available to registered trimslice developers signed up on their devslice forum. This has enabled him to get accelerated graphics on his MeeGo port to the device. This is a perfect device for putting below your TV and with the up coming MeeGo for TV UX we will be able to experience MeeGo in the large. For access to the drivers developers need to got to the trimslice Forum and PM irads to ask for acces to the private devslice forum.
Video of the action:
The trimslice is a fanless dual core computer which is only 0.6 inches thick sporting HDMI, DVI , 4 USB, serial connection, front mounted SD card slot and side mounted microsd slot. The MeeGo build running here is a fairly recent Tablet UX build usually only seen on Intel Pinetrail devices.
Full Specifications of trimslice
| CPU | NVIDIA Tegra 2 @ 1 GHz |
| Memory | 1 GB DDR2-667 |
| Storage | 32 GB SATA SSD (1.8″ half size, USB to SATA Genesys Logic GL830) Full size SD slot (SDHC) Micro SD slot (SDHC) with locking door |
| Primary display | HDMI 1.3 max resolution 1920 x 1080 |
| Secondary display | DVI-D max resolution 1680 x 1050 with DDC (Silicon Image Sil164) |
| Audio | S/PDIF 5.1 (electrical through 3.5mm jack) Stereo line-out, Sereo line-in (TI TLV320AIC23) |
| LAN | Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8111DL) |
| WLAN | 802.11n single antenna (RaLink RT3070) |
| USB | 4 USB 2.0 standard A type – max current 1A per port |
| USB Device | Micro USB device port (mutually exclusive with SATA functionality) |
| Serial port | RS232 full UART (MAX3243) |
| Security | Kensington lock |
| Dimensions | 130mm x 95mm x 15mm 5.1″ x 3.7″ x 0.6″ |
| Case | All metal, silver color |
| Input | 12V DC (8V – 16V tolerant) |
| Power | 2W – 6W (depending on system load) |
| Operating Temperature | 0C – 45C |
Heres the Tech bit:
The significance of the hardfp drivers is an important change to the binary interfaces between functions on ARM processors. Before hardfp function parameters were converted from floats into integers before being passed to a function and converted back to floats by the called function. This wastes a lot of time especially in processor intensive things like sound and video. MeeGo made the jump to a hardfp build late last year but Fedora, Debian, Arch and Ubuntu are also planning releases. MeeGo was one of if not the first to move and has suffered a little because the OEM’s had not released hardfp versions of their drivers. Up until now that is. MeeGo is again at the forefront of Linux based experiences.
Vgrade has also been talking to irads at trimslice about starting a Device Developer Program for devices where compulabs make development devices available at a reduce price for MeeGo developers.
Message from vgrade: “Finally can I express my thanks to the team at compulabs (irads) and the devs at nVidia for listening and providing the drivers to make this possible.”
21 Comments
Nice post Ash
Hey, nice work vgrade!
thanks,
I’ve also updated the developer device program wiki to add the offer from compulabs of 45% reduction in price for MeeGo developers.
vgrade
Your welcome and well done for making this all possible
Great work ! congratulations !
hardfp drivers are hardly the same thing as video driver support. no doubt the ability to handle fp numbers on the CPU is important and will speed things up, but this is massively different than real driver support for the 8 core GPU on the Tegra 2.
the real question is when Nouveau (or a new open source nV driver) decides to start supporting the ULP geforce on Tegra. thusfar, Nouveau have demured: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTM2Nw
NO GPU SUPPORT FOR TEGRA 2 ON LINUX.
Sorry, but that’s what this is all about. Those are accelerated drivers, providing OpenGL ES 1 and 2, as well as EGL support for the Tegra devices, and accelerated multimedia decoding via OpenMAX.
Great news, thanks!
Easy tiger. Hardfloat only adds minor improvements to 3D graphics according to silicon vendors, and MeeGo is by no means the first to have hardfloat working in their distro. I think it is hyperbole for you to claim MeeGo is at the “forefront” in any part of Linux. Not least because there will never be an official MeeGo product released with those drivers since I’ll bet you they’re binary drivers and not open source.
Nonetheless, this is an excellent proof of concept and great work from vgrade. The trimeslice is a pretty nice piece of kit, shame they are using Ubuntu 10.04 because it is LTS. LTS was never meant for embedded devices but for servers which need to be stable, handsets change every six months and the software changes more quickly which puts the trimeslice at a bit of a disadvantage.
Are you sure compliant MeeGo cannot include binary drivers?
Just to set the record straight,
Facts: Meego bootstrapped from Debian/armhf, which itself bootstrapped from Gentoo hardfloat stage3. Debian/armhf is the first serious hardfp port effort for ARM. Right now, armhf works on all CortexA8/A9 devices, including Genesi EfikaMX systems (iMX51/iMX53), Freescale LOCO (iMX53), Beagleboard (OMAP3), Pandaboard (OMAP4), and the AC100 and Trimslice which are Tegra2 based.
Status of Debian/armhf here:
http://buildd.debian-ports.org/status/architecture.php?a=armhf&suite=unstable
and check the graph at:
http://wiki.debian.org/ArmHardFloatTodo
The port is just a year old.
Meego was definitely not the first distro to get a hardfp port out there.
Nothing against Meego, but please try to get the facts straight.
I think what was meant by the first to move was that it was the first distro to move to exclusively hardfp on ARM.
You are correct about stskeeps using armhf to bootstrap MeeGo.
Hope this puts things straight.
Pepedog had this working first if you look at the TrimSlice forums, then he documented how he got it working…give credit where it is due.
That’s right Mike once I’d helped him with which server ABI files to unpack, I think this was written from a MeeGo perspective though.
As long as it’s a closed, proprietary video driver and not a fully open (at least in source, ideally in process as well), KMS-enabled driver, this is only half a victory. Sure, something is available, but it’s no real victory for an open mobile system.
I’ll take half a victory.
Are there any fully open drivers in the mobile/tablet space?
What’s the word on the ability to distribute these drivers beyond your immediate purpose?
A bit sketchy at the moment.
compulab say ‘go ahead and distribute your OS builds using these drivers’ not need to create splash clickthroughs etc.
Arch Linux have already announced a release so if you need to cherry pick the drivers.
http://www.trimslice.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=219
I have asked for a license file of the form ‘nVidia allows redistribution, as long as this text is included, gives no warranties, support etc’
And about Advent Vega, vgrade? =D
Hi vgrade
Any chance of you getting XBMC working on a Raspberry Pi?
We are already planning a port to Pi but we need access to a device.
Can anyone help?
M