NextThing Co C.H.I.P and GR8

vrpc · May 1, 2017 at 9:42 PM

I'm looking at incorporating the GR8 into a design and want to see if CHIP is capable of running libreElec.

The GR8 and CHIP use an Allwinner R8 which is just a repackaging of the A13 SoC.

Thanks.

**Klojum** · May 1, 2017 at 9:52 PM Official Post

Anything Allwinner and LibreELEC will not happen anytime soon.
Support from Allwinner in terms of drivers and/or documentation is basically non-existent.

vrpc · May 1, 2017 at 10:20 PM

Quote from Klojum

Anything Allwinner and LibreELEC will not happen anytime soon.
Support from Allwinner in terms of drivers and/or documentation is basically non-existent.

Thanks, guess I will go with a higher powered SoC. Like the Amlogic S802 or S905, or go for a Exynos 4412 or 5250

**chewitt** · May 2, 2017 at 7:49 AM Official Post

I would expect all serious development on 32-bit Amlogic platforms using ye ancient 3.10 kernel to dry-up once mainline support for S905/905X arrives around Linux 4.13, and there is currently zero support for Exynos chips in current Kodi although DRM/V4L2 we're doing might open the door to that changing before v18 ships. Those factoids might narrow your selection criteria.

vrpc · May 2, 2017 at 6:42 PM

Quote from chewitt

I would expect all serious development on 32-bit Amlogic platforms using ye ancient 3.10 kernel to dry-up once mainline support for S905/905X arrives around Linux 4.13, and there is currently zero support for Exynos chips in current Kodi although DRM/V4L2 we're doing might open the door to that changing before v18 ships. Those factoids might narrow your selection criteria.

So Amlogic is the best bet for continued support? I wanted to try for a SoC with a more powerful GPU if I couldn't go with my original chipset. The S802 has a Mail450MP6 and the S905 has a Mail450MP3. So what about the S912.

Is Rockchip and Snapdragon also a no go's? What ARMv8 CPU and GPU that supports OpenGL 3+/Vulkan is available or am I looking for a unicorn or should just refrain from trying to use libreELEC at all.

**chewitt** · May 2, 2017 at 9:38 PM Official Post

[Linux] Generic drm/kms implementation by lrusak · Pull Request #11955 · xbmc/xbmc · GitHub

this is also supporting current efforts with the Rockchip based TinkerBoard and Amlogic aarch64 devices on a 4.11 kernel, and sometime in the next week or so an Exynos based DragonBoard should end up in the hands of the same developer. There are no plans for LE to "support" DragonBoards but it has the best (or most-complete) V4L2 stack of any ARM device so it has development uses as we figure out fun stuff like atomic modesetting. Things are moving in the right direction and it's not a unicorn, but there's a HUGE amount of unwritten code between where we are today and the next release of Kodi using Wayland etc.

So best support is and probably always will be Raspberry Pi, but after that there's no clear winner. Right now I'd give Amlogic a minor edge but that's only due to knowing more about the fugly state of their current kernels and the efforts Baylibre are doing to correct them. Rockchip has more code in the mainline kernel, but we know less about them.

NB: S802 is 32-bit and none of the current mainline effort targets Amlogic 32-bit devices. There is a fair amount of IP common with aarch64 platforms but there are differences and nobody is being actively paid to code for them.

vrpc · May 3, 2017 at 4:33 PM

This looks interesting for the Rockchip RK3288 Omegamoon’s GitHub: LibreELEC test build for RK3288 and Omegamoon blog - LibreELEC on Rockchip RK3288

The Snapdragon 410, while the CPU is good (identical to the Rpi3), the GPU is a Adreno 306 with 21.6 GFlops. Which is slightly lower performing that the Rpi3. I would rather have a Snapdragon 600 or 800 with GPUs with GFlops 4x and 8x more, respectively. Though the 410 is probably getting support because it uses the Cortex A53 as the others use Qualcomm's Krait Cores. I don't think there will be a lot of sharing there. I am also interested in the RK3399 as that looks very promising for performance and power savings with 2xA73+4xA53 cores and a Mail860MP4 with 81.6 GFlops which supports OpenGL3 and Vulkan. If you didn't notice I am focusing a lot on GPU performance. As my end goal is to use Lakka which runs libretro (RetroArch) and is based on libreELEC. Gamegirl Part II: Back in the Game • Hackaday.io End goal for a quad core+ chip is a landscape layout with a 4.3-5.5" screen and analog sticks to play any game up to the PSP.