A few new boards but not a lot of progress Banana Pi M4 and Libre AML-S085X (le frite)

Well both boards seem nice.....but they're really not much cop for graphic coding, no drivers as usual, and very sluggish overall

The Banana has Emmc on board but I've not found an idiots guide to help me install to it, and if I'm honest I'm far from impressed with the Images supplied, hardly a surprise from BPi, its all mystical everyone knows how to do it stuff.....

Anway, got it working with Ubuntu 18, sometimes, with SD, GLmark2 crawled along so slow I didn't even bother waiting for it to finish....it wasn't reporting any drivers and it was clearly emulating

Debian, also seems to get stuck in a boot mode....lights are flashing but nothing much else is going on, I get a blank screen, suggesting something is happening, I guess I'm supposed to click something, or set something, or some other mad shit... but bottom line is...it does not boot to a nice friendly desktop for me to play with....end of game, In the drawer
ohhh as I type this, it came up....ok...lets run update on it....
oh its slow
nope can't access update, maybe doing an update in the background.
No GLMark2 on board, so I'll try to install my test project, which initially failed to compile due to memory issues,  it only has 1GB of RAM on board and it looks like a fair chunk of it is used by OS and GPU, as it only reports 566 available.
So I set it to compile 1 thread and it managed it..pretty quick for a single thread...but didn't fire up, I get this error

we got an xwindow
we got an Nativewindow
we got an EGLDisplay
libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to authenticate

I've seen this before a few times and seem to recall a few work arounds but as this is just a see what it does test, I'm not going to hunt around.. One last attempt at an update/upgrade which works this time.

and a final build attempt...

nope...back in the drawer till I have time to review

The le frite actually worked a bit better, but again, no drivers....not a lot of point in continuing

trying it again to update...it locks into a boot fail loop

sigh...back in the drawer

Raspberry Pi4

Exciting stuff,  the Pi 4 is here, its ~3 times the CPU power, but not yet a massive difference in GPU power, though there is a bit of a boost and it will improve as it settles in. Also it does have OpenGLES3.0 on board at last so it will be possible to write much better render functions to take care of instancing and other cool features that improve performance markedly.

On tiny concern is that it no longer uses the old Broadcom DispmanX video system to create render surfaces, it now uses tradtional X11 or DRM based windows, so that makes setting up for the Pi 4 the same as the other SBC's running linux and X11. This has good and bad sides

The good side, using mesa libs should ensure continued open source support.

The bad side.. well it breaks all the code in my book, DispmanX no longer works on my Pi4..Also I don't currently know how to use smaller renderbuffers, which was simple to do on the DispmanX system, so the buffers are now the same res as the screen we set. Thats nice in one way but it means more pixels to render and it impacts on speed.
This image below runs comfortably on a Pi3B  at 60fps, at 1080p res, but the render buffer is half that res and I can make it smaller still on lesser Pi's

But on the Pi 4 the render buffer is also 1920x1080 and even with the extra speed of the CPU and slight boost in GPU, it struggles to do 20fps. I am sure this can be overcome though, I just need to do a bit more research than I have so far.

Also it does mean we now have to build different builds for Pi4 and other Pi's or have a system for testing the version of Pi and setup accordingly.

Its a small annoyance really, but for beginners using my book, the 1st couple of chapters won't work now.. Lets hope it increases the traffic to the support site to find the solutions.

But for sure the Pi4 is exciting, the speed is impressive, and as software matures those video drivers will start to see 3.1 and 3.2 come on line...More memory too makes a big difference (I have a 4G one) it really will be fun to build something cool on it with less restrictions to worry about.

Up Core now working but what an effort

I got a replacement UpCore from Aaeon, and was pissed off when I tried to fire it up, no OS...ok, ok thats not a problem, this is a new one, so lets stick on an OS...

and nope.

try another

nope.

oh ffs...how much of a pain is this, I reflash the bios...
nope

So its dead Jim.

I open up another RMA request to send this one back, and get a slightly stroppy response that I havn't fully explained the issue, and I need to reflash the Bios, here's a link...hmm they clearly didn't read my mail when I pointed out in detail the issue and that flashing the bios did nothing.

I am mid way through typing my not too sarcastic reponse when I notice the link they send me is to a new BIOS....17, the one I used was 13.
I go to the link and notice 1 download has occured, so its a very new upload...

So putting the reponse to one side, I download and reflash with the new bios.

And so I try to install Ubuntu...and wow, its happening, its installing...nice graphical interface and everything..but it gets stuck after the region selection.

Hmm annoying but encouraged that it went further than before, I noted someone on the forums mentioned that the 1Gb models (I have a 1Gb) can suffer from over sized GPU allocation. So I reduced the memory allocation from max to 256MB, more than enough for my kind of work and tried again.

This time...it worked..no problems at all, installation took a while bit it did everything as expected. And at the end of the install, I followed the wiki's directions on installing the Up board Kernel.

It now works fine, totally awesome in fact. the Intel HD400 graphics are fast, it reports as a 3.1 system though it has extensions or tesselation (not compute though) and it absolutly blasts any of the current fast ARM chips out the water. Massive scores on GLMark2-es2
Quad cores, and a 16?? core GPU give it a lot more GPU and CPU grunt than even a rockchip 3399.

Its amazing.
It does suffer a little for lack of memory though, Ubuntu 18.04 is a bit greedier on memory than older OS's so sometimes there's a pause as the swap buffer kicks in, but overall its running all my test demo's just fine once libs are installed.

Amazing bit of kit for $99. a 2G is only $10 more. Their top of the line model with $4Gb and 64Gb eMMC is $169 represents something close to the power of a micro laptop, on a tiny PC board.

It even keeps up with its slightly more powerful Up^2 board, at least my 2G dual core celeron with Intel HD505 graphics.

But one thing about these boards, is they are basically small PC's really genuine PC's they can indeed load and run Windows 10. While the lower end ones represent great value for money for SBC fans, as the specs go up, so does the price and its hard to see why you should buy one unless its for a specific project, that needs a small board, rather than one of the many mini/budger or even 2nd hand PC's which can totally destroy these in sheer power/performance terms.

But for $99 I have a tiny board that can outperform a raspberry by a factor of 10 in every dept, and run OpenGLES3.1 so its a fun thing to mess with. It is without doubt the fasted sub $100 board in my collection, and by some margin. It can't quite match my base model Up*2 board (CPU is better, GPU is worse), but thats $150 for the base model, and considerably more if  you want more ram/better CPU.

There's also an UpCore+ model due next month, same form factor, much more powerful CPU, and base 2G 32GBeMMC mode, for $149 is a total bargain, but its over my $100 limit so I will pass on it.

Curious, and Up core getting sorted

Saw this today.
https://coral.withgoogle.com/tutorials/devboard-datasheet/
A new board being pushed by Google no less.

hmmmm very curious, I'm not actually very interested in machine learning but the idea of a machine with a copro that is capable of it, and therefore capable of slight more things is interesting.
Sadly though at $149 its outside my self imposed spend limit.. so unless I can get a test unit (hint hint...as if anyone reads this). I'll have to leave it.

Its so different from other SBC's it might be quite a challenge to get this puppy up and running and it seems the GPU is capable of ES3.1 but is an MP4 unit, so unless there's something cool going on, its not going to outperform too many of the competition in graphic terms.

Even so.
Curious.


Also my UpCore board which I've struggled to get working since it arrived, and had it in and out of the drawer of shame was sent back to the UpStore for repair/replacement. Happy to see that despite being a slow process they do acknowledge it can't install Ubuntu, so are hopfully fixing or replacing as I type.
Can't wait to try one of these actully working at full whack.

Been busy sorry

I'm focusing a lot more of my time on the Scratchpadgames.net forums, where I've been updating my most recent acquisitions and experiments as well as catching up (or trying to) on some issue with the book code, and articles. That and overwhelming pressure of my day job are making me long for the spring holidays. (Where I promise I am going to rest for a few days)

The most interesting thing to report is a few new OpenGLES3.0+ boards I've got hold of or are on the way thanks to generous donations from the makers.

I got a NanoPi Neo4 from the ever friendly FriendlyElec, and its just as nice as the T4, which I did eventually find a nice stable build to work on and it is a wonderful full professional board. The NEO4 has the same chip and less connections in a smaller board.

Its a fraction of the price of most other RK3399 Hexacore boards, and less ports might trouble some makers, but for me its fine, this is a beast, and looks super cool with its custom fitted heatsink



2 other RK3399 boards are on the way to me, thanks to the kind donations from the makers the RockPi4 which I've mentioned before but have had helluva time finding it in Europe at a decent price is on its way. As is the RockPro64 from Pine. I've never liked their kickstarter PineA64 board, but I've seen them grow and improve over the time they've been going so am quite excited to see their latest beast and hope that the software is up to it this time



All these lovely RK3399 boards really are opening up incredible new possibilities for graphics coders. Even though the gpu core size of most of them isn't much better (still MP4's) they are much faster bits of silicon and can push a lot more content if treated nicely with their OpenGLES3.0+ capabilities.

In other news, I finally fixed the "shader" issues with the UP^2 board, it was in fact a small maths issue in my code, bad programming, that didn't show up on ARM systems but did on intel.

Even though I only have the base model Celeron dual core system, what I do have is a (I think) 12 core, GPU capable of OpenGL 4.5 and I assume through some other wizardly full OpenGLES3.2 (at least it reports it ca).  Its a fantastically fast, powerful system, I know its pushing it to call it an SBC, its really a mini PC, but I like having something at the top end of the scale to play with and see how well things can scale back.
This is such a beast, check out this list of extensions, which is what the list extensions reports, but I suspect its all on board and no extension sneeded

/* UpSquared's extensions...wow mama
 *:GL_ANDROID_extension_pack_es31a
 *GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt3
 *GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt5
 *GL_APPLE_texture_max_level
 *GL_EXT_blend_func_extended
 *GL_EXT_blend_minmax
 *GL_EXT_buffer_storage
 *GL_EXT_clip_cull_distance
 *GL_EXT_color_buffer_float
 *GL_EXT_compressed_ETC1_RGB8_sub_texture
 *GL_EXT_copy_image
 *GL_EXT_discard_framebuffer
 *GL_EXT_disjoint_timer_query
 *GL_EXT_draw_buffers
 *GL_EXT_draw_buffers_indexed
 *GL_EXT_draw_elements_base_vertex
 *GL_EXT_frag_depth
 *GL_EXT_geometry_point_size
 *GL_EXT_geometry_shader
 *GL_EXT_gpu_shader5
 *GL_EXT_map_buffer_range
 *GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays
 *GL_EXT_occlusion_query_boolean
 *GL_EXT_polygon_offset_clamp
 *GL_EXT_primitive_bounding_box
 *GL_EXT_read_format_bgra
 *GL_EXT_robustness
 *GL_EXT_separate_shader_objects
 *GL_EXT_shader_framebuffer_fetch
 *GL_EXT_shader_integer_mix
 *GL_EXT_shader_io_blocks
 *GL_EXT_shader_samples_identical
 *GL_EXT_tessellation_point_size
 *GL_EXT_tessellation_shader
 *GL_EXT_texture_border_clamp
 *GL_EXT_texture_buffer
 *GL_EXT_texture_compression_dxt1
 *GL_EXT_texture_cube_map_array
 *GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic
 *GL_EXT_texture_format_BGRA8888
 *GL_EXT_texture_rg
 *GL_EXT_texture_sRGB_decode
 *GL_EXT_texture_type_2_10_10_10_REV
 *GL_EXT_unpack_subimage
 *GL_INTEL_conservative_rasterization
 *GL_INTEL_performance_query
 *GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced
 *GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced_coherent
 *GL_KHR_context_flush_control
 *GL_KHR_debug
 *GL_KHR_no_error
 *GL_KHR_robust_buffer_access_behavior
 *GL_KHR_robustness
 *GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_hdr
 *GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_ldr
 *GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_sliced_3d
 *GL_MESA_shader_integer_functions
 *GL_NV_draw_buffers
 *GL_NV_fbo_color_attachments
 *GL_NV_image_formats
 *GL_NV_read_buffer
 *GL_NV_read_depth
 *GL_NV_read_depth_stencil
 *GL_NV_read_stencil
 *GL_OES_EGL_image
 *GL_OES_EGL_image_external
 *GL_OES_EGL_sync
 *GL_OES_compressed_ETC1_RGB8_texture
 *GL_OES_copy_image
 *GL_OES_depth24
 *GL_OES_depth_texture
 *GL_OES_depth_texture_cube_map
 *GL_OES_draw_buffers_indexed
 *GL_OES_draw_elements_base_vertex
 *GL_OES_element_index_uint
 *GL_OES_fbo_render_mipmap
 *GL_OES_geometry_point_size
 *GL_OES_geometry_shader
 *GL_OES_get_program_binary
 *GL_OES_gpu_shader5
 *GL_OES_mapbuffer
 *GL_OES_packed_depth_stencil
 *GL_OES_primitive_bounding_box
 *GL_OES_required_internalformat
 *GL_OES_rgb8_rgba8
 *GL_OES_sample_shading
 *GL_OES_sample_variables
 *GL_OES_shader_image_atomic
 *GL_OES_shader_io_blocks
 *GL_OES_shader_multisample_interpolation
 *GL_OES_standard_derivatives
 *GL_OES_stencil8
 *GL_OES_surfaceless_context
 *GL_OES_tessellation_point_size
 *GL_OES_tessellation_shader
 *GL_OES_texture_3D
 *GL_OES_texture_border_clamp
 *GL_OES_texture_buffer
 *GL_OES_texture_cube_map_array
 *GL_OES_texture_float
 *GL_OES_texture_float_linear
 *GL_OES_texture_half_float
 *GL_OES_texture_half_float_linear
 *GL_OES_texture_npot
 *GL_OES_texture_stencil8
 *GL_OES_texture_storage_multisample_2d_array
 *GL_OES_vertex_array_object
 *GL_OES_vertex_half_float
 *GL_OES_viewport_array
 *
*/


Sadly I never got anywhere with the UpCore Atom board, which should outperform the ^2 board, it's really not working no matter what I try,  and I'm trying to send it back for a replacement, but its proving to be quite a chore to get them to send RMA info. Frustrating as they are here in the Netherlands (I think in my home town as I saw their logo on a building here, but hard to verify that)

There's been a lot of new Orange and Banana boards, but I've resisted buying them, the software always lets them down, so am going to wait and see what people report before leaping in to add to the drawer of shame.

Thats it, I'll try to keep this blog updated a bit more, but if you are missing out on your fix of SBC for games/graphics, join the forums on my website, www.scratchpadgames.net