Marcin Juszkiewicz - linaroconnect

The end of “Mali question”?

2019-04-16T10:44:00+02:00

For several Linaro Connect events we had sessions about state of graphics drivers on ARM platforms. I attended most of them and got a reputation of person asking problematic questions.

But situation has changed. With Panfrost project happening. It is a Foss driver for Arm Mali Midgard graphics chipset (Bifrost support on a way). It went from “wow, a triangle” to “we can play some games or run a desktop” in quite short time.

At BKK19 Linaro Connect we had “State of opensource drivers for mobile GPU chips” session. Freedreno, Etnaviv, vc4, v3d, Panfrost, Lima etc. What they target, what was already achieved, what are plans. Great progress across whole ARM world. And several questions from the audience. And interesting answers as well.

Mali then. Grant Likely from Arm told that they are looking how Panfrost is going. From company perspective both Midgard and Bifrost chips are “done, in a field” product which will not get changes. Still — engineering support goes entirely into their binary drivers as this is what their customers are using. Situation may change if those customers start asking for open drivers.

I do not use any Arm hardware with Mali GPU anymore. But hope that at next Linaro Connect instead of asking famous “Mali question” we will rather discuss how it runs on our devices.

How did I hacked Linaro Connect BKK19 puzzle

2019-04-09T19:14:00+02:00

One of Linaro Connect traditions is a puzzle to solve. Created by Dave Pigott. And recent BKK19 event was not any different. There was puzzle announcement on the first day — right before first keynote. But no one could be first to answer at that time…

Tuesday

As usual before Connect I looked at a map and marked several locations in Bangkok as places to visit. Then took a look at the official BKK19 application. Installed it on my phone and started.

First screen had few paragraphs of text. Some information about the event and schedule. But there was also paragraph with information about the puzzle. WITH the link to it!

I clicked to get some redirection to Google Forms website. With information that this form is not available for users outside of organization. As I do not have work accounts on my phone I checked for redirection link and loaded it on my desktop. And landed into the puzzle.

Puzzle form

It was a bit different than version provided during Linaro Connect. There was a graphics with seven (official one had eight ones) columns of text. Under it was graphics with chess figures:

H1 G3 F1 H2 G4 E3 D1
A4 C3 B1 A3 C4 B6 A8
B5 A7 C8 D6 E8 F6 D5
G8 H6 F5 G7 H5 F4 E2
C6 A5 B7 C5 A6 B8 D7
F3 G1 H3 G5 H7 F8 E6
F7 H8 G6 H4 G2 E1 D3
A2 B4 C2 A1 B3 D2 E4

Graphical hint

Dave later said that knight was not present in it but I did not noticed that. There was a plan to add that graphics into official puzzle if no one provides proper answer until Wednesday.

From text I noticed that it is chess related. Took a sheet of paper, draw 8x8 grid on it and started following each row on it with different markings each time. Hm… nothing came to my mind. Noted missing entries.

Help me Google, you are my only hope

Then started googling “knight chess puzzle” and got “knight’s tour” links on first page. Started reading what it is about. Then restarted tracking knight’s moves from the puzzle with adding missing ones. Turned out that this was it.

Let me mail Dave

I submitted “knight’s tour problem” as the answer and wrote to Dave:

I see that they are online already.

Are the ones there official ones or testing one?

Turned out that I found testing version. Which did not even collected emails when someone provided an answer. But there was one such sent so Dave marked it as my submission. And the link got removed from BKK19 application.

At pool bar

I arrived in Bangkok on Saturday. Met Dave at pool bar and we had a chat about the puzzle. Was fun to see how surprised people around were that first answer was already provided. I asked Dave to not give me the proper answer nor info was my answer good so I would not spoil other people.

During Connect few attendees asked me about the puzzle, how it went. Kept away from spoiling them.

And the winner is…

Then Friday happened with closing remarks session. Only a few people provided two words answer (“knight’s tour”) and few three word one (“closed knight’s tour”). My name was in “special mention” section.

Puzzle winners slide

Turned out that there is separate award for hacking a puzzle. It was 3rd time when it happened. I got a waterproof action camera (EZVIV S1C model) — will find some use for it sooner or later ;D

Whole puzzle was fun. Thanks go to Dave for creating it and providing me with a copy of both results slide and graphical hint so I could use it in blog post.

Shenzhen trip

2018-03-29T13:54:00+02:00

Few months ago, at the end of previous Linaro Connect gathering, there was announcement that next one will take place in Hong Kong. This gave me idea of repeating Shenzhen trip but in a bit longer version.

So I mailed people at Linaro and there were some responses. We quickly agreed on going there before Connect. Alex, Arnd, Green and me were landing around noon, Riku a few hours later so we decided that we will meet in Shenzhen.

We crossed border in Lok Ma Chau, my visa had the highest price again and then we took a taxi to the Maker Hotel (still called “Quchuang Hotel” in Google Maps and on Booking.com) next to all those shops we wanted to visit. Then went for quick walk through Seg Electronics Market. Lot of mining gear. 2000W power supplies, strange PCI Express expanders etc. Dinner, meeting with Riku and day ended.

I have woken up at 02:22 and was not able to fall asleep. Around 6:00 it turned out that rest of team is awake as well so we decided to go around and search for some breakfast. Deserted streets looked a bit weird.

Back at hotel we were discussing random things. Then someone from Singapore joined and we were talking about changes in how Shenzhen stores/factories operate. He told us that there is less and less of stores as business moves to the Internet. Then some Chinese family came with about seven years old boy. He said something, his mother translated and it turned out that he wanted to touch my beard. As it was not the first time my beard got such attention I allowed him. That surprise on his face was worth it. And then we realized that we have not seen bearded Chinese man on a street.

As stores were opening at 10:00 we still had a lot of time so went for random walk. Including Shenzhen Center Park which is really nice place:

Shenzhen Center Park

Then stores started to open. Fake phones, real phones, tablets, components, devices, misc things… Walking there was fun itself. Bought some items from my list.

Store with floors of small shops

They also had a lot of old things. Intel Overdrive system for example or 386/486 era processors and FPUs.

Intel Overdrive

From weird things: 3.5” floppy disks and Intel Xeon Platinum 8175 made for Amazon cloud only.

brand new 3.5” floppies

Intel Xeon Platinum 8177

Lot and lot of stuff everywhere. Need power supply? There were several stores with industrial ones, regulated ones etc. Used computers/laptops? Piles after piles. New components? Lot to choose from. Etc, etc, etc…

After several hours we finally decided to go back to Hong Kong and rest. The whole trip was fun. I really enjoyed it. Even without getting half of items from my ‘buy while in Shenzhen’ list ;D

And ordered Shenzhen fridge magnet on Aliexpress… They were not available to buy at any place we were.

Devconf.cz? FOSDEM? PTG? Linaro Connect?

2018-01-19T19:29:00+01:00

What connects those names? All of them are conference or team meeting names. Spread over Europe + Asia. And I will be on all of them this year.

First will be in Brno, Czechia. Terrible city to travel to but amount of people I can meet there is enormous. Some guys from my Red Hat team will be there, my boss’ boss (and boss of my boss’ boss) and several people from CentOS, Fedora, RHEL (and some other names) communities. Meetings, sessions… Nice to be there. Will be in A-Sport hotel as it is closest to Red Hat office where I have some meetings to attend.

Then FOSDEM. The only “week-long conference squeezed into two days” I know. Good luck with meeting me probably. As usual my list of sessions covers all buildings and have several conflicts. Will meet many people, miss even more, do some beers. This year I stay in Floris Arlequin Grand-Place hotel.

Next one? OpenStack PTG in Dublin, Ireland. Finally will meet all those developers reviewing my patches, helping me with understanding source code of several OpenStack projects. And probably answering several questions about state of AArch64 support. Conference hotel.

Linaro Connect. Hong Kong again. Not registered yet, not looked at flights. Have to do that sooner than later and checking which airline sucks less on intercontinental connections sucks too. With few members of SDI team I will talk about our journey through/with OpenStack on our beloved architecture. Conference hotel.

What after those? Probably OpenSource Day in Poland, maybe some other ones. Will see.

Can Socionext SynQuacer be first 96boards desktop machine?

2017-10-02T19:49:00+02:00

During Linaro Connect SFO17 I had an occasion to take a look at first 96boards Enterprise Edition MicroATX format board: Socionext SynQuacer. Can it be called first 96boards desktop machine?

Just to remind — 96boards EE specification defined two form factors:

custom 160x120mm
MicroATX

There were attempts to build boards in that custom format (Husky, Cello) but they both failed terribly. Turns out that companies which are able to produce 96boards CE boards are not able to make more complicated ones.

Connect ago I wrote about Systart Oxalis LS1020A board as being first 96boards EE one but it used that custom format.

So going back to SynQuacer board…

I would say that it looks like typical MicroATX mainboard:

four memory slots (DDR4, up to 64GB, ECC or not ECC)
CPU under heatsink (24 Cortex-A53 cores, 1GHz clock)
PCI-Express slots (x1, x1, x16 with just 4 lanes)
two SATA ports
Gigabit Ethernet port
two USB 3.0 ports at the back
connector for another USB 3.0 ports
96boards low-speed connector (think sensors, serial console, tpm etc)
24pin ATX power connector (no extra +12V ones)
power and reset buttons
fan connector
JTAG port

Socionext SynQuacer

The official announcement did not provide information about price. Only info present was that it will available in December 2017. During discussions with Socionext representatives I was told that full developer box will cost around 1000 USD and involve mainboard, memory, storage (rather not SSD), case and graphics card. Price for just mainboard was not provided as it looked like such option is not planned.

From software point of view there was UEFI presented. With graphical boot. Upstreaming kernel support is in progress (Linaro provides 4.14-rc tree with required changes).

Will it satisfy a need for AArch64 desktop? Time will show. From what I got from developers using it already performance is quite ok as long as it is multithreaded (so kernel build goes nice with -j24 until linking phase kicks in).

Other option for AArch64 desktop would be Macchiatobin. Latest revisions are needed as PCI support got fixed (I was told that first revisions were unable to fully use PCI Express port). Bernhard Rosenkränzer was demoing such setup and it was running nicely.

First 96boards Enterprise board which will be on a market?

2017-03-06T16:10:00+01:00

I am at Linaro Connect in Budapest, Hungary. And on Arrow’s stand I noticed something I did not expected — 96boards Enterprise Edition form factor board.

In past Linaro presented ‘Husky’ and ‘Cello’ devboards in 96boards EE form factor. None of them ever reached production. Only few prototypes existed (had some of them in hands). Both products were complete failures.

Systart Oxalis LS1020A got announced about month ago. They target routers, IoT gateways type devices with it.

System on Module on carrierboard

As you can see board has ports all over the edges but that’s fault of 96boards EE specification which mandate such broken designs. When I saw it first time my question was “where is PCIe slot?” but found out that (according to spec) it is optional. Board has mini-pcie slot on bottom side anyway.

Speaking of design… Oxalis is made from two parts: carrier board and SoM (System on Module). SoM is based on NXP Network Processor QorIQ® LS1012A processor (single ARM Cortex-A53 core running up to 800 MHz) with 64MB of SPI flash (space for bootloader!) and 1GB of memory. Carrier board gives two GbE network ports, two USB 3.0 connectors, standard 96boards header, one SATA port (with power!), microSD and mini-pcie slot (on bottom side).

System on Module top view

System on Module bottom view

The beauty of such design is that you can replace CPU board with something different. According to Dieter Kiermaier from Arrow there are plans for other SoM board in future.

Carrierboard

Will it be success? Time will show. Will I buy it? Rather not as for my development I need 16GB ram. Will it have case? Not asked. When on market? May/June 2017.

Linaro Connect: interesting hardware

2016-10-11T11:06:00+02:00

Before going for Linaro Connect I had a plan to look at all those 96boards devices and write some complains/opinions about them. But it would be like shooting fish in a barrel so I decided against. But there were some interesting pieces of hardware there.

One of them was Macchiatobin board from SolidRun. I think that this is same as their Armada 8040 community board but after design changes. Standard Mini-ITX format, quad core Cortex-A72 cpu (with upto 2GHz clock), one normal DIMM slot (max 16GB, ships with 4GB), three Serial-ATA ports, PCI-Express x4 slot, one USB 3.0 port, microSD slot.

UPDATE: SolidRun confirmed - this is final design of their Armada 8040 community board.

Photo (done by Riku Voipio) shows which goodies are available:

Armada 8040 community board

Network interfaces from top to bottom are (if I remember correctly):

10GbE (SFP + RJ-45)
10GbE (SFP + RJ-45)
2.5GbE (SFP)
1GbE (RJ-45)

When it comes to software I was told that board is SBSA compliant so any normal distribution should work. Kernel, bootloaders (U-Boot and UEFI) are mainlined.

Price? 350USD. Looks like nice candidate for AArch64 development platform or NAS.

Other device was Gumstix Nodana 96BCE board which is 96boards compliant carrierboard for Intel Joule modules.

On top it looks like typical 96boards device (except USB C port):

Gumstix Nodana top view

But once reversed Intel Joule module is visible:

Gumstix Nodana bottom view

This is first non-ARM based 96boards device. Maybe even one of most compliant ones. At least from software perspective because when it comes to hardware then module makes it a bit too thick to fit in 96boards CE specification limits.

Note that 96boards Consumer Electronics specification does not require using ARM or AArch64 cpu.

Linaro Connect: Las Vegas sightseeing

2016-09-30T01:27:00+02:00

One of cool things of being Linaro assignee is going to Linaro Connect conference. This time it was Las Vegas, USA. I was flying Berlin Tegel -> London Heathrow -> Las Vegas. Last part was fun as I met several Linaro folks at the airport ;D

Arrived in Vegas, went to hotel and fall asleep. Sunday was planned for some Ingress playing and for sightseeing. As usual I had several places marked on Google Maps to make things easier.

So Sunday… It was really Sun day. I took some water with me and refueled several times during day just to stay hydrated. With Las Vegas climate I was not even felt sweety as it vaporated right away…

Street with palm trees

But let’s start from beginning. I walked few hundred meters from hotel and caught public transport bus which took me to Freemont Street (or somewhere around). When I walked I felt like the only person on the Earth or in a no-go zone. There was basically no one on the street. After some walking and few photos I got asked something like “who are you and what you are doing here???” from security guy. It turned out that some part of Freemont Street (and surroundings) were closed due to some arts/music festival. I probably missed some ‘no entry’ plate…

Atomic liquor

Anyway I did not get any problems and was pointed where the gate is. Walked around, saw some places, bought souvenirs (including fridge magnet to my collection), another water bottles and decided to walk to another point on my map.

Yes, it may feel strange but I walked. And walked. And walked. Then Arts district happened.

OMG it was awesome. Deserted streets, shops with some retro furniture/stuff, shops with some crazy junk, shop with wax figures from Last Supper etc. But the best part was murals and graffitis. Lot of them, different styles and quality. I spent about 2 hours just walking there and taking photos.

Hydro geek graffiti

Stagecoach made from metal

Woman graffiti

Next step was the Strip. All those big hotel/casino buildings. At Circus Circus I found room with arcade machines and spent 25 cents on Galaga. In Venetian I looked at their version of Venice canals (have to go to Venice and compare one day :D). Few minutes later I saw Eiffel tower (or rather miniature version of it). Decided to skip searching for copy of Statue of Liberty and instead crossed street and went to take a look at Bellagio fountains show. Have to admit that it was nice. I saw three shows (had to sort few things around) and then took a cab back to the hotel.