X11 slowness on vortex86sx

2009-03-24T18:15:00+01:00

Today I played a bit with Vortex86sx based device again. This time I wanted to get X11 working on it.

In short: it “works”. Default driver should be “sis” but it fails with messages which shows that libpciaccess has a problem on that device:

(EE) SIS(0): Unable to map IO aperture. Invalid argument (22)
(EE) SIS(0): **************************************************
(EE) SIS(0):                       ERROR:
(EE) SIS(0): Could not map MMIO area
(EE) SIS(0):                   END OF MESSAGE
(EE) SIS(0): **************************************************
(EE) SIS(0): **************************************************
(EE) SIS(0):                       ERROR:
(EE) SIS(0): SiSMapMem() failed
(EE) SIS(0):                   END OF MESSAGE
(EE) SIS(0): **************************************************

I switched to “vesa” driver — it works, gives 1280x1024 resolution. But it is so sluggish… Even my few years old Zaurus c760 is faster (I checked how Vortex86sx works with VGA resolution).

Tried also “fbdev” driver — same slowness. All was done with full X.org server not “kdrive” one.

Does Vortex86sx based devices are worth something?

2009-02-20T16:39:00+01:00

At FOSDEM 2009 I grabbed one Vortex86SX based device — Koala Nano PC which is available at Koan software. Device came with Ångström distribution and was running 2.6.26 kernel. I wanted to get something more fresh on it and after some fighting I booted 2.6.29-rc5 kernel today.

Device use Vortex86SX SoC which is based on 486SX core. Yes — this is x86 machine without FPU. Overall speed of that is… nearly not existing.

First benchmark which came to my mind was “hdparm -T /dev/sda”. Results were dramatic: 9-13 MB/s for cached reads (with 133MHz memory and 300MHz cpu). I decided to compare against other devices:

Device	Arch	CPU	CPU speed	memory type	cached reads
Koala Nano PC	x86	vortex86sx	300MHz	DDR2	9-13MB/s
old PC	x86	pentium2	266MHz	EDO DRAM	33MB/s
ATNGW100	av32	AT32AP700x	130MHz	SDRAM	35MB/s
ASUS WL-500gP	mips	bcm3302	266MHz		46MB/s
Freecom FSG-3	arm	ipx42x	266MHz		43MB/s
iBook G3	ppc	g3	300MHz	SDRAM	65MB/s
AT91SAM9263-EK	arm	at91sam9263	180MHz	SDRAM	62-63MB/s
Compulab	arm	pxa270	312MHz	SDRAM	74MB/s
NSLU2	arm	ixp420	266MHz	SDRAM	74MB/s
Koala nano33	x86	vortex86dx	1GHz	DDR2	74MB/s
Nokia N810	arm	omap2420	400MHz	SDRAM	82MB/s
AT91SAM9G20-EK	arm	at91sam9G20	400MHz	SDRAM	96MB/s
Linkstation pro duo	arm	ixp4xx	266MHz		147MB/s
BeagleBoard	arm	omap3530	500MHz	mDDR	152MB/s
Alix.1c	x86	geodelx	500MHz	DDR	209MB/s
kirkwood reference board¹	arm	kirkwood	1200MHz	DDR2	209MB/s
BUG	arm	i.mx31	533MHz	DDR	294MB/s
my desktop	x86	core2quad	2400MHz	DDR2	3300-3500MB/s
Cliff’s desktop	x86	Core-i7 920 Quad	2.67GHz	DDR3	6400-7200MB/s

But remember that this test is not so good for benchmarking — I am preparing better set of tests to really compare speed of devices. So far it contains openssl speed and MP3 encoding/decoding.

But device has also few nice things. Everything is integrated so 12x12cm box is enough to keep everything inside. It has ATA controller, FastEthernet, graphics based on XGI core (with accelerated framebuffer able to do 1680x1050 resolution) and working USB. There is a place to put 2.5” HDD inside (normally it boots from CompactFlash card), second Ethernet or WiFi are available options…

But what is use for such slow device? There are lot of ARM based ones which offer similar (or better) functionality and are faster… But wait — there is one use: event displays as this machine has nicely working framebuffer (I got even 1680x1050 resolution).

UPDATE: added results from iBook G3 300MHz and some other machines.

kirkwood reference board uses same cpu as SheevaPlug device. ↩

Marcin Juszkiewicz - vortex86sx

X11 slowness on vortex86sx

Does Vortex86sx based devices are worth something?