Linux for ARM?

[cheesehead]

From what I've read, ARM has been undergoing something of a revival. Starting with the Apple iPhone, a variety of powerful and inexpensive computing devices have been based on this architecture, and several semiconductor manufacturers - notably Texas Instruments, Samsung, and Nvidia - have recently done huge amounts of R&D on improving the platform. Recent benchmarks suggest that high-end ARM platforms can perform roughly as well as Intel's Atom, but with far less power consumption and - notably - a lower pricetag as well.

Unlike Windows, which seems to be tied quite heavily to X86, Linux seems to be quite well suited to the ARM. Linux (along with its' Unix predecessors) has been used on RISC-based systems for over a decade, and there has been quite a lot of work on adapting it for ARM-based hardware. Even Ubuntu has jumped on the bandwagon - I've heard that there's an ARM-specific version of the distribution in the works, with a new GUI better suited to the hardware.

I'm a big fan of Linux, and would like to see more consumer-oriented use of the software. While Windows has been the OS of choice for netbooks so far due to the minimal if not nonexistent price difference between products sold with Windows 7 and Linux, the low cost and power consumption of ARM hardware might be enough to finally push Linux into mainstream use. Anyone else have any thoughts on the subject?

 

[xSauronx]

im pretty sure at least a portion of debian has been compiled to ARM regularly for a while now, youd have to double check, but that distro has been good about multi architechture support

 

[saratoga172]

In order for Linux and ARM to take mainstream in the consumer netbook market would require adoption from major manufacturers as well as shown performance. What kind of battery life etc are we talking about?

 

[Fox5]

Atom netbooks are both faster and cheaper than the high end arm platforms. Perhaps arm is cheap to manufacture but it's not being sold cheap.

 

[Scarpozzi]

I hear so many acronyms these days, I had to google ARM to see what you all are talking about. Here's wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture

Cool to see that it's what powered the Gameboy Advance and some other notable stuff like the iPod Touch and a bunch of portable phones (Some blackberries, etc). It's obvious that the architecture can be coded for without too much trouble.

The only downside to ARM is that without having a more clear Apples to Apples (not the company) comparison of CPU power to a comparable Intel processor, it'd be hard to sell without forcing it down consumers' throats via something that branded heavily by Apple (the company) for example.

I can definitely see them being used for consumer electronics and linux based operating systems like the Android OS for use in cellphones and mobile devices... To get to the laptop/netbook area, you'd have to start with the right ARM chip and find a few motherboard manufacturers to license the technology to....but you'll need some real backing by Dell, Acer, Apple, MPC Gateway, HP, etc...to help with market entry.

Think about the challenges AMD's had to overcome.

 

[Fox5]

I hear so many acronyms these days, I had to google ARM to see what you all are talking about. Here's wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture

Cool to see that it's what powered the Gameboy Advance and some other notable stuff like the iPod Touch and a bunch of portable phones (Some blackberries, etc). It's obvious that the architecture can be coded for without too much trouble.

The only downside to ARM is that without having a more clear Apples to Apples (not the company) comparison of CPU power to a comparable Intel processor, it'd be hard to sell without forcing it down consumers' throats via something that branded heavily by Apple (the company) for example.

I can definitely see them being used for consumer electronics and linux based operating systems like the Android OS for use in cellphones and mobile devices... To get to the laptop/netbook area, you'd have to start with the right ARM chip and find a few motherboard manufacturers to license the technology to....but you'll need some real backing by Dell, Acer, Apple, MPC Gateway, HP, etc...to help with market entry.

Think about the challenges AMD's had to overcome.

ARM is used in practically every handheld and portable device, it's more pervasive than x86.
And it's being scaled up to netbooks (often referred to as smartbooks when they contain an ARM processor) You probably wouldn't buy a motherboard for ARM, ARM processors are typically Systems on a Chip. Nearly everything the system needs to do is contained on a single chip (graphics, sound, wireless modem, memory), so it should have a significant size/cost/power consumption advantage over Atom. The PCB boards just need to hook up various I/O devices on an ARM chip.

 

[cheesehead]

ARM is used in practically every handheld and portable device, it's more pervasive than x86.
And it's being scaled up to netbooks (often referred to as smartbooks when they contain an ARM processor) You probably wouldn't buy a motherboard for ARM, ARM processors are typically Systems on a Chip. Nearly everything the system needs to do is contained on a single chip (graphics, sound, wireless modem, memory), so it should have a significant size/cost/power consumption advantage over Atom. The PCB boards just need to hook up various I/O devices on an ARM chip.

This is what I perceive to be the major advantage of ARM. Even if it's not quite up to Atom equivalency, a combination of efficient programming and purpose-built hardware (such as the 1080p decoding functionality of the Tegra 2) means that including ARM hardware into products is quick, easy, and cheap. From car stereos to televisions, there's no reason why you shouldn't use ARM - in fact, Microsoft is using a form of Nvidia's Tegra platform for its' new Zune.

Another important factor is Android. While it's very much a new operating system and is generally sold in a configuration specific to whatever device it's installed on, there's no reason why it couldn't be used more like a standard OS. Including Android on everything from typewriters to toasters means that writing Android-compatible software becomes very profitable...and what runs under Android can easily be made to run under Ubuntu or Slackware or Fedora or whatever. (Isn't POSIX grand?)

Call me an evil socialist, but I feel that OS development is done far more efficiently in the public domain. Sure, UI design and tech support make sense to do on a private basis, but allowing everyone to contribute and make use of Linux code is both useful to huge corporations (who get a leg up on product design) and poor people in the third world (who can buy really cheap minimalist computers that are miraculously compatible with IBM mainframes.)

 

[Colt45]

«starting with the iphone»

no.. ARM devices have existed since long before the iPhone was a glint in job's eye.

 

[cheesehead]

«starting with the iphone»

no.. ARM devices have existed since long before the iPhone was a glint in job's eye.

However, ARMs haven't been used in anything remotely similar to a standard personal computer, aside from a few oddballs like the Acorn. Although it has been used on cell phones and PDAs since its' inception, only recently has the swell in smartphone business started by the iPhone lead to heavy interest in the platform.

 

[Colt45]

ARM based smartphones existed long before iPhone. whatever.

 

[Fox5]

However, ARMs haven't been used in anything remotely similar to a standard personal computer, aside from a few oddballs like the Acorn. Although it has been used on cell phones and PDAs since its' inception, only recently has the swell in smartphone business started by the iPhone lead to heavy interest in the platform.

ARM as a relatively performance competitive option is a recent thing, and it's enabled it to power full featured operating systems like the iphone OS. Though you could make an argument that older operating systems, like symbian and blackberry were full featured as far as operating systems go. (ignoring user interface and apps and just focusing on kernels, memory management, security, and such, I have no idea where blackberry and symbian stand)

 

[cheesehead]

ARM as a relatively performance competitive option is a recent thing, and it's enabled it to power full featured operating systems like the iphone OS. Though you could make an argument that older operating systems, like symbian and blackberry were full featured as far as operating systems go. (ignoring user interface and apps and just focusing on kernels, memory management, security, and such, I have no idea where blackberry and symbian stand)

There's also RiscOS and one or two others, but to be fair, until fairly recently ARM hardware simply wasn't up to the job. However, the smartphone wars have resulted in steadily more powerful ARMs with vastly improved graphics and some nifty features, many of which are getting fast enough that you can use them for basic office use. And they're still spectacularly cheap.

Has anyone here run Linux on an ARM system?

 

[Colt45]

i've got a nokia 770 somewhere. I can't find it though.
it has maemo (linux) and a ARM. kinda long in the tooth now though.

 

[Fox5]

i've got a nokia 770 somewhere. I can't find it though.
it has maemo (linux) and a ARM. kinda long in the tooth now though.

I've got an N900 with Maemo v5 on it. I also did some kind of debian image install that allows me to chroot into it and execute apps as if I was running the debian system natively.

A 600Mhz Cortex A8 doesn't appear to be fast enough just yet for a desktop OS, but it runs their maemo OS pretty well. (the problem could also be a slow solid state drive that oddly enough is formatted as FAT32 instead of a native linux file system, FAT32 has abysmal random access performance)

 

[cheesehead]

I've got an N900 with Maemo v5 on it. I also did some kind of debian image install that allows me to chroot into it and execute apps as if I was running the debian system natively.

A 600Mhz Cortex A8 doesn't appear to be fast enough just yet for a desktop OS, but it runs their maemo OS pretty well. (the problem could also be a slow solid state drive that oddly enough is formatted as FAT32 instead of a native linux file system, FAT32 has abysmal random access performance)

I wonder if anyone has any benchmarks comparing the Cortex A8 to more modern solutions? The Tegra 2 is a dual-core A9 running at 1ghz, and Marvell has their "Kirkwood" ARM processors running as fast as 2ghz. The latter also has goodies like a SATA controller, though, rather annoyingly, no video out. Also, folks have OC'd said Nokia as much as 50% - I'd wager that if you slapped an adequately large lump of aluminum on a Tegra, you could easily do the sam.

I severely doubt that even the fastest ARMs would be capable of serious desktop use, but for basic word processing and web browsing, they seem to be a pretty capable solution. Also, the "system-on-a-chip" hardware means that OLPC-style products can be made even cheaper, with reduced R&D time required to update the hardware for each successive generation.

 

[Fox5]

I wonder if anyone has any benchmarks comparing the Cortex A8 to more modern solutions? The Tegra 2 is a dual-core A9 running at 1ghz, and Marvell has their "Kirkwood" ARM processors running as fast as 2ghz. The latter also has goodies like a SATA controller, though, rather annoyingly, no video out. Also, folks have OC'd said Nokia as much as 50% - I'd wager that if you slapped an adequately large lump of aluminum on a Tegra, you could easily do the sam.

I severely doubt that even the fastest ARMs would be capable of serious desktop use, but for basic word processing and web browsing, they seem to be a pretty capable solution. Also, the "system-on-a-chip" hardware means that OLPC-style products can be made even cheaper, with reduced R&D time required to update the hardware for each successive generation.

I think Atom level of performance is very doable in the near future.

 

[PCTC2]

I have compiled Ubuntu for the TI OMAP based boards (BeagleBoard and other development platforms like GumStix). It's basically the iPhone 3G hardware. It's not too shabby for using as a network monitor and terminal. I'm working on two handheld platforms. It'll be nice to have a full-featured Linux on a handheld.

 

[meloz]

Anyone else have any thoughts on the subject?

Intel is agressively pushing for 'x86 everwhere', so I expect the need for ARM port of popular distros to drop in future. We would be running the same distros on desktop and our low power portable devices (MIDs, smartphones, and such). I think right now we are in a period where both Intel and ARM solutions can co-exist, but going into future I fully expect the 'Chipzilla' to dominate.

Now whether desktop oriented x86 distros would need certain modifications to make them more suitable for low powered devices, that is another matter.

 

[mundhra]

i have a sheevaplug. it came with ubuntu 9.04, but ubuntu has since dropped arm support. i installed debian squeeze on mine rather than gentoo which i'm more familiar with. according to the wiki, arm is supported by debian stable/testing, fedora, gentoo, openwrt, ubuntu 9.04, freebsd 9.x, and plan 9.

 

[Fox5]

i have a sheevaplug. it came with ubuntu 9.04, but ubuntu has since dropped arm support. i installed debian squeeze on mine rather than gentoo which i'm more familiar with. according to the wiki, arm is supported by debian stable/testing, fedora, gentoo, openwrt, ubuntu 9.04, freebsd 9.x, and plan 9.

Ubuntu 9.10 has an ARM version.
http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/arm

Perhaps it's just updated less frequently? I'd rather go with a debian arm base anyway, it's the biggest arm repository afaik.

 

[cheesehead]

Can anyone here with a Sheevaplug or similar device try an easily repeatable common task - say, encoding "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" into a 320kbps Mp3 - to see how the real-world performance of linux on the ARM compares to a modern desktop PC? I'd be curious to see the results.

 

[Fox5]

Can anyone here with a Sheevaplug or similar device try an easily repeatable common task - say, encoding "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" into a 320kbps Mp3 - to see how the real-world performance of linux on the ARM compares to a modern desktop PC? I'd be curious to see the results.

Heh, I could do it on my Nokia N900. You can find a few debian ARM benchmarks online if you look hard enough though.