[Discuss] EOMA68 Libre Hardware Standard and Libre Software project, currently crowd-funding (deadline expires 26th aug 2016)

[lkcl .]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 1:24 AM, Marcin Jakubowski
<marcin at opensourceecology.org> wrote:
> Luke,
>
> Can you expand your answer regarding FreeCAD and Blender? I don't understand
> your answer.

 sure.  you're asking 2 separate questions (one about 3D, the other
about video) - it would be better to separate them but we'll manage
fine :)

> Could FreeCAD be modified to run on your system?

 it wouldn't really help: this is an ultra-low-power processor that
would simply not be able to cope with the CPU load.  imagine asking,
"could FreeCAD run on a 10-year-old 1.8ghz Pentium 4" and the answer
is "yes... but so slowly as to be virtually unusable".


> What is a possible workflow for 3D CAD and nonlinear video editing that is
> possible on your current system?

 for 3D CAD on this EOMA68-A20 computer card?  wait a few years for a
more powerful one to come out.

 for 2D nonlinear video editing?  it *might* be possible as long as
you make absolutely sure that the video editing software uses the
accelerated hardware encode / decode engine.  that's going to be
absolutely critical.  i've got a demo up of running 1080p60 video
decode - CPU usage is somewhere around.... 20%, thanks to using the
hardware video engine.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/cedrus

 if you *don't* use that hardware video decode / encode engine you
will barely be able to do 480p with both ARM cores maxed out at 100%.
so it's *really* important to make sure that the software suite you're
using goes through to the hardware engine.



> Our main tool for 3D CAD is FreeCAD - so for this to be usable for day to
> day work, we would need to address access to FreeCAD. Do you have any
> suggestions?

 yeah don't do it.  too painful.  3D CAD work really needs about 100x
more processing capability (with associated massive power draw) than
this 2.5 watt CPU is capable of.

> Can you explain to the beginner what would be required to run FreeCAD on
> your system? You mentioned both Libre and Open Source versions of your
> system at your campaign - could FreeCAD run on the Open Source version of
> your system?

 yes... just incredibly slowly.

 in a few years time we'll have 20nm, 14nm, 10nm etc. low-power
systems, 8 core, even 16 core, and those will then be able to handle
FreeCAD within the power budget.... but not right now.

l.