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

[Matt Maier]

I just ran across this computer a little while ago and now you pop up on
the mailing list, neat.

Your explanation of use cases for Marcin is important. It's the biggest
part that's missing from the information I've seen about the project. The
"but what can I do with it" question needs to be front and center, or at
least co-equal with the libre and environmental factors.

It might be worth comparing it to other examples of computers that people
are familiar with. For example, a table with the EOMA68, a Raspberry Pi, a
Chromebook, a Microsoft Surface, and a Macbook (maybe add some phones and
servers too?), would go a long way towards putting it into context. And it
wouldn't necessarily suffer for performing at the lower end of the scale if
you went on to explain that after a few generations of improvement you
could swap out another card and instantly upgrade to higher performance,
equivalent to somewhere else in the chart.

That would also help get non-comp-sci types interested in it. If designers
understand that they can design any enclosure they want, independent of the
actual function, they'll get excited about it.

On Sat, Aug 20, 2016 at 3:40 AM, lkcl . <luke.leighton at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.
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>
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