Hello, Long time lurker, and old time attempter... (waay back in v1 with an sis 535 or something like that)... Anyway, I have a project that our company may be undertaking and some of it relies on instant on / small form factor computers. Think kiosk type system. We'll be running linux, custom built or one of the super small distros, built to run off a CF card or boot off the network. Here's where I've got some questions that I imagine people on this list may have some expertise.
We'd hope to have something that has hardware accelerated graphics capabilities (likely using DirectFB for graphics) so something that has linux drivers would be a major plus. We'd potentially like to use more than one monitor per device. We don't need many of the common parts on a regular PC or mini-ITX type boards, but are wondering what kind of company you would approach to get something like that built. We'd like to have coreboot as the bios to help with boot times etc. If you were looking for something like that, where would you go? Most of the miniITX boards don't quite fit the need. I'm wondering what volumes you'd need for a custom board to reach that same price, considering we'd really have very little on the device, cpu, ram, cf, video and a network. Which I guess describes almost all computers... Anyway, pointers on where to purchase, or get a board developed that could do stuff like this. We've initially contemplated the Via boards, but have seen that there are more and more offerings out there. The Geode based systems could be fine if there was hardware assistance for the graphics we imagine... Anyway, any pointers on a stuff like this would be appreciated.
On Fri, Apr 04, 2008 at 02:17:45PM -0600, Nathanael D. Noblet wrote:
We'd hope to have something that has hardware accelerated graphics capabilities (likely using DirectFB for graphics) so something that has linux drivers would be a major plus.
So far the spec is standard stuff.
We'd potentially like to use more than one monitor per device.
This is not so common however.
We don't need many of the common parts on a regular PC or mini-ITX type boards, but are wondering what kind of company you would approach to get something like that built.
I have a few suggestions here in Sweden, but that may not help you.
We'd like to have coreboot as the bios to help with boot times etc. If you were looking for something like that, where would you go? Most of the miniITX boards don't quite fit the need. I'm wondering what volumes you'd need for a custom board to reach that same price
10k would be my optimistic guesstimate.
We've initially contemplated the Via boards, but have seen that there are more and more offerings out there. The Geode based systems could be fine if there was hardware assistance for the graphics we imagine...
I think your graphics requirements will be the dealmaker/breaker.
I don't know any integrated graphics with multiple independent outputs. There is TV out but I guess that's not what you're after.
What kind of acceleration do you need? 2d primitives like blitting and scaling or 3d stuff? Pixel shaders? Etc? DirectFB doesn't do much 3d AFAIK, and they don't seem to have support for very many of the most recent graphics chipsets.
Perhaps you could use NVIDIA+nouveau on X.
For smaller series I would try to create a solution using standard components, some mobo and a discrete graphics card. Maybe even USB.
If you have the volume then talk to a graphics chip vendor about modesetting without video BIOS and documentation for writing open source drivers. Worst case they may not be able to help even if they want to. :(
//Peter
On Sat, Apr 5, 2008 at 3:17 AM, Nathanael D. Noblet nathanael@gnat.ca wrote:
Hello, Long time lurker, and old time attempter... (waay back in v1 with an sis 535 or something like that)... Anyway, I have a project that our company may be undertaking and some of it relies on instant on / small form factor computers. Think kiosk type system. We'll be running linux, custom built or one of the super small distros, built to run off a CF card or boot off the network. Here's where I've got some questions that I imagine people on this list may have some expertise.
We'd hope to have something that has hardware accelerated graphics capabilities (likely using DirectFB for graphics) so something that has linux drivers would be a major plus. We'd potentially like to use more than one monitor per device. We don't need many of the common parts on a regular PC or mini-ITX type boards, but are wondering what kind of company you would approach to get something like that built. We'd like to have coreboot as the bios to help with boot times etc. If you were looking for something like that, where would you go? Most of the miniITX boards don't quite fit the need. I'm wondering what volumes you'd need for a custom board to reach that same price, considering we'd really have very little on the device, cpu, ram, cf, video and a network. Which I guess describes almost all computers... Anyway, pointers on where to purchase, or get a board developed that could do stuff like this. We've initially contemplated the Via boards, but have seen that there are more and more offerings out there. The Geode based systems could be fine if there was hardware assistance for the graphics we imagine... Anyway, any pointers on a stuff like this would be appreciated.
Does an AMD 690G system fit your requirement? it has two video outputs, most vendors implement one as regular VGA and the other one as HDMI. It has solid ATI Linux driver ( I have test it both in x86 32-bit and x86_64 Linux). The driver takes quite a large space though, but I think your CF will be enough to host it. As for the Linux BIOS support, I think AMD already working on it but not released publicly yet, for high volumes "client" like your need, AMD might be giving special assistance or something, ask the AMD guys here ;-).
-
Darmawan Salihun -
Nathanael D. Noblet -
Peter Stuge