Geode GX1 processor?

[Ferenc Engard]

Hi all,

A bit offtopic: I am looking for a forum/mailing list/people who are work
with this processor, especially with its 2d video accel on linux. I have
problems, NSC didn't respond, and I stucked... :-(

Thanks:
Circum

[ron minnich]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Ferenc Engard wrote:
> A bit offtopic: I am looking for a forum/mailing list/people who are work
> with this processor, especially with its 2d video accel on linux. I have
> problems, NSC didn't respond, and I stucked... :-(

you can split a list off for geode, but we're interested here, and I would
welcome a discussion on this list -- it's not a high traffic list.

ron

[Bari Ari]

ron minnich wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Ferenc Engard wrote:
> > A bit offtopic: I am looking for a forum/mailing list/people who are work
> > with this processor, especially with its 2d video accel on linux. I have
> > problems, NSC didn't respond, and I stucked... :-(
>
> you can split a list off for geode, but we're interested here, and I would
> welcome a discussion on this list -- it's not a high traffic list.

NSC has been trying to sell their IA/Geode group for the past few months

http://www.national.com/news/item/0,1735,863,00.html

Support has generally been non-existent for the IA products if you're 
not in their loop. Go ahead and ask away. A few of us here may be able 
to help.

-Bari

[ron minnich]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Bari Ari wrote:
> NSC has been trying to sell their IA/Geode group for the past few months
>
> http://www.national.com/news/item/0,1735,863,00.html

hmm.
> Support has generally been non-existent for the IA products ...

gee, could there be a cause-and-effect here?

ron

[Bari Ari]

ron minnich wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Bari Ari wrote:
> > NSC has been trying to sell their IA/Geode group for the past few months
> >
> > http://www.national.com/news/item/0,1735,863,00.html
>
> hmm.
> > Support has generally been non-existent for the IA products ...
>
> gee, could there be a cause-and-effect here?

Support has been pretty good if you've made it into their "inner 
circle". It's the typical situation for all the chipset vendors. Nearly 
zero support unless you're a volume OEM. All the IA/Geode data sheets 
are still only available on a confidential website that requires 
authorization. You can find some helpful info and source code for the 
Gedoes at:

www.linux4.tv

-Bari

[Brian G. Rhodes]

They left their geode roadmap quite a while ago.  From what I heard when
we started working with their products and created a reference design they
would have about the same speed and features as VIA has now on their
mini-itx boards.

You can get to some of the IA stuff at.

http://wwwd.national.com/National/developer.nsf/designs/System.htm

Since they changed their site I haven't had to log in for the software
anymore, and I haven't been able to find most of the resources I
previously used.

Brian G Rhodes
[e-mail]
[e-mail]
[phone]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Bari Ari wrote:
> ron minnich wrote:
> > On Thu, 10 Jul 2003, Bari Ari wrote:
> > > NSC has been trying to sell their IA/Geode group for the past few months
> > >
> > > http://www.national.com/news/item/0,1735,863,00.html
> >
> > hmm.
> > > Support has generally been non-existent for the IA products ...
> >
> > gee, could there be a cause-and-effect here?
>
> Support has been pretty good if you've made it into their "inner
> circle". It's the typical situation for all the chipset vendors. Nearly
> zero support unless you're a volume OEM. All the IA/Geode data sheets
> are still only available on a confidential website that requires
> authorization. You can find some helpful info and source code for the
> Gedoes at:
>
> www.linux4.tv
>
> -Bari
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Ferenc Engard]

Sorry for being late, my router / mail server has hardware problems. :-(
> > A bit offtopic: I am looking for a forum/mailing list/people who are work
> > with this processor, especially with its 2d video accel on linux. I have
> > problems, NSC didn't respond, and I stucked... :-(
>
> you can split a list off for geode, but we're interested here, and I would
> welcome a discussion on this list -- it's not a high traffic list.

I know, it's a refreshment after lkml, or, say, comp.lang.tcl. :-)

So, my problem is not related to linuxbios (maybe there will be one time,
if we decide to use this processor for our product).

I have an Advantech PCM-5820 board, with GX1 and CS5530, and I play with
it to test it's hardware bitblt feature. I have patched the 2.4.17 kernel
with NSC's geodefb driver, compiled a user-space GAL lib. I wrote a
program to move a part of the screen, the usleep a short interval (aka
scrolling a region). I know that this is not nice as the GX1 spec said
that I should not use the fb while the bitblt engine is working, and
because I have fb console, the console writes into it (it do not know
about the bitblt engine), but there was no problem, the center of the
screen scrolled like a dream, just when I typed something, there were 1-1
pixel errors.

The problem was when I decided to check the memory bandwidth, and issued a
dd if=/dev/mem of=/dev/null bs=1024 count=16384
command. Sometimes (about every 2nd time) it completely freezes the
machine. No oops, no kernel panic, just freeze to death. :-(  And I do not
understand what is going on, because if I do not scroll, there is no such
problem, and the bitblt operation just means to write some values into
some (processor-handled) IO registers.

What could be the problem? How to debug? What 'dd if=/dev/mem ...' exactly
do? Many questions, and I have not answers. What a philosophical work is
ours... :-)

Thanks:
Circum