As I browse through TI’s website, I ran across the OMAP5432 .
Are there any plans in the works for a new Beagle hosting this chip? Is there another board package that has it?
No.
Gerald
So the following is no longer the case?
"There is a plan to have an OMAP5 based board when the device is ready
fro
prime time. But that won't be any time soon."
http://groups.google.com/group/beagleboard/msg/ce35b153e50e4859
I can see it now. The board should be named "Panther " . Unless of course there is one named Panther out there somewhere. 
As much as you might think we would, we really don't have great
insight into what TI teams might have planned. With the success of
the PandaBoard and its approach, we might not see OMAP5 being offered
through distribution in raw-chip form (the only way we'd ever pick it
up for the BeagleBoard). While that project has different goals, if
you want to chase the high-performance-mobile processor, it might be
best to follow the PandaBoard project. We certainly want to bring in
a Cortex-A15 into the BeagleBoard family when an appropriate device is
available that will have the longevity and availability that are more
at the core of our project goals. Our fear is that we'll pick up a
device that becomes ignored too quickly with the next-big-thing and
you won't be able to get hold of it to make your own designs outside
of just purchasing our boards---because our goal isn't to sell a ton
of BeagleBoards but to enable others to take the BeagleBoard design to
make something new and interesting.
Anyway, that's my view. We've always thought that OMAP5 would be the
next big stable platform for us and it still might be. A15 provides a
significant jump over A8, whereas A9 was a small step (though it did
enable multi-core). When an A15 comes out with the right power,
price, availability, longevity, etc., I think you can count on us to
be there (OMAP5, OMAP6, AMblah, whatever). In the meantime, if you
want to play with the technology, PandaBoard will likely get you there
first and there is nothing wrong with that.
Further, we do want to avoid churn. I wouldn't expect another major
BeagleBoard.org release for *at least* 6 months (and probably closer
to 18 months as that has been our typical design turn-over) now that
we have released the BeagleBone, even if it is on a quite different
vector.
Thanks; it's fascinating to hear the BB perspective on this.
I was late to the Beagleboard party, and ended up buying a Pandaboard
instead, for which I am now designing an FPGA expansion. I am curious
as to how the "success" of these ____Board projects is scored by the
powers that be. I was always rather disappointed that the Pandaboard
did not seem to be acquiring the following / user-base that the Beagle
had. If you skim the Pandaboard google group, you'll mostly find lots
of newbie questions relating to Android on the device, many of them
unanswered. (In fairness, many of them are also unreadable.) So, if
I were TI management assessing the relative success of Beagle/Panda, I
would be a lot more impressed with the Beagle. Of course, if I were
TI management, I would probably use a different metric, something
related to profit 
But surely they are not selling as many
Pandaboards as Beagleboards, so it must be something other than
volume?
BTW, it's likely that an emphasis on hardware produces a more robust
design. Panda hardware has plenty of issues, although they have just
released their first major board revision.
I sincerely hope we see a Beagle-like OMAP5 platform to encourage
creative hardware development by small players. I've never understood
what TI has to lose by this.
Mark
Thanks; it's fascinating to hear the BB perspective on this.
I was late to the Beagleboard party, and ended up buying a Pandaboard
instead, for which I am now designing an FPGA expansion. I am curious
as to how the "success" of these ____Board projects is scored by the
powers that be. I was always rather disappointed that the Pandaboard
did not seem to be acquiring the following / user-base that the Beagle
had. If you skim the Pandaboard google group, you'll mostly find lots
of newbie questions relating to Android on the device, many of them
unanswered. (In fairness, many of them are also unreadable.) So, if
I were TI management assessing the relative success of Beagle/Panda, I
would be a lot more impressed with the Beagle. Of course, if I were
TI management, I would probably use a different metric, something
related to profitBut surely they are not selling as many
Pandaboards as Beagleboards, so it must be something other than
volume?
This is a challenge for me and something for which I'm open to
suggestions. In my view, most of the metrics that could be collected
lead to wrong priorities. That is why I don't have a set of metrics I
consistently push to TI management and instead rely more on anecdotes.
The types of anecdotes include various size customers who've been
able to create designs and prepare to ramp into production before they
ever contact TI for one-on-one support and the various commercial and
open source software that have been created without a lot of hand-held
relationship building and promotion by TI. What I've found to be the
most effective anecdotes are the customers who are familiar with our
processors through the project and are able to tell field engineers
much about them before ever being given a presentation.
The number of people who buy the boards, read the RSS articles, visit
the website, join the mailing list and join the live chat are also
somewhat indicative of a growing and healthy ecosystem, but our main
focus is to simply make sure we are getting feedback on what we are
building and are able to make continuous improvements to the
capabilities of others to take the design and make something cool from
it and to advance the state of open source software for the base
platform.
BTW, it's likely that an emphasis on hardware produces a more robust
design. Panda hardware has plenty of issues, although they have just
released their first major board revision.
I think you'll find that there is great success in the PandaBoard
project if you look at the goal of advancing the state of open source
software on OMAP4. To that end, I expect you will find continued
investments in the project.
I have no doubt this is true. But, neither is it facilitated (or
impeded) by keeping OMAPx out of the hands of low-volume hardware
folks, is it? Aren't these orthogonal considerations?
At the end of the day, I accept that what is best for TI is not
necessarily best for the open-source hardware and hobbyist community.
If the two interests align, it may only be a happy coincidence.
Still, it makes me sad, as an engineer who got my start in technology
partly by the largess of big semiconductor companies. (They were
willing to hand out unlimited tech literature and free samples to a
high-school kid.) It's always nice when they save some table crumbs
for us.
Mark
Mark,
i am not entirely certain i understand your complaint.
Both BeagleBoard and PandaBoard projects are open source and open
designs. they are low cost and they both provide excellent platforms
for developing under and for Linux, however there are different target
audiences for the two boards.
The primary purpose of the PandaBoard is to provide "Bleeding Edge"
access to TI arm cores and primarily targeted for software development
environments.
this is illustrated with the fact that with Google's recent release of
Ice Cream Sandwich aka android 4.0, that the PandaBoard is the ONLY
development platform directly supported by Google.
Dave
I think that PandaBoard project chose the wrong way by making this platform so cheap. As it essentially targeted for device manufacturers the price should be a few $k for the board. Why? To cut all those stupid questions from hobbyists who don’t even understand how to compile x-loader. I’m sure that TI has to answer a lot of requests from single volume designers about availability of OMAP4 processors. Why does TI need this? I don’t understand.
Want OMAP4? Buy a SOM from Variscite.
Want NVidia Tegra 2? Buy a SOM from Toradex.
Learn to integrate cheap solutions into your designs.
2011/12/7 David Anders <danders.dev@gmail.com>
Both BeagleBoard and PandaBoard projects are open source and open
designs.
Speaking about openness - does anybody know whether promised DSP
accelerated video encoders for PandaBoard are released by TI?
Thanks,
Andrey.
No, but the IVAHD accelerated ones are
Speaking about openness - does anybody know whether promised DSP
accelerated video encoders for PandaBoard are released by TI?No, but the IVAHD accelerated ones are
Right, this is what I was asking about .
BTW, do you have any links to the corresponding documentation? In
particular I am interesting in gstrreamer-based solutions (something
like TIVidenc1 element on BeagleBoard). My quick attempt to Google for
"PandaBoard encoder gstreamer" reveals only the following relevant
link which does not look promising :
http://groups.google.com/group/pandaboard/browse_thread/thread/13fd638da8e6f744
Thanks!
Andrey.
P.S.
Sorry for the off-topic discussion (yes, I've heard about PandaBoard
mail-list ), but just could not resist to ask this question while
reading the thread.
Maxim Podbereznyy wrote:
I think that PandaBoard project chose the wrong way by making this platform so cheap. As it essentially targeted for
device manufacturers the price should be a few $k for the board. Why? To cut all those stupid questions from hobbyists
who don't even understand how to compile x-loader. I'm sure that TI has to answer a lot of requests from single volume
designers about availability of OMAP4 processors. Why does TI need this? I don't understand.
I am more annoyed by the (stupid) non-hobbyists who think they hit the mother lode
and found a board they can productize for a fraction of the real-world costs..
TI should sell the panda at 2 price points, the subsidized "hobbyist" one and the
"professional" one....
Hi Dave,
i am not entirely certain i understand your complaint.
Sorry, I didn't mean this to come across so negative. Pandaboard and
Beagleboard are both wonderful projects. The benefits to Linux and
the broader open community are impressive. Hey, TI even sent me a
free board to play with! So any complaint needs to be tempered.
This thread started with an observation by some Beagle folks that TI's
restrictions on OMAP4 availability (i.e. you can't buy one at Digikey)
may carry forward to OMAP5, and thereby scuttle plans for an OMAP5
Beagleboard. The supposition was that TI may produce another
Pandaboard-like product instead, which has consequences for the open-
hardware folks because, as you stated,
there are different target audiences for the two boards.
What I was trying to ask was, Why can't we have our cake (the
Pandaboard's acknowledged success in spurring OMAP4 Linux and Android
development) and eat it too (give the open-hardware guys the ability
to buy OMAP4s in small quantities to use in their own projects)? As I
said, to my naive thinking, these seem like orthogonal considerations.
(And, I might have added, why must the audience be so circumscribed in
the first place? It's fine that the board is designed with one group
in mind, but after it's offered for sale, why not just embrace whoever
wants to use it, for whatever purpose?)
Beagleboard clearly has a much broader ecosystem, and a larger user
base, vs. Pandaboard. I'm certain the main reason for this is that
Beagleboard came first, and colonized a big chunk of the potential
users. But I suspect the dictation of "target audience" also has
something to do with it. Why fool around with OMAP4 in a hardware
project when TI keeps going out of their way to remind you that you
are not in their target audience, and won't promise that you will ever
be able to purchase their chips?
By the time OMAP5 is widely available, more Beagleboard folks will be
looking to upgrade. It would be really cool if there were a reference
design that is not merely open in the sense of being public, but open
in the sense that anyone can use it as a starting point for derivative
boards and products.
Mark
Mark,
Let me clarify a few things for you and anyone else following this
thread.
first, TI makes no money on either BeagleBoard or Pandaboard. In fact
for PandaBoard, TI loses money as they subsidize the cost of the
PandaBoard.
with that in mind, the volume of sales of either board is not a metric
for it's success.
for both boards TI's goal is to sell chips(not necessarily 5 chips at
time or to hobbists) and to promote Open Source Software.
BeagleBoard and PandaBoard are sponsored by two different divisions
inside of TI, each with their own goals.
PandaBoard is intended to provide high end software developers the
opportunity to work with bleeding edge products prior them being
available in retail products.
for instance the PandaBoard has been available way in advance of
products like the Amazon Kindle Fire. PandaBoard has also become the
defacto standard for doing Android ICS development. Granted you can't
build your own "android device" from an OMAP4 chip, but for most of
the software developers, they aren't concerned with that.
BeagleBoard has different goals and requirements.(which Jason can
comment on)
anyway, it boils down to this, you are equating success of the boards
with the volume of sales of the board and the size of the "ecosystem"
users who make hardware products, when in fact neither of those are
even on the list.
Dave
Hi Dave,
I feel like we may be talking past each other. You wrote,
anyway, it boils down to this, you are equating success of the boards
with the volume of sales of the board and the size of the "ecosystem"
users who make hardware products, when in fact neither of those are
even on the list.
I agree these are not TI's criteria, which is why I said:
At the end of the day, I accept that what is best for TI is not
necessarily best for the open-source hardware and hobbyist
community. If the two interests align, it may only be a happy
coincidence.
but then went on to question why the pursuit of TI's criteria should
be incompatible with the Beagleboard model. In other words, couldn't
a Beagleboard-like offering be just as effective for TI as the
Pandaboard has been, in those areas where you are touting the
Pandaboard's success, while at the same time making the open-hardware
people happy? I haven't read any explanation for why the pursuit of
the former must necessary lead to neglect of the latter.
But I may be pressing the point too far. TI will do what TI will do,
and it's not my intention to antagonize any of you, just to offer some
friendly criticism and try to understand the company's logic.
Mark
Mark,
Hi Dave,
I feel like we may be talking past each other. You wrote,
> anyway, it boils down to this, you are equating success of the boards
> with the volume of sales of the board and the size of the "ecosystem"
> users who make hardware products, when in fact neither of those are
> even on the list.I agree these are not TI's criteria, which is why I said:
> At the end of the day, I accept that what is best for TI is not
> necessarily best for the open-source hardware and hobbyist
> community. If the two interests align, it may only be a happy
> coincidence.
how is having a subsized low cost development board in advance not a
good thing for the open-souce community?
but then went on to question why the pursuit of TI's criteria should
be incompatible with the Beagleboard model. In other words, couldn't
a Beagleboard-like offering be just as effective for TI as the
Pandaboard has been, in those areas where you are touting the
Pandaboard's success, while at the same time making the open-hardware
people happy? I haven't read any explanation for why the pursuit of
the former must necessary lead to neglect of the latter.But I may be pressing the point too far. TI will do what TI will do,
and it's not my intention to antagonize any of you, just to offer some
friendly criticism and try to understand the company's logic.
the only difference between the pandaboard and beagleboard is that you
can purchase the SoC for the beagleboard in small quantity.
if you look at the history of OMAP3 series you will find that it too
was also not able to be purchased in small quantity.
as the chip was moved into the catalog portion of TI, it then became
available.
i think your sticking point is not being able to purchase OMAP4 in
small quantity.
is that correct?
Dave
how is having a subsized low cost development board in advance not a
good thing for the open-souce community?
I hope nothing in my comments could be construed to imply otherwise.
i think your sticking point is not being able to purchase OMAP4 in
small quantity.is that correct?
Pretty much, yes. It's not that *I* want to design my own OMAP4
board, but rather the things which tend to go along with including
hardware in the mission:
-- more people designing add-on boards -> more interest in the
hobbyist community -> greater diversity of applications
-- encouragement to use the DSP for things other than video encode/
decode
-- a more stable dev platform for everyone, because the HW geeks are
more likely to offer design improvements, whereas the typical Android
developer doesn't care. this is analogous to the open- vs closed-
source models of SW development---when the community gets inside the
debug loop, quality is higher.
Again, none of this is meant to imply that PB has not been hugely
successful in Linux/Android development. It has. It's just that BB
demonstrates, in my view, a superior model, because you can have
everything PB has, and more besides. I mean, offering OMAPx for sale
at Digikey and openly encouraging derivative-hardware projects is not
going to adversely impact the development successes that are happening
with PB, will it?
if you look at the history of OMAP3 series you will find that it too
was also not able to be purchased in small quantity. as the chip was
moved into the catalog portion of TI, it then became available.
I don't have knowledge of the pre-BB timeline. Is the situation with
OMAP4 really the same as OMAP3, just at a different point in its
lifecycle? Seems like OMAP4 has been around for quite a while now.
And, HW guys become markedly less interested in OMAP(n) once OMAP(n+1)
is sampling. We're getting close to that point with OMAP5, no? Was
OMAP4 already sampling to customers when BB was first offered for
sale?
Maybe our views are not so far apart, but you are taking it as a given
that each new OMAP will be unavailable in small quantities for a
protracted period---in fact well beyond the point at which you can buy
products with that OMAP inside! I am questioning whether this is
really necessary. I'm glad it doesn't work this way with the other TI
parts I buy, like op-amps and I wonder what tangible benefits TI
derives from this policy.
Mark
Hello Andrey,
I know this is not the scope of the list or the thread, but since it
looks like nobody answered, there it goes:
I am using gst-ducati with Distributed Codec Engine (project from rob
clark), and it works on my PandaBoard:
https://gitorious.org/gstreamer-omap/gst-ducati
there is a PPA for ubuntu 11.10 that works very well:
https://launchpad.net/~tiomap-dev/+archive/release?field.series_filter=oneiric
For more information, you should ask on PandaBoard community or their
mailing list.
Good luck!
Marco Casaroli