AndyCap Did you get Bela running on the older AI in the end or was it not worth it with the out of control temperatures without active cooling?

We got it to run yes, there was a GSoC project last year (https://dhruvag2000.github.io/Blog-GSoC21/logs/). There is a kernel issue that makes it crash at boot half of the times, but it essentially worked. The work done there should make it relatively straightforward to port to the new BBAI-64, as we were using the rproc driver.

    Nice (apart from the boot issue!).

    If I manage to get one I will let you know how it goes, if the passive cooling is up to it then I could have a play with Bela on it...

    So with a very basic test looking at temps:

    Temperature in room is around 18 degrees at the moment I guess. I have put some stands on so the heatsink is sitting about 2 cm above desk.

    Without any fan:

    At idle I am getting 58 degrees.

    After loading the two arm cores at 100% (using yes) I am getting 68 degrees and it seems to be sitting there with slight variations.

    I can't find my box of fans currently so I just pointed a desk fan at it:

    idle: 34 degrees
    100% load : 38 degrees

    I have no idea what speed the cores are running as the cpufreq stuff seems to be missing.

    And a quick basic benchmark (prime numbers Sieve)

    Taking the BB Black as the base

    AI32, no fan and suffering from heatstroke is slower at 82%

    AI64, single core, no fan is faster at 366% (pretty sure cpu is not at max freq here)

    So I have now tried to get it to throttle down by sticking it in a box with no ventilation.

    After an hour I have managed to get it up to 90 degrees with no throttling. It seems to be sticking to 90 degrees.

    I'm quite impressed with the temperatures compared to the AI32, they have done a better job.

    I'm going to try to get the PRUs, C7s and R5s spinning as well to see what effect that has, this may take some time...

      Thanks for taking the time of investigating and sharing

      AndyCap up to 90 degrees with no throttling.

      is that good or bad? ... makes me wonder whether throttling is implemented at all?

      Weird you don't get the CPU frequency ... what does /proc/cpuinfo say?

        Just says:

        processor	: 0
BogoMIPS	: 400.00
Features	: fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid
CPU implementer	: 0x41
CPU architecture: 8
CPU variant	: 0x1
CPU part	: 0xd08
CPU revision	: 0

processor	: 1
BogoMIPS	: 400.00
Features	: fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 cpuid
CPU implementer	: 0x41
CPU architecture: 8
CPU variant	: 0x1
CPU part	: 0xd08
CPU revision	: 0

        I asked on the forum and Robert got back saying the cpufreq stuff is not yet there:

        debian@BeagleBone:~$ ls -ltr /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq
total 0

        I'm guessing it is running schedutil policy:

        debian@BeagleBone:~$ cat /sys/module/cpufreq/parameters/default_governor 
schedutil

        So I am thinking it is already throttled slightly.

        Mooching around on the net TI say the processor can handle 125 degrees (junction temperature), how that relates to the sensors I am not sure but have found someone complaining that the processor shutdown at 115 degrees from the sensors.

        With ventilation and both arm cores flat out it sticks below 70, I'm happily messing around with it with no fan.

        Compared to the A!-32 which can't even idle without shutting itself down after a while it is a breath of fresh air!

        I have asked on the forum if anyone has looked at Xenomai on it, no bites yet...

          AndyCap BogoMIPS : 400.00

          does that not mean 400MHz?

          AndyCap I asked on the forum and Robert got back saying the cpufreq stuff is not yet there:

          but he'll know the current frequency for sure!

          AndyCap I have asked on the forum if anyone has looked at Xenomai on it, no bites yet...

          seems unlikely ... what kernel is it running? The latest BB xenomai kernel is 5.4 and it doesn't actually build right now.

                  debian@BeagleBone:~$ uname -r
5.10.109-ti-arm64-r49

                    I see your "ti-linux-xenomai-4.19.y doesn't build" issue has been open for over a year without response, not looking hopeful.

                    couldn't expect much as it was an issue that only happened with my config file.... I eventually got it to build somehow though, as that's what was used for the BBAI(-32) (https://github.com/BelaPlatform/Bela/pull/669).

                    AndyCap 5.10.109-ti-arm64-r49

                    Right, I had the feeling that all the work they had done for this board was done on 5.10 , so there's not even a branch to build a Xenomai kernel for this board. One could always try to run Bela without Xenomai ... (ah-ehm, needs a few changes to the source code, but a minimal example shouldn't be too hard to put together). The other challenge is the PRU you need to get to work. The good thing is that (PRU-wise) the code done last year for the BBAI should work also here with only minor changes. Trying to rebase it right now.

                      Thanks, I will look at all that once I actually get some PRU stuff actually running, everything seems different with this kernel and added to that I don't really know what I am doing 🙂

                      I've done some progress already, I can now run without Xenomai. Now cleaning it up and pushing soon.

                      Nice one, you are having more success that I have been having.

                      Been nose deep in trying to work out what the hell is going on with this board.

                      The two C66 DSPs, the C71 DSP and two of the R5Fs seem to be being used for some TI vision shenanigans, I'm guessing this is just to do with the dts stuff from TI, not sure it is really needed!

                      All the pru stuff seems to be installed and none of the prus "seem" to be doing anything currently, once I manage to just get a gpio toggling I will be happy!

                      OK, I have done my share.

                      The allow-no-xenomai branch should be able to run a bare minimum program on regular BBB without Xenomai.
                      And BBAI-support-rebased is now rebased on top of that and should work as a starting point for BBAI-64 work.

                      In both cases, to setup the build in xenomai-free mode, do as follows:

                      make coreclean
make -f Makefile.libraries cleanall
echo "BELA_RT_BACKEND=" >> CustomMakefileTop.in

                      alternatively to the last line, you can pass BELA_RT_BACKEND= as an option to make but the above is more consistent (remember to do the same thing again but setting BELA_RT_BACKEND=xenomai in order to revert to normal mode).

                      Nice one.

                      First I will try to get the allow-no-xenomai built and running on a BBB...