Benchmarks

There’s some code on the beagleboard.org mailing list for 1GHz, which also bypasses SmartReflex. I thought it might be of interest for comparison purposes.

Linux benchmarking thread, for reference. I’ve not investigated which language it’s written in, but perhaps it’s C++. If so, would there be any merit in trying to compile under RISC OS for comparison?

If it is C/C++ then there’s not much point compiling it under RISC OS, because it relies heavily on floating point, for which we’re still using FPEmulator/softfloat.

still using FPEmulator/softfloat.

Until VFP/NEON under GCC is ready?

Correct. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to working on that this weekend, as long as no more big SCSI/USB/etc. bugs pop up.

Would it be a silly question to enquire if any progress has been made towards running at 1GHz ‘officially’ yet?

That’s the next thing on my todo list; if all goes to plan I should be able to start work on it next week.

Micahel, here’s some data for you:

Note: screenmode 1024x600 16M (TouchBook)

FFNew_test
CPU speed (MHz)    Time (ms)   Tot it Efficiency (it/ms/MHz)
            125        17030 93781789                  44.05
            250         8440 93781789                  44.45
            500         4210 93781789                  44.55
            550         3820 93781789                  44.64
            600         3500 93781789                  44.66
            720         2920 93781789                  44.61

FracVFP
                =======Single====== =======Double======     Single    Double     ========Single======= ========Double=======
CPU speed (MHz) Time (ms)    Tot it Time (ms)    Tot it =Efficiency (it/ms/MHz)= Calc speed Disp speed Calc speed Disp speed
            125    124100 177944574     14534 177936156     11.47     97.94      1433.881       1433  12242.752       1224
            250     61550 177944574      7208 177936156     11.56     98.74      2891.057       2891  24685.926       2468
            500           177944574           177936156
            550           177944574           177936156
            600           177944574           177936156
            720     21270 177944574      2491 177936156     11.62     99.21      8365.988       8365  71431.616       7143

FracNEON
CPU speed (MHz)    Time (ms)    Tot it Efficiency (it/ms/MHz) Calc speed Disp speed
            125         8970 177944574                158.70   19837.745      19837
            250         4450 177944574                159.95   39987.545      39987
            500         2210 177944574                161.04   80517.907      80517
            550              177944574
            600              177944574
            720         1540 177944574                160.48   11554.843     115548

Comparisons elsewhere won’t be ideal because I used the Touch Book (screen resolution stated above). Note that in ‘FracVFP’ and ‘FracNEON’ the displayed time figure is cs not ms – which confused me when I started looking at the figures and realised it’d taken much longer to calculate than the figures I’d tabulated. I’d have a look at your code for the factor of 10 speed issue… but I’m not ready for ARM assembler yet!

Chocolate teapots per second (CTPS), anyone (without OpenGL ES, of course)?

Does anyone have any thoughts about CoreMark? (Perhaps RISC OS doesn’t yet have all the necessary functions for this to be meaningful.)

A quick skim over the CoreMark website suggests that they’ve designed it to be easily portable. I doubt it would take long to get it running.

Just demo’ed the rotating cubes and Mandelbrot fractal programs on the BeagleBoard at SASAUG (Surrey and Sussex Acorn User Group) — they worked brilliantly. We used a resolution of 1280 × 1024 for the rotating cubes, the minimum resolution for which it works, but it was on a 1920 × 1080 screen. So the cubes were distorted. Has anyone got an mdf that includes a 16 to 9 resolution that will work for the cubes on a BB?
By the way, the rotating cubes was doing 35 fps consistently.

Cross-reference to The truth about VIDC, ViewFinder and VPod at c.s.a.hardware. BeagleBoard comparison results in Matthew Phillips’s post.

Hi any news about SmartReflex driver for xM or a new opp.bas Jeffery

No news yet, but a SmartReflex driver is the next thing on my todo list once I sort out the USB/SCSI CD driver.

These are the results for romark 1.01 running on a Pandaboard ES at 1200MHz.

Graphics Resoloution: 1920x1200, 16M colours

Test                                                   Benchmark
Processor - Looped instructions (cache)                  1878515    1056%
Memory - Multiple register transfer                         9710    5993%
Rectangle Copy - Graphics acceleration test                 1980     818%
Icon Plotting - 16 colour sprite with mask                 12347     617%
Draw Path - Stroke narrow line                              6469     414%
Draw Fill - Plot filled shape                               4349     298%
HD Read - Block load 1MB file                              13524     453%
HD Write - Block save 1MB file                             14355     472%
FS Read - Byte stream file in                                200      96%
FS Write - Byte stream file out                              200     104%

These are the results for romark 1.01 running on a Pandaboard ES at 1200MHz

That’s nice, but what do the percentages mean?

That’s nice, but what do the percentages mean?

That’s the performance relative to the base system (202MHz StrongARM, RISC OS 4.02)

Ta.

Looks like the CPU in the Pandaboard ES runs stable at 1.5GHz. So here are the romark 1.01 results,

Graphics Resoloution: 1920x1200, 16M colours

Test                                                   Benchmark
Processor - Looped instructions (cache)                  2361435    1327%
Memory - Multiple register transfer                        12114    7477%
Rectangle Copy - Graphics acceleration test                 1921     793%
Icon Plotting - 16 colour sprite with mask                 14531     726%
Draw Path - Stroke narrow line                              7176     460%
Draw Fill - Plot filled shape                               5084     348%
HD Read - Block load 1MB file                              15456     518%
HD Write - Block save 1MB file                             15906     523%
FS Read - Byte stream file in                                201      97%
FS Write - Byte stream file out                              199     103%

You’ll all be glad to hear I finally got round to writing the SmartReflex driver for the BB-xM and adding 1GHz support. Much as you’d expect, some benchmarks I ran showed that CPU-heavy stuff now runs about 20-25% faster than it did at 800MHz. The driver is in CVS, so expect to see it in ROMs starting from tomorrow.

Note that anyone who’s been using the ‘override’ entry in the CPUClk HAL device to set up custom OPPs/clock speeds will need to be aware that the SmartReflex driver uses a different table format to the non-SmartReflex driver. See the header and code for details. Also killing the Portable module won’t (yet) disable SmartReflex, so if you’re using your own code to set the clock speed manually you’ll have to deal with that.

Nice work!
Is the SmartReflex driver enabled by default?

Other than replacing the ROM, is there anything else needed to enable the BB-xM to run a 1Ghz?

Is the SmartReflex driver enabled by default?

Yes.

Other than replacing the ROM, is there anything else needed to enable the BB-xM to run a 1Ghz?

No.

Brilliant work, Jeffrey, thankyou :) This is the one thing that was missing!

Here’s another comparison between the Beagleboard xM and Pandboard ES.

The figures are from the SDL Quake 1 ‘timedemo demo1’ benchmark running fullscreen at a resolution of 800×600 and 640×480.

                       GCC 4.1.2    GCC 4.1.2   GCC4.6.3    GCC4.6.3     GCC 4.6.3    GCC 4.6.3
                       Softfloat    Softfloat   Softfloat   Softfloat    vfp/neon     vfp/neon
                       800x600      640x480     800x600     640x480      800x600      640x480
Beagleboard xM 1Ghz    14.0 fps     20.2        16.2        22.4         20.6 fps     29.5
Pandaboard ES 1.5GHz   23.5 fps     32.5        26.1        36.8         48.9 fps     66.3