@jcmarcos
There are a few more people. Peter works for Genesi on this board, as well as others. There are at least a dozen other folks that have boards. We know because we shipped them. We will try to explain a bit more about this, but we can only take the conversation so far.
The ADS board was designed and produced by STx. There were six versions of the board (2.0, 2.5, 3.1, 3.2, 3.5 and 4.0). Prior to that there was a chip validation system. The 4.0 board was shipped with v1.5 and v2.0 of the 5121e. As you might suspect, this is a very high number of board revisions. It should not take so long to stabilize a board design. There were are number of reasons for this, some we can discuss and some we cannot.
There are three 'cores' - the e300, the AXE (200MHz) and the MBX Lite (_Lite_). All the documentation associated with the MBX is proprietary and beyond what can be shared in discussion here. The AXE engine is documented and available through the Freescale website. We developed assembly level code for the AXE engine. As of yet, Freescale has only released this code to specific customers. That is their prerogative. This is also true for the MBX and Flash Lite drivers that run on the chip. Both still need work.
Here is what we can say:
1. A PowerVR driver for this chip is not generally available.
2. Solid code using the AXE is not available (a sound driver has had a beta release).
3. The performance is better in some measure because there is more RAM which means there is less swapping and the IDE speed is a lot faster, but all the performance advantages are lost with the I/O.
We predict this chip will be successful eventually, but it will take more work. Programming for it presents many challenges. Fortunately, as mentioned in another thread there has been a management change that will create a vast improvement in the opportunity for success. Sometimes it is the people and not the technology itself that create the problems. We were extremely excited about the prospects for this chip 12-18 months ago and we shared our enthusiasm here and in other Forums. For those of you that feel mislead, we are regretful. Be assured we have wasted many, many valuable man-months trying to bring this chip's performance
for consumer applications in line with its promotion (
vs. embedded use for which the chip is fine). Ultimately, there was an accounting at Freescale and the people responsible for the bulk of the problems are gone. Let's see what happens next.
R&B :)
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