The Scottish Boinc Team

I've been keeping an eye on various single board systems since the Raspberry Pi was released. There are LOTS, however this little stunner has caught my eye.

ODROID-XU for $169.00 gets you 8 physical cores!



• Exynos5 Octa Cortex™-A15 1.6Ghz quad core and Cortex™-A7 quad core CPUs
• PowerVR SGX544MP3 GPU (OpenGL ES 2.0, OpenGL ES 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 EP)
• 2Gbyte LPDDR3 RAM PoP
• USB 3.0 Host x 1, USB 3.0 OTG x 1, USB 2.0 Host x 4
• HDMI 1.4a output Type-D connector
• eMMC 4.5 Flash Storage

The eMMC storage offers a real world read speed of 160MB/sec.

I have yet to even order one as my work schedule is crazy right now. I might try and schedule an order for my December holidays.

The board runs various OS's and I am confident BOINC will zip along quite nicely with next to no tinkering.

What do you guys think?

Link: http://www.hardkernel.com/renewal_2011/ ... 7510300620

I believe Skynet POGS already has a version for this. They are very active in producing ported apps for various devices.

Oh nice one.

I have been reading this guys blog for a few months:

http://burdeview.blogspot.com.au/p/rasp ... eated.html

http://burdeview.blogspot.com.au/p/ondr ... oject.html


Interesting reading :)

Just checked the message boards and Daniel over at POGS has been running an ODROID at POGS, Einstein and Milkyway for months now, error and hassle free !! Might look into this for a wee farm. Need to compare the performance compared to renting AWS server xeon cores when I want to boost things.
In fact BURDE VIEW is Daniels blog. He's the developer at skynet.

Been reading through, yes intresting times. Easier to understand the Pi, thats linux so not so bad. The Ordoid would be a learning experiance again...Android...wife has that on her phone, never thought of it for crunching !!

It comes with Android by default but you can wipe and install Linux :)

Read the web site, Ubuntu can be loaded, problem solved. Also noticed, ARM chips by samsung, same as wife's phone, maybe I should just hand it over to her and ask her to sort it out
nah, scrap that , give it to my 12 year old, tell him it's a phone really... he'll have it dancing in minutes....and demanding to know if it will run minecraft

alezevo1 wrote:...demanding to know if it will run minecraft

Janos wrote:

alezevo1 wrote:...demanding to know if it will run minecraft

Code: Select all

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:minecraft-installer-peeps/minecraft-installer
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install minecraft-installer

..... and then last seen vanishing into the black hole that is his bedroom

Found this and tons of others on Amazon



Might have a look at this later tonight.

think I will try this one

Just bought the droidbox to have a play about with , should be .....interesting

Droidbox now munching away

Superb!

Any pain getting it going?

How is the performance?

Only completed a few units so far on skynet. 2 straight away validated, 3rd pending so no errors so far. Time approx 8 - 8 1/2 hrs per unit. Runs all 4 cores no problem with no lag etc at 100%.
Had problems installing Boinc. Tried the official release but that all installed etc but wouldn't run. No info about why it was suspended all the time until i figured out that as the Droidbox doesn't have a battery like a phone then the client can't monitor the battery and refuses to start crunching.
Uninstalled official Boinc and installed nativeBoinc instead and it warns you no battery detected and then crunches away happily. Far more options for control with this as well so would definitely recommend nativeBoinc as the app of choice for Android so far.
Other than that, took one look at the power adaptor / usb cable / shaver plug style adapter supplied with the Droidbox and binned them. Didn't even attempt to plug in. Cheapest of fire hazard cheap garbage. Powering Droidbox from powered USB hub. Anyone buying one of these, do the same and order a powered hub with it and bin the adapter supplied. disaster waiting to happen and I doubt it would pass even the most rudimentary of electrical safety tests !!!
Health and safety rant over

I've ordered the Odroid U2 to try out.
With all the debate surrounding the possibility of getting to use all eight cores on the XU I thought I'd save the money and get the older cheaper model.

I'll let you know how I get on when it turns up....

I've placed my order as well. Can hardly wait for the box of goodies :)

It shouldn't take too long either, I was quite pleased how quickly mine appeared.
My tip so far is to make sure you have an adapter to go from micro hdmi to whatever your going to plug it into!
You'll also need a psu or if you ordered one you'll need a two pin adapter thingy :)

Silver wrote:It shouldn't take too long either, I was quite pleased how quickly mine appeared.

But is it any good?

Looks pretty good, if that's what you mean
I'll try and work out what its done tomorrow, which I suspect is what you're asking.
If I could understand boinc stats, hosts and everything else it might make it easier

My Odroid XU is now up and crunching!

Like the U2 it was a painless set up (if you discount cable delivery issues). My one complaint is the noise the fan makes when under load. The U2 is silent while the XU has a really annoying tone.

In terms of speed, no WU's delivered yet. Will report soon.

I'll stick it on the comparison when you get some data

pogs tasks take around 9 hours which would make is slower than the u2! I don't know if that is backoff due to heat or the android OS is less optimised. The XU only ran with 4/8 cores (as expected on android) so I am currently installing ubuntu to see if 1. I can get all the cores going and 2. performance is improved.

Is it not a case of it uses the 4 fast cores for intensive computing and the 4 slower cores for power saving ? Can it actually run all 8 at the same time?

During my research before I bought the U2 there was word that a firmware update may allow all eight cores to work. Whether that was on the current chip or the next generation was not confirmed hence my decision to go with the cheaper - although not by much - U2 model.

Now all I need to do is re-find the download! If you can find it please post and let me know!

Janos wrote:Now all I need to do is re-find the download! If you can find it please post and let me know!

I'm having a brain dead moment, what is it your looking for Janos?

The code/patch/kernel which allows the XU to run with all cores.

Hmm, I think you might struggle

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=170675

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthr ... ?t=2191850

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/16 ... 0-arm-chip

If you find something a bit more positive let me know and I'll look at ordering one next :)

Silver wrote:Hmm, I think you might struggle

I am

Thanks for looking :)

I wouldn't rely solely on my Googling skills, some of those articles are 6 months old.

I've been reading the forums and googlin all afternoon/evening. No luck but a vague memory of seeing a recent site with a dmesg output with someone able to use 7/8 cores... I will search again later on.

I may have got it wrong but everything that I have read is that the Exynos 5410 which your ordroids are based on can only run 4 cores. The Exynos 5420 can run all 8 cores. I believe it is a physical limitation so kernal upgrades are not an option.

bit of a discussion here http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=1907
that said all the latest firmware can be found here http://com.odroid.com/sigong/nf_file_bo ... _board.php

discussion about why you can't get all 8 cores here http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=1884, but in reality all 4 A7 cores barely make an A15 core so at best you would have a pentcore not an octocore

Yes, it has been a very frustrating day. I really did think I could get all 8 going... hey ho.

Late last night I had a stable build of Ubuntu running on my XU. It all appears to be working well.

In the short term it will not be used for BOINC , I have other cunning plans... and the XU will be offshore with me unable to transfer BOINC data.

Janos wrote:Late last night I had a stable build of Ubuntu running on my XU. It all appears to be working well.

In the short term it will not be used for BOINC , I have other cunning plans... and the XU will be offshore with me unable to transfer BOINC data.

I might be really cheeky and ask for a copy of your linux build sometime - I know nothing about linux but feel I should really have a play with it at some point.

Think it's safe to say it's not going offshore as a cabin heater, I'm intrigued as to your cunning plan though

I want to learn how to control the GPIO pins on the XU.

That sounds like the start of an interesting yet possibly frustrating adventure. Good luck and I'll keep an eye on the news for an oil rig that's seemingly randomly turning on and off

XU for sale. See: http://www.dunadd.co.uk/seti/forum/view ... =25&t=2084

No one seems interested in the item for sale so, now that I am home, I guess some BOINC crunching is in order.

Sorry Janos, I was tempted but I think I'm going to start a U2 farm when funds allow

Probably just as well, I think I just fried the one I had for sale!

Janos wrote:Probably just as well, I think I just fried the one I had for sale!

ooops although from what you have posted, seems it wasn't the best of beasts anyway....
thinking of another droidbox :)

It is up and running on Linux once again. :)

I managed to nuke the eMMC and kill the image... image restored, BOINC installed, credits incoming. :bounce:

It is only a very small % lower BOINC performance than the U2.

This morning I changed the noisy fan for a large heatsink so I have removed the annoying roar of the tiny, lowcost fan.

Janos wrote:I've been reading the forums and googlin all afternoon/evening. No luck but a vague memory of seeing a recent site with a dmesg output with someone able to use 7/8 cores... I will search again later on.

I knew I had not gone mad!

https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/10/1/264

I'll be interested to see how you get on then, maybe I should've bought that xu off you!

Just tried YoYo and every work unit errored on Ubuntu Linux.

Check the work units under your account and see if it reports the error. Might be a missing library. are you running 32 bit or 64 bit Ubuntu ? That said Asteroids just will not run on my Droidboxes, every unit errors regardless.

The result: http://www.rechenkraft.net/yoyo/result. ... d=23415662
The XU: http://www.rechenkraft.net/yoyo/show_ho ... tid=105221