[Interest] Does anyone have Qt3D running on any embedded board?

[Thiago Macieira]

On segunda-feira, 31 de julho de 2017 17:31:53 PDT Christian Gagneraud wrote:
> RPI3 is definitely a top-of the line product despite costing $35:
> http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/02/29/raspberry-pi-3-board-is-powered-by-br
> oadcom-bcm2827-cortex-a53-processor-sells-for-35/
> 
> TL;DR: 1.2GHz Quad-core Cortex-A53 (64 bits), with VideoCore 4 GPU.
> 
> Previous generation of RPI were quite "shitty", RPI1 was armv5 w/
> softfp if i'm not wrong.
> 
> iMX6 and Sitara are "old" Cortex-A8/A9, running at around 1GHz.

Note that in this case we're focusing on the GPU. The main CPU can be slow and 
Qt3D will run, provided you have a good GPU and drivers.

> All of these embedded boards provides OpenGL/ES. The problem is not the
> HW, the problem is software setup and packaging, mainly due to
> proprietary binary blobs. eg.
> https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-62100

Right. That's where Yocto recipes and Boot2Qt come into play.

> >> These are not gadgets, they are cheap boards, that many people use at
> >> home *and* at work to demo technologies like Qt.
> > 
> > "Cheap" usually implies "low-end".
> 
> Sorry Thiago, but this is completely wrong. You can achieve low price
> by carefully selecting your components and mass-production.
> Mass-production is actually factor number one.

I said "usually".

Note also that prototyping on mass-produced devices means you don't get to see 
the real price of the boards until you start to move on from prototype to 
actual product. That's the bane of a lot of products, since then the HW BOM 
price shoots up and there comes a time to compromise by choosing lower specs 
to compensate.

At that time, all your demos that worked on prototype boards stop working on 
real products.

> Expensive doesn't imply "high-end" either.

Agreed.

> > And again, my point is that I don't see why we should make demos that run
> > on low-end devices that can't be used for something meaningful. Make a
> > meaningful demo that is a good cross-section of what you can do with Qt3D
> > and what it can exercise the hardware for.
> > 
> > If the demo won't run, stop trying to use Qt3D or get better
> > hardware/drivers.
> OK, OK. The industry have to catch-up with Qt... right...

That's not what I meant.

I meant that Qt3D is not simple and it does require quite a lot from the GPU. 
I just don't think that making a dumbed down demo that runs is good for us. It 
may get us the foot through the door, but end up frustrating the developer 
when they can't make anything useful besides that demo. That frustration after 
some time spent trying to figure out can be worse than the upfront "sorry, not 
on this HW".

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center