Hi,

My name is Stéphane ANCELOT, I am working at Numalliance R&D Team in France (http://www.numalliance.com). We are making our own wire bending CNC platform, linux based using INTEL PC platforms (automation and GUI in the same PC). That may be the wrong place, but I think it is important to report my experience, regarding intel graphics performance , when benchmarking INTEL ATOM platforms for usage in our CNC.You may be able to report to the right persons in INTEL group


Our application need realtime performance to run automation tasks. This is done using Realtime patches against standard linux kernels. This means we can not use the more recent kernels, but stabilised kernel releases versions (at time of writing, RT preempt : kernel 3.14, xenomai API: kernel 3.16...)
I used a kernel 3.16.2.


We are using a 19 inch vertical display at 1280x1024 resolution.
We faced following problems with GFX driver :

a/console
flickering console at screen bottom in kernel 3.16.2 . The problem increased when there was CPU/disk/network activity.This problem does not appear from kernel 3.18.2 release. Unfortunately in our environment, we can not use 3.18 kernel , because it is not ready with realtime patches.


b/ 2D performance
Poor 2D performance, looks like we have not had 2D acceleration.
Visually poor performance visible when raising/lowering fullscreen window.
When moving object in paint application (inkscape) , the object does not follow efficiently the mouse.

c/ 3D performances
In our application,we are making heavy usage of 3D for CNC simulation (some screenshots available on request only). We have seen lot better performances than ATOM D2550 , we tried in the past. That seems a good thing.


Conclusion
Although there is a wish from Intel to provide ATOM platforms ready for industry, it is not ready regarding ATOM platforms. Because we can not change kernel releases versions, when validating a product. This requirement should be considered. In the same way, we can not change the PC platform every year, because of processor obsolescence. In our case, we are dependant on Ethernet realtime driver, Realtime patches, graphic 2D and 3D performance. We think too, that since ATOM platforms is not very spreaded and so common as Desktop platforms, BayTrail drivers are not so efficients. I am sure They will be... but in may be 2 years...


For these reasons, we will stop benchmarking ATOM platforms, and will benchmark Core Ix platforms, since we think the GFX chipsets is better supported regarding drivers .
Am I right ?

I am an open minded guy, so feel free to give your positive or negative opinion ! ;-)

I can give more details if needed. Have a look at what we are doing with an INTEL platform :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj30CeAFwuk

Regards
Stephane ANCELOT
sance...@numalliance.com


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