INTEL ATOM E3826 Feedback from an industrial customer.

["Stéphane ANCELOT" <sancelot@free.fr>]

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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
sancelot@numalliance.com



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