We just rolled out a new suite of CE and Friends over the last few days.  This includes updates to Codec Engine, Framework Components, SysLink, Linux Utils, OSAL, and the XDAIS products.  And we also introduced a new member of the family - IPC Utils.

[ The new guy's name is subject to change - we needed something on the birth certificate, but we admittedly didn't give it enough thought. ]

The scope of the IPC-Utils-product-that-shall-be-named-later is "frameworks built on IPC", and the initial spotlight is on RCM.  RCM is fundamentally a MessageQ-based client/server framework for running functions on another processor.  It's been distributed with Framework Components for a few years, and is what the EZSDK's OMX framework, libdce, and other frameworks can be built upon.  But it's always been a little bit odd in that it introduced a SysLink/IPC dependency into Framework Components.  Putting it into a fundamentally IPC-aware product made sense.

There's also an OpenCL prototype we included in the initial IPC Utils release, also built on RCM.  It serves as both another example for building higher frameworks on RCM, as well as an interesting option for our users that prefer open standards.  Personally, I think OpenCL has its place - in systems with lots of coprocessors that can run tons of jobs in parallel.  In this prototype, we're just showing how you could implement OpenCL on a multicore system built on RCM/IPC... but frankly running it on a dual-core environment like OMAP3 isn't really a sweet spot for OpenCL.  But think about putting it on one of those cool C6678 devices (or a farm of them!) and now we're talking!

Back to the MFP release details, here are some key additions and removals:

  • Added TI811X support
  • Thanks to IPC Utils refactoring RCM, the Framework Components product is now back to its roots, providing single core XDAIS alg management again.
  • Removed Android support.  This one kinda bums me out, but the demand just wasn't there (on the devices using MFP on the HLOS), so the support cost didn't justify it.
  • Removed uClibc support.  Doesn't bum me out as much as dropping Android, but another victim of demand-lack.
  • Removed GT and DBC.  What do you mean you haven't moved to xdc.runtime.Log and xdc.runtime.Assert yet?!?
  • Deprecated FrameQ, COFF, DMAN3, and ACPY3.  What do you mean you haven't moved to MessageQ, ELF, RMAN and IRESMAN_EDMA3CHAN yet?!?
And here are the download links and Release Notes:

 That's all I got for now.  Now go write some code!

 Chris

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