am62x - Android performance issue
SDK: 08_08_00
Android version: 12
Hardware: TI SK and our own am62x development kit board
First task: Run Android on the TI SK using the pre-built files
Installed all the software, burnt the files into the emmc and booted the target.
Result: Android came up and showed a couple of icons on the monitor. Performance was sluggish in that when clicking on one of the icons (say the contacts list) there is a pause before opening the contacts screen. The pause was probably between .5 sec and 1 sec but it was not rigorously timed.
We have an Android based application running an a 335x platform and switching screens on the 335x platform had a similar delay. We were expecting that the AM62x with 4 cpus at 1.4G would be noticeably faster than the 335x.
Other E2E issues seem to be asking about the same kind of issue performance:
* e2e.ti.com/.../processor-sdk-am62x-app-switch-screen-delay-on-am62x-evm-android-os
* e2e.ti.com/.../4575312
* e2e.ti.com/.../4211749
At least one of these issues was reported against 08_03_xx so this does not seem to be a new issue.
The above issues recommended turning off animations. This was tried and turning off animations does improve the performance a little. But not a lot.
At least one of the above issues mentioned seeing the message "ti-udma 485c0100.dma-controller: chan1 teardown timeout!". We also see this message. It usually comes out about 1 second after the screens have switched.
Second Task: Build Android images for the TI SK.
This was successfully done and the new images were placed on the target. The performance was the same.
Third Task: Build Android for our AM62x development kit.
This took a little work to get our device tree into the images and to get a working defconfig file for the kernel. After a couple of failed attempts, we got Android up and running and when running on our hardware we have the same performance issues as on the TI SK board.
The TI-SK version that is currently running is producing an error message once a second. I don't remember these being present with the pre-built images but they may have been. The error message is:
[50062.087640] sdhci-am654 fa00000.mmc: Power on failed
[50063.641620] sdhci-am654 fa00000.mmc: Power on failed
[50065.403676] sdhci-am654 fa00000.mmc: Power on failed
[50066.965785] sdhci-am654 fa00000.mmc: Power on failed
[50068.519609] sdhci-am654 fa00000.mmc: Power on failed
[50070.081685] sdhci-am654 fa00000.mmc: Power on failed
We would like the performance for Android on the AM62x to be significantly better than it is on the 335x. At the very least, we would like to know why it is not. Hopefully, the next SDK can help address the performance issues.
