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So in my post yesterday about the Raspberry Pi I mentioned that it could run GATE. Given that before the Raspberry Pi was released a lot of people were of the opinion that they wouldn't be powerful enough to run interpreted languages, such as Java, I decided that one of the first things I'd do with mine was show how wrong that is by running GATE. So having booted up the machine and logged in I installed Java with the single command:sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jdkThis took a while as it downloaded and installed all the required packages. I then grabbed the binary only copy of GATE's nightly build (while I wanted to run GATE I didn't want to try compiling it). Once downloaded I started up X to give me a graphical interface (the default distribution uses LXDE). From a terminal I then started GATE. The splash screen came up almost immediately, but then there was a bit of a wait while it built the developer interface. Once GATE had started I then loaded up a copy of ANNIE (the default information extraction pipeline). This was the point at which I then took the photo on the left. Now because Amazon seem to have mislaid a parcel I ordered, I'm stuck connecting the Raspberry Pi to my TV via a composite cable (I wanted to use a HDMI to DVI-D cable to attach to my nice monitor) and I can't get the screen to scale correctly. This means that the top and bottom are cut off slightly and it isn't filling the width. Anyway at least you can see GATE loaded and the Raspberry Pi resting on the box of chocolates on the floor.
I was intending to take some proper screenshots to show GATE working but unfortunately I couldn't figure out how (turns out that taking screenshots under LXDE is a slightly convoluted process), but here is a close up photo of the TV having done a small amount of information extraction.
I'm not sure what I'm going to try doing with the Raspberry Pi next so if anyone has anything they'd like to test let me know and I'll see what I can do.
nice
ReplyDeleteI posted it to the pi forum: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/general-discussion/big-graphical-java-app-running-on-the-pi#p65215
I guess the obvious next thing is to load up a ZX Spectrum emulator and play some classic 8 bit games!
ReplyDeleteHaving grown up with Acorn computers I think I'll try a BBC emulator first. Maybe a game of Daredevil Denis!
Delete"Given that before the Raspberry Pi was released a lot of people were of the opinion that they wouldn't be powerful enough to run interpreted languages, such as Java"
ReplyDeleteJava is not interpreted, there's a JIT.
Plus, OpenJDK on ARM even supports hardware acceleration. Take a peek here.
http://labb.zafena.se/?p=514
Good luck and thanks for the post!. I look forward to getting a RaspPi and playing with OpenJDK...
FC
Yes I didn't quite use the right terminology. But you have to remember that the JIT only kicks in for code paths that have been executed a number of times. I think most of the people saying Java wouldn't run are those who still think that it's slow in comparison to many other languages when (because of the JIT) that hasn't really been the case for years.
DeleteI didn't know about the hardware acceleration for ARM though, that I will have to play with. I was going to try one of Oracle's embedded Java SE builds for ARM to see if that helped but maybe now I won't have to.
Amazon have finally delivered my HDMI to DVI cable and I've had a chance tyo play around with the Raspberry Pi a little more (work has been kind of crazy). It turns out that currently enabling the XRender option on OpenJDK doesn't make any difference. I'm guessing that this is because X isn't currently accelerated so no matter which render is used it all results in software based drawing of gui components. Hopefully hardware acceleration will eventually be possible at which point this tip really should help.
Delete