Atom E3845 Freezes While playing H.264 Video

[idata]

Hi,

We have a customer facing device based on E3845 processor.

We have a custom application developed by us which loops through a 4 seconds 1080p H.264 video continuously.

When we have this setup running in around 40 devices and we observe around 12-15 devices getting OS Frozen.

System Specs:

• Windows 10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB - Build 14393.1770
• Intel ATOM E3845 Processor based Main-board with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD
• Custom application based on Electron shell (HTML5 application with Hardware acceleration enabled on chrome)

Symptoms:

• Monitor display output is ON and static
• User facing application is stuck: Video Animation is frozen, not responding to inputs
• Recovers after hard power reboot
• No Event viewer or application logs during the stuck period
• No suspicious Event viewer or application logs prior to getting stuck
• When a USB keyboard is plugged in, it is not functioning during this hanged period
• Windows is running on "High Performance" power profile

Have you observed a similar scenario? Any idea for a resolution ?

Please let me know if any more information is required to help debug the problem.

(I have seen another thread no this forum on an issue something similar on a Linux platform but does not indicate a resolution. Link:

[CarlosAM_INTEL]

Hello, Pubudu:

Thank you for contacting Intel Embedded Community.

In order to be on the same page, we would like to address the following questions:

Could you please tell us if the affected project has been developed by you or by a third party company? In case that they are third products, could you please give us all the information related to them? If it has been developed by you, how many units show this behavior? could you please let us where are stated the guidelines to develop them?

Could please let us know the BIOS version and its manufacturer related to this situation? In case that it is an outdated version, please update it to the latest version, then try to reproduce the issue and let us know the results.

Could you please let us know if this situation still happens with the Operating Systems stated on page 3 of the https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/platform-briefs/atom-processor-e3800-platform-brief.pdf Platform Brief Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor E3800 Product Family? In case that you ignore the answer, please use any of the listed OS to verify if the problem persists and let us know the results.

Please let us know the information that should answer these questions.

Waiting for your reply.

Best regards,

Carlos_A.

[idata]

Hi Carlos,

Thank you for the prompt reply.

Question:

Could you please tell us if the affected project has been developed by you or by a third party company? In case that they are third products, could you please give us all the information related to them? If it has been developed by you, how many units show this behavior? could you please let us where are stated the guidelines to develop them?

Answer:

This application was developed by us and is running on 9 client locations with totaling 40 devices. We are seeing this issue in around 15 devices. The area which is not clear to me is how could a bug in the software logic could cause the OS to hang.

Question:

Could please let us know the BIOS version and its manufacturer related to this situation? In case that it is an outdated version, please update it to the latest version, then try to reproduce the issue and let us know the results.

Answer: We are using the Insyde BIOS and it supports the latest Microcode revision (907). Also attaching the version information provided in the BIOS.

Question:

Could you please let us know if this situation still happens with the Operating Systems stated on page 3 of the https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/platform-briefs/atom-processor-e3800-platform-brief.pdf Platform Brief Intel(R) Atom(TM) Processor E3800 Product Family? In case that you ignore the answer, please use any of the listed OS to verify if the problem persists and let us know the results.

Answer:

We are using Windows 10 IOT Enterprise 2016 64 bit version. Even though the pdf does not include Windows 10 version, following link from Intel says the Bay Trail is supported by Windows 10. Wouldn't it?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000006105/processors.html Does My Intel® Processor Support Microsoft Windows® 10?

Additional Info:

We also tried the following steps recommend by Microsoft to enable key-strokes to crash the Windows system when it freezes. The idea was to make the system crash after a freeze and get the crash dump analyzed through MS support to find a clue.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/forcing-a-system-crash-from-the-keyboard Forcing a System Crash from the Keyboard | Microsoft Docs

Unfortunately, the system does not crash when it freezes. It seems the Windows kernel may be (looping/hanged) at a higher level IRQL than the keyboard interrupt.

Hope this also helps.

[CarlosAM_INTEL]

Hello, Pubudu:

Thanks for your reply.

Based on your previous communication, Could you please tell us if the affected devices have been designed by you or by a third party company? In case that they are third-party products, could you please give us all the information related to them?

By the way, could you please try to reproduce this situation using any of the Operating System (OS) listed at the cited product brief document and let us know the results?

Waiting for the answers to these questions.

Best regards,

Carlos_A.