AlphaScale ASM9260 ARM9 Processor Details and Development Board

Yesterday, as I wrote a Linux 4.0 Changelog, I noticed a new ARM processor called AlphaScale ASM9260, and I thought it might be interesting to find out more. A Google search would only return results from the Linux kernel mailing list and mirrors, so I checked out the code a bit to find out its an ARM9 processor made by AlphaScale Integrated Circuits Systems, Inc, based in Wuxi, China. The company website alphascale.com does not work, but I found out the processor is sold on Taobao for 38 RMB (~$6), and there’s also a development board (ASM9260DVK) for 498 RMB or about $80, and that’s basically the only two links were I could find any details.

AlphaScale ASM9260T is arm ARM926EJS processor clocked at 240 MHz, 16GN I-cache and D-cache, 8KB SRAM, with the following peripherals:

• 32-bit SDRAM/NOR interface
• MLC NAND 24-bit ECC
• 2x USB 2.0 OTG, 2x USB 2.0 PHY
• 24-bit LCD interface
• Camera interface
• 10/100M Ethernet MAC
• 2x CAN, 10x USART, 2x SPI, 1x SQPI, 32 GPIO, 2x I2C
• 8x 12-bit ADC, 1x 12-bit DAC
• 2x 5.1 channels I2S
• Packages – LQFP216,  LQFP176, or LQFP128

The development board  comes with a 10/100M Ethernet interface (KSZ8051RNL Ethernet PHY), micro and full size USB ports, two UART ports (DB9) for debugging and app?, a CAN port, a camera interface and two audio jacks (WM8731L Audio Codec). It can also support 4.5″, 7″ or 8″ displays, and boot from SPI NOR and NAND. There’s also a 20-pin JTAG interface., and a few unpopulated UART and RS422 headers.

The software development kit description refers to ALPOS ADS1.2 development environment, but I can’t find any details about it, as well as support for Linux 2.6.38, U-boot and GCC cross-toolchain. It might not be exactly using the latest version of Linux, but since the developer who submitted patchsets for ASM9260 has been working on it since August 2014, some company must be serious about improving Linux support for the platform.

The company claims ASM9260 offers a more cost effective solution compared to Samsung S3C2440 and Atmel SAM9G45, partially because it can be used on 2-layer boards, while the competitors require 6-layer boards.

Apart from the two Taobao links listed in introduction, I can’t find any useful links, so in case you are interested in such platform, and need more details, you’d either have to call to +86(0)25 86892412/86462412 (in China) or QQ to 714960297, and you’d probably better speak Mandarin. [Update: There’s a product page in Chinese on Tianjili website].

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