Most SoCs have a very limited amount of internal SDRAM just enough to load the bootROM code, but a few integrated a few MB of RAM on-chip such as Renesas RZ/A1H with 10MB on-chip DRAM, in order to reduce costs for some applications that may not require external RAM. Allwinner V3s, designed for dual camera solutions, appeared to be such an SoC with 64MB (512Mbit) on-chip DDR2 RAM, but the block diagram seems to imply it is a System-in-Package (SiP) instead. Nevertheless you still get a single chip with an ARM Cortex A7 processor, two ISPs, a video engine, 64MB RAM, and more.
Allwinner V3s main features & specifications:
- CPU – ARM Cortex-A7 @ up to 1.2 GHz
- Memory – Integrated 64MB DDR2 DRAM
- Storage I/F – SD 2.0, eMMC 4.41, SPI NAND flash, SPI NOR flash
- Audio Codec – 92dB audio codec supporting 2x ADC channels and 2x DAC channels, 1x low-noise analog microphone bias output, 1x microphone input and 1x stereo microphone output
- Video Processing Unit
- Encoding – 1080p@40fps or 1080p@30fps + VGA@30fps H.264
- Decoding – 1080@30fps H.264 and MJPEG
- Video Input/Output
- 8/10/12-bit parallel CSI and 4-lane MIPI CSI2
- Up to 5M CMOS sensor
- RGB/i80/LVDS LCD up to 1024×768 resolution
- Peripherals
- 3x SD card controllers
- LRADC/SPI/TWI/UART/PWM
- USB 2.0 OTG
- EMAC+PHY
- ISP
- Integrated “Hawkview” ISP up to 5M pixels
- Supports 2x channel outputs for display and encoding respectively
- Supports various input and output formats
- Supports AE/AF/AWB
- Supports saturation adjustment/ noise reduction/ defect pixel correction/distortion correction
- Package – 128-pin eLQFP
The processor supports Camdroid, a lightweight operating system based on Android, as well as Linux just like its more powerful sibling (minus the built-in memory) Allwinner V3.
Beside Allwinner V3s product page, and the datasheet, there’s no that much info and talk about V3s in the Internet. Searching a bit more, I found out that Q3H-2 Sports Action Camera is based on the processor, and somebody did a short review of the thing with photo and video samples. Some people also did some hacking of the previous Q3H model based on Allwinner V3, but I’m not sure how much of that is usable on Q3H-2.
The makers of Lichee Pi One board have also designed an Allwinner V3s board named Lichee Pi Zero to sell for $6 in China, but I don’t have the full details, and only know some members of linux-sunxi have started to work on it. That still means there may be decent Linux support for the processor in a few months time.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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