AllWinner A80 To Support 5 Operating Systems, Products To Become Available in May

AllWinner has released some more materials about their AllWinner A80 Ultracore octa core big.LITTLE SoC ahead of the Hong Kong Electronics Fair 2014, and we’ve learned more about OptimusBoard, as well as tablets and TV boxes availability through a video interview shot by Charbax at the exhibition. Part of the release was more detailed specifications: CPU Octa-Core big.LITTLE Cortex-A15/7 Low-power CoolFlex power management architecture 2MB + 512 KB L2 Cache GPU – Imagination Technologies PowerVR 64-core G6230 with support for OpenGL ES 3.0/2.0, OpenCL 1.x, RenderScript, DX 9.3/10.0 Memory Supports dual-channel DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR3/LPDDR2, up to 8GB Supports Raw NAND with 72-bit ECC Supports eMMC V4.5 Video Supports UHD H.264/VP8 4Kx2K@30fps video playback Supports multi-format FHD video decoding, including MPEG 1/2/4, H.263, H.264. WMV9/VC-1, etc Supports H.265/VP9 1080p@30fps video playback Supports H.264 HP/VP8 4Kx2K@30fps video capture Supports 3840×1080@30fps 3D decoding, BD/SBS/TAB/FP supported Supports 3840×1080@30fps 3D encoding Supports RTSP, HTTP, HLS, RTMP, MMS […]

Banana Pi is a Raspberry Pi Compatible Board fitted with an AllWinner A20 SoC

So you’ve got a Raspberry Pi board, an enclosure, and a few add-on boards. Your application would however do with some more processing power, or you’d like to run Android, but you don’t want to have to purchase accessories all over again for another board. Banana Pi could be the solution, as it’s apparently [Update: it’s not. See comments] mechanically and electrically compatible with the Raspberry Pi, and comes with a dual core Cortex A7 AllWinner A20 SoC with 1GB RAM, a Gigabit Ethernet port, and a SATA port, among other things. The board does indeed look familiar, with all external connectors at the exact same positions, but the hardware specs are fairly different: SoC- Allwinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 processor @ 1 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1 GB RAM Storage – SD card slot, SATA connector Video output – HDMI, Composite, and LVDS/RGB Audio I/O […]

Embedded Linux Conference 2014 Schedule

The Tenth Embedded Linux Conference (ELC 2014) will take place on April 29 – May 1, 2014 at the San Jose Marriott in San Jose, California. The event will feature 90+ sessions on embedded Linux, Android and IoT with over 450 attendees expected to attend. It will also be co-located with Android Builders Summit and the AllSeen Alliance Hackfest. Even if you can’t attend it’s still interesting to see what will be discussed at the event to get a grasp of on-going developments, learn a few things about different optimization techniques, and so on. So I’ve gone through the sessions’ description, and I’ve designed my own virtual schedule with sessions that could be of interest. April 29 9:00 – 9:30 – Keynote: The Paradox of embedded and Open Source by Tim Bird, Sony Mobile Linux has taken the embedded world by storm.  Billions (with a ‘B’) of devices have now shipped […]

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Released

Every two years, Canonical releases Long Term Support (LTS) version of Ubuntu Linux based operating systems. The previous version was Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “Precise Pangolin”, and the latest Ubuntu 14.04 LTS “Trusty Tahr” has just been released with a 5 year support commitment for bug fixes and security patches. The company also releases other version every 6 months without long term support. There has not been major changes to this version, at least compared to Ubuntu 13.10, with the development team focusing on performance and stability improvements. For the first time, this LTS release also includes Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu Kylin, and Ubuntu Studio. It is also the first long-term support release to support “arm64” architecture for 64-bit ARM systems. Some notable others changes for Ubuntu Desktop include: Support for High-DPI screens and desktop scaling New screen saver and lock screen New window decorations, with improved appearance […]

Mixtile LOFT-Q Board and LOFT Kit mini PC Powered by AllWinner A31

Recently most development around AllWinner, at least for Linux, is focusing on AllWinner A20, and there are several AllWinner A20 board and development platforms available on the market such as Cubieboard2, A20-OLinuXino, IBOX and more. But apart from the team at Free Electrons, few people seem to be working on AllWinner A31, so there are few development platform available, if we exclude consumer products such as tablets and Android TV Boxes. There’s now an AllWinner A31 development board thanks to Mixtile LOFT-Q board, which also comes in LOFT Kit to make a complete mini PC with enclosure. Mixtile LOFT-Q specifications: SoC – Allwinner A31 quad core ARM Cortex-A7 processor with PowerVR SGX544 MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB 64-bit DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC (ver 4.51), SATA III connector for 2.5″ drives, and SD card Slot Video Output – HDMI 1.4 up to 1080p Audio I/O – HDMI, 1 headphone/TOSLINK […]

pcDuino3 Development Board Features AllWinner A20 SoC, Arduino Headers

The first pcDuino board powered by AllWinner A10 has been available for about a year, later last year pcDuino V2 was released with a built-in Wi-Fi modules and mechanically and software compatible Arduino headers, and now pcDuino3 has been announced in a form factor similar to pcDuino V2 board but replacing AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 SoC with AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7, and improving overall specs such as faster Ethernet, the addition of a SATA port, and LiPo support. pcDuino3 specifications: SoC – AllWinner A20 dual core ARM Cortex A7 @ 1.0 GHz, with Mali 400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DRAM Storage – 4GB NAND Flash, SATA connector, and microSD card slot (up to 32GB) Video Output – HDMI 1.4 with HDCP support, LVDS header Audio Out –  3.5mm analog audio interface, I2S stereo digital audio interface Connectivity – WiFi, 10/100M Ethernet USB – 1x USB host, 1x […]

Linaro 14.03 Release with Linux Kernel 3.14 and Android 4.4.2

Linaro 14.03 has just been released with Linux Kernel 3.14-rc7 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.33 (LSK), and Android 4.4.2. This month, I could not find any major changes or updates, but work has been performed on big.LITTLE, Samsung Arndale / Arndale-octa, HiSilicon K3V2 and D01 boards and Broadcom Capri hardware, as well as ARMv8 models. Here are the highlights of this release: Linaro Stable Kernel (LSK) 3.10.33-2014.03 big.LITTLE support – ARM MP patch set, IKS (ARMv7 only). Interactive scheduler enhancements ARMv8 features – CPU frequency scaling, CPU topology, CPU suspend Power efficient workqueue support Android v3.10 patch set from AOSP GATOR ARMv8 4xA57 4xA53 FVP (Fixed Virtual Platform) and Versatile Express TC2 support Linux Linaro 3.14-rc7-2014.03 GATOR version 5.17 Android topic (linaro-android-3.14-merge) updated to get the recent code from AOSP uprobes v7 (new version) Updated big-LITTLE-pmu topic from ARM LT (Landing team) Updated basic Capri board support from Broadcom LT (bcm590xx […]

ECS LIVA is a Complete Sub $200 mini PC based on Intel Bay Trail-M SoC

Many low cost Intel mini PCs sold on the market do not include storage and memory, and you have to add them yourself. On the contrary, ECS LIVA desktop computer powered by an Intel Bay Trail-M processor will work out of the box as it comes with 32GB eMMC and 2GB DDR3L, both soldered on board, and will sell for less $200 once it becomes available. Here are the currently available specifications of this small x86 computer: SoC – Unspecified Intel Bay Trail-M SoC. It should be on of the N2800, N2900 or N3500 series. System Memory – 2GB DDR3L Storage – 32GB eMMC Video Output – 1x HDMI, 1x VGA Audio – 2-ch audio combo jack (Realtek ALC282) Connectivity 1x Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8111G) IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 (AzureWave AW-NB136NF 2) USB – 1x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0 Expansion – M.2 interface (NGFF) Thermal – […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC