Allwinner A-Series Category - Page 15 of 53 - CNX Software

October 4, 2017October 5, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Olimex Introduces Universal Systems-on-Module with 204-pin SO-DIMM Edge Connector

Olimex has designed several system-on-modules (SoM) over the years for on various processors such as Rockchip RK3188, TI AM3352, or Allwinner A20, and each time they focus on exposing as many pins as possible from the SoC. That’s nice for some application, but it also means SoM with different processor are not compatible, and you can’t simply design a single baseboard for all those SoMs. Olimex then realized many customers wanted an upgrade path for the SoM without having to redesigned the baseboard, and most were using the same common interfaces, so a family of compatible SoMs was needed. While there are already many system-on-module standards available, the company decided to roll their own SoM form factor based on the 204-pin SO-DIMM edge connector. The first SoM based on the standard will be A20-SOM204 powered by the popular Allwinner A20 processor. All SoM following this standard will expose the following […]

September 26, 2017September 26, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

Allwinner SoCs with Mali GPU Get Mainline Linux OpenGL ES Support

OpenGL ES support in Linux for ARM SoC is usually pretty hard to get because of closed source binary blobs coupled with the manufacturers focus on Android. Workarounds include open driver projects such as Freedreno for Qualcomm Adreno GPU, Nouveau for Tegra, or Etnaviv for Vivante GPUs, as well as libhybris library that converts Linux calls into Android calls in order to leverage existing Android GPU binary blobs. Allwinner processors relies on either PoverVR or ARM Mali GPU, and the former does not have any open source project, while some work is still being going for the latter with Lima project, but it’s not ready yet. That means so far, you’re only option was to use libhybris for either GPU family. The good news is that Free Electrons engineers have been working on OpenGL ES support for ARM Mali GPU for Allwinner processor, and have been allowed to release the […]

September 4, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linux 4.13 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 4.13 and a kidney stone…: So last week was actually somewhat eventful, but not enough to push me to delay 4.13. Most of the changes since rc7 are actually networking fixes, the bulk of them to various drivers. With apologies to the authors of said patches, they don’t look all that interesting (which is definitely exactly what you want just before a release). Details in the appended shortlog. Note that the shortlog below is obviously only since rc7 – the _full_4.13 log is much too big to post and nobody sane would read it. So if you’re interested in all the rest of it, get the git tree and limit the logs to the files you are interested in if you crave details. No, the excitement was largely in the mmu notification layer, where we had a fairly last-minute regression and […]

August 16, 2017August 16, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

Pine64 SoPine Cluster Board Takes up to Seven SOPINE A64 Systems-on-Module

Pine64 launched SOPINE A64 system-on-module based on Allwinner A64 processor back in January, with such module normally being found in low volume products where companies do not want to spent too many resources developing complex multiple layers boards with CPU and RAM, and instead focus on developing a simpler baseboard and custom software for their product. Pine64 made something else with SOPINE A64 modules: a cluster board. I don’t have the full details yet, but “PINE64 SoPine Cluster Board” comes with 7 SO-DIMM slot designed to take SOPINE64 modules with the board providing a micro USB OTG port, a USB host port, and Ethernet transceiver for each SoM, which are connected to a Gigabit Ethernet switch (initially Marvell 88E6185, but they appear to have now switched to a Realtek part), and accessible via a single Gigabit Ethernet port. Power can be provided by a 5V/10A power supply connected to a […]

July 3, 2017June 18, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Linux 4.12 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.12: Things were quite calm this week, so I really didn’t have any real reason to delay the 4.12 release. As mentioned over the various rc announcements, 4.12 is one of the bigger releases historically, and I think only 4.9 ends up having had more commits. And 4.9 was big at least partly because Greg announced it was an LTS kernel. But 4.12 is just plain big. There’s also nothing particularly odd going on in the tree – it’s all just normal development, just more of it that usual. The shortlog below is obviously just the minor changes since rc7 – the whole 4.12 shortlog is much too large to post. In the diff department, 4.12 is also very big, although the reason there isn’t just that there’s a lot of development, we have the added bulk of a lot of new header files […]

June 26, 2017June 26, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Allwinner A63 2K “Flat Panel” SoC Unveiled at APC 2017 Conference

Allwinner unveiled their latest A63 quad core Cortex A53 SoC for tablet at the APC 2017 conference in Zhuhai, Shenzhen, last week. The processor will be an upgrade to Allwinner A64 with a Mali-T760MP2 GPU, support for 2560 x 1600 displays, and a 6K H.265/VP9 video processing unit. Some of Allwinner A63 key features: CPU- Quad core Cortex A53 processor with 32KB L1 I-cache, 32KB L1 D-cache, shared 512KB L2 cache GPU – ARM Mali-T760MP2 “high performance” GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2 support VPU – 4K/6K VP9, H.265, and H.264 4K @ 30fps video decoder; Smartcolor 3.0 “video quality enhancement engine” Memory I/F – DDR3, DDR3L, LPDDR3, LPDDR2 Storage I/F – eMMC 5.0; TLC/MLC/SLC/EF NAND flash with 80-bit ECC Display I/F – Dual MIPI and eDP interfaces up to 2560 x 1600 resolution Audio – Support for multi-microphone array, multi-channel analog voice signal input and stereo ADC, DAC Package – […]

June 6, 2017June 6, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 24 Comments

A64-OLinuXino Open Source Hardware Allwinner A64 Development Board Launched for 50 Euros

Several boards based on Allwinner A64 quad core 64-bit ARM processor have been available on the market for a while, with products such as Pine A64(+), NanoPi A64, or Banana Pi BPI-M64. Olimex also has been working on A64-OLinuXino since late 2015, and the company has now formally launched the board for 50 Euros, which also happens to be the very first open source hardware board based on Allwinner A64. A64-OLinuXino Rev. C board specifications: SoC – Allwinner A64 quad core Cortex-A53 processor with Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1 or 2GB DDR3L @ 672 MHz Storage – micro SD slot, Optional 4 or 16GB industrial grade eMMC flash, optional SPI Flash Video Output & Display I/F – HDMI, 20-pin MIPI & 40-pin LCD display connectors Audio – Via HDMI, 3.5mm Audio In and Out jacks (Headphone output and microphone input can be changed to Line-in and Line-out via jumpers) […]

May 1, 2017May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Linux 4.11 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architecture

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.11: So after that extra week with an rc8, things were pretty calm, and I’m much happier releasing a final 4.11 now. We still had various smaller fixes the last week, but nothing that made me go “hmm..”. Shortlog appended for people who want to peruse the details, but it’s a mix all over, with about half being drivers (networking dominates, but some sound fixlets too), with the rest being some arch updates, generic networking, and filesystem (nfs[d]) fixes. But it’s all really small, which is what I like to see the last week of the release cycle. And with this, the merge window is obviously open. I already have two pull request for 4.12 in my inbox, I expect that overnight I’ll get a lot more. Linux 4.10 added Virtual GPU support, perf c2c’ tool, improved writeback management, a faster initial WiFi connection […]