Allwinner A-Series Category - Page 25 of 53 - CNX Software

February 2, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

H88 HummingBird Development Board Powered by Allwinner A80 Comes with 4GB RAM, Built-in GPS, 4G LTE Support

Merrii Technology is having some fun churning out Allwinner A80 development boards, and after A80 OptimusBoard, H8 Hummingbird, here comes H88 HummingBird. The new board is somewhat similar to H8, but is quite larger, and features 4GB RAM, built-in GPS, and a few other goodies. H88 HummingBird specifications: SoC – AllWinner A80 octa-core processor with 4x Cortex 15, 4x Cortex A7 cores in big.LITTLE configuration with Imagination Technologies PowerVR GC6230 GPU compliant with OpenGL ES 3.0/2.0/11, OpenCL 1.1, and DirectX 9.3 System Memory – 4GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB internal storage (Hynix H27UCG8T2BTRBC), micro SD slot up to 32 GB Video Output/ Display Interfaces HDMI 1.4 up to 4K UHD resolution RGB/LVDS interface EDP LCD + TP interface MIPI LCD interface VGA output Audio – HDMI, headphone jack,LINE-IN, Camera I/F – Parallel and MIPI CSI interface. Integrated 16MP camera Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet (Realtek RTL8211D/E), dual band Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n […]

January 29, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

FOSDEM 2015 Schedule – January 31 – February 1 2015

FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Software Developers’ European Meeting) takes place every year during the first week-end of February. This year the developer-oriented event expects to bring over 5000 geeks to share ideas and collaborate on open source projects. Contrary to most other events, it’s free to attend, and you don’t even need to register, just show up. FOSDEM 2015 will take place on January 31- February 1 in Brussels. There will be 551 sessions divided into 5 keynotes, 40 lightning talks, 6 certification exams, and with the bulk being developer rooms and main tracks, divided into 7 main tracks this year: Languages, Performance, Time, Typesetting, Hardware, Security and Miscellaneous. I’m not going to attend, but it’s still interested to see what will be talked about, and I’ve concocted my own little virtual program out of the main tracks and developers’ rooms. There’s a few minutes overlap between some talks […]

January 26, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

4K Output and Video Playback Capability Tested on 6 ARM based mini PCs and Boards

Since I’ve now got a 4K TV, I’ve decided to test 4K support for six different platforms based on Rockchip, Allwinner, Amlogic, Realtek, HiSilicon, and Mstar processors. For all these platforms I’ll report HDMI 4K output options, user interface resolution, and take close up pictures of the screen while displaying a 4K 1×1 grid picture and video with the image players, and video players such as MX Player or XBMC depending which are available in the firmware. Test Setup and Procedure I’m using LG 42UB820T 42″ UltraHD television with an HDMI cable connected to HDMI 1 port of the TV. Please note that my TV only support 8-bit color depth / YCbCr 4:2:0 which may cause compatibility issues with some boxes, at least the ones based on RK3288 processor, for 2160p 50Hz or 60Hz mode. I’ll take close-up pictures of the screen with a Canon PowerShot A2300HD camera by holding […]

January 16, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Mini Review of VidOn Box Android Media Player

Vidon Box is an Allwinner A31s based TV box made by Vidon.me, a Diamond sponsor for Kodi entertainment center. I’ve already listed specs, subscriber services, and uploaded pictures in the unboxing post, so it’s time for a review. Since Allwinner A31s has been around for a while, I’ve decided to write a shorter review. First Boot, Setup, and First Impressions Since the box provides some services with a subscription, with a free 1-year top-up card included, you’ll probably want to register an account on Vidon.me first, as it’s needed to activate all services in the box as shown on the back of the top-up card. After the optional Subscription is $14.99 per year, and it’s only needed if you need features like Blu-ray navigation, or audio pass-through. The simple remote included does the job if you only use the box for settings and XBMC, but otherwise you’ll need an air […]

January 11, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

So This is How Allwinner A80 Cheats at Antutu Benchmark…

Ever since Allwinner A80 was released, the Antutu scores did not add up with some devices getting around 30,000 points, while other devices scoring close to 50,000 or even higher. But what about 143,430 points? Now that would be impressive, and that’s exactly what Byron got in his Tronsmart Draco AW80 box, after changing a single parameter. The screenshot above reports a Nexus 10 because he must be using one of Freatab ROM, where they often change the device name for better Google Play compatibility. Nevertheless what kind of sorcery is that? How could he achieve this? It turns out build.prop, as a key called ro.sys.hiritsu. It’s set to 30 in the stock firmware, but if you change this to 95, some magic happens, and you get the very high score above. Byron reported his box got pretty hot with this setting, so it’s probably better not to try a […]

January 8, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

AllWinner A64 is a $5 Quad Core 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 SoC for Tablets

Allwinner already announced H64 octa-core Cortex A53 processor for OTT boxes together with Nobel64 development board in the last quarter of last year, and the Chinese silicon manufacturer has now introduced Allwinner A64 quad core Cortex A53 processor for entry-level tablets, as the processor will only cost $5 per unit in large quantities. As usual, Allwinner only provided a subset of information for their first announcement, and some technical details like the GPU are unknown. Key features listed for Allwinner A64: 64-bit Cortex-A53 architecture Supports H.265/H.264 video decoding in hardware, and supports HDMI 4K display Supports various DDR memory types, making the BOM cost more competitive Supports eMMC 5.0 for better IO performance and enhanced data throughput capacity Allwinner SmartColor display technology for more vivid and eye-pleasing visual experience Supports Trusted Firmware security architecture from ARM The company is finally moving to a device tree enabled kernel with Linux 3.10, and Allwinner 64-bit ARM tablets will also run Android 5.0 Lollipop. Hopefully, this processor implements proper H.265 hardware decoding, not GPU accelerated decoding as in Allwinner A80 processor. Interestingly neither Allwinner A64, nor Rockchip RK3368 announced recently, support VP9, despite it being the codec of […]

January 6, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Easily Create an Android Bootable SD Card for Allwinner A80 Devices with PhoenixCard Tool

We’ve already seen how it was possible to boot Linux or Android on Rockchip RK3288 devices from an SD card, which involved getting the stock firmware and running some scripts in Linux. Today, Freaktab member no_spam_for_me found out how to create a bootable SD card for Tronsmart Draco AW80 Meta, and other Allwinner A80 devices using PhoenixCard 3.09 tools for Windows (The latest version should be available @ http://dl.cubieboard.org/model/cc-a80/Tools/Flash-firmware-tools/). There may also be a way to use LiveSuit tools for Linux, but this have not been tested. Once you have installed the tools, start it, and load the firmware by clicking on “Img File” button (Here Draco AW80 Finless 1.1 firmware was used). Then press DiskCheck to scan for storage devices, and select your SD card in the drop-down menu “disk” (not sure why it’s blank in the screenshot above), select “Startup !” write mode, and click on the “Burn” […]

January 2, 2015May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 14 Comments

Linux Benchmarks – Rockchip RK3288 vs Exynos 5422 vs AllWinner A80 vs Intel Atom Z3735F

With all these Intel Atom Z3735F been released right now at a price similar to ARM based mini PCs, many people, including myself, are wondering about the performance of the low cost Intel processor against their ARM competitors. Ian Morrison just published some results from Phoronix Test Suite comparing the performance of Firefly-RK3288 (Rockchip RK3288), ODROID-XU3 Lite (Samsung Exynos 5422 BIN2), and A80 OptimusBoard (Allwinner A80) in Linux (Ununtu 12.04.5), against the performance of MeegoPad T01 (Intel Atom Z3735F) running Linux from a Live CD on a USB drive. Some of the benchmarks failed because Phoronix Test Suite got apparently confused with the file systems located on a USB drive, but at least we’ve got a comparison point, and the results are a bit confusing, as they’re no clear winner. In some tests like FFmpeg, the Intel SoC really crushed the ARM competition being at least twice as fast as […]