Allwinner A-Series Category - Page 36 of 53 - CNX Software

March 4, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linux Kernel Upstreaming How-To – Linaro Connect Asia 2014

I’ve already written a post about submitting kernel patches to mainline based on a 2011 presentation by Greg Kroah-Hartman, but Matt Porter, Broadcom Landing Team (LT) Technical Lead at Linaro, has given two updated talks entitled “Upstreaming 101” and “Upstreaming 201” at Linaro Connect Asia 2014. There are many planned talked during LCA 2014, and you can get the list as well as links to presentation and videos, as they become available on LCA 14 resources page. The first session “Upstream 101” starts with some definitions such as “upstreaming” (basically getting your code to kernel.org), “mainline”, etc, explains how to get information about the (912) maintainers (tip: it’s in the MAINTAINERS file), how to deal with the 2-week merge windows occurring every 10 weeks or so, but the bulk of the talk detailing the work flow required to upstream code to the Linux kernel. There are basically 5 steps: Preparation – Read […]

February 24, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

AllWinner UltraOcta A80 big.LITTLE SoC Officially Announced, Includes PowerVR G6230 GPU

Allwinner has formally announced AllWinner UltraOcta A80 SoC at Mobile World Congress 2014. The SoC featurs four Cortex A15 and four Cortex A7 cores in big.LITTLE configuration as well as Imagination Technologies PowerVR G6230 GPU, and a VPU with H.265 and VP9 support. The processor will be used in tablets, OTT media players, notebook PCs, all-in-ones, and smart TVs. Key Features: Ultra low power, high performance 28nm UltraOcta SoC with heterogeneous eight-core CPU computing Ultra performance graphics – PowerVR G6230 GPU with two shader clusters and 64 FP32 ALU cores CoolFlex power management system – optimized big.LITTLE technology to dynamically activate energy-efficient or high performance processor cores based on computing workload Next generation video engine – 4K encode/decode, H.265, VP9 Triple-screen display support Imagination PowerVR G6230 Rogue GPU is said to embed power saving technologies such as PVRTC and PVRTC2 texture compression formats, PVRIC (lossless image compression) and PVRGC (lossless […]

February 24, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Firefox OS Smartphones, Tablets and Reference Designs at Mobile World Congress 2014

Beside the $25 smartphone, Mozilla has also announced a number of smartphones and tablets running Firefox OS during an event at Mobile World Congress 2014. The first devices such as ZTE Open featured a single core processor, the new models come with more powerful dual and quad core processors, mostly from Qualcomm, but also WonderMedia and AllWinner, together with better screen and features. Let’s have a look. ZTE Open C and Open II ZTE Open C smartphone features a 4″ display (800 x 480 resolution), powered by Qualcomm Snadragon 200 SoC @ 1.2 GHz, 512MB of RAM, a 2MP camera, as well as a 1,200mAh battery. Engadget has an hands-on video. ZTE Open II sports a 3.5″ (HVGA -> 480×320) display, with a dual core Snapdragon processor @ 1.2 GHz, 256 MB, 2GB flash, a 2MP camera, and a 1150 mh, according to CNet. It also supports 3G networks. Both […]

February 17, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

AllWinner Linux-sunxi Community Presentation and Status Report – FOSDEM 2014

Oliver Schinagl, a member of linux-sunxi community working on open source kernel and bootloader for AllWinner SoCs, has given a presentation of the community at FOSDEM 2014 to give an overview, and show what progress has been made to date. I’ll write a summary in this post, but if you want to watch the video and/or access the slides scroll down at the bottom of the post. After explaining what sunxi is, and introducing himself, he gave some information about AllWinner and their SoCs: Founded in 2007 in Zhuhai, Chiang now with 550 employees including 450+ engineers 15% market share in 2013 for tablet SoCs, only behind Apple. Products: F-series SoC (2010), A10 (2011), A13, A10s (2012), and A20 (2013). (cnsoft He skipped A31(s) and A80 here as they are not really supported by the community). They list “Open Source Source” and “GPLv3” in their marketing materials although they clearly […]

February 16, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

How to Build and Run Tizen 2.0 on AllWinner Boards – FOSDEM 2014

Leon Anavi has spent some time building and running Tizen for Olimex A10s-OLinuXino-MICRO board based onAllWinner A10s cortex A8 processor, and gave a short presentation at FOSDEM 2014 showing the main steps involved in the project. The final result is basically a non-portable Tizen tablet with a main board connected to an LCD display. If you have an LCD screen, you could also use a monitor (VGA/HDMI) instead. After a short description of the hardware, and explaining it should also work on other AllWinner platforms such as Cubieboard, Leon gave a few no-nonsense recommendations he learned from his mistakes: Get a USB serial board for debugging Use recommended accessories from the manufacturer such as power supply or LCD display to make development easier Buy a board that can boot from micro SD or SD card, again for ease of development If something does not work… Restart the board! 🙂 In […]

February 10, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

DragonBox Pyra Open Source Handheld Game Console To Feature TI OMAP5432 SoC.. or AllWinner A80, or Intel Bay Trail, or Qualcomm Snapdragon…

Pandora is an open source handheld console which development started as far back as 2007. The project has had ups and downs, and some people have yet to receive the device they pre-ordered. As many components are now more difficult to source, Pandora has reach end-of-life, as Pandora 2 is now being developed with a subset of the original team, but has been renamed to DragonBox Pyra to start afresh. The new version aims to take to the good aspects of the original Pandora, and improve on the bad ones, so that DragonBox will have a faster hardware with a better looking case and better control. Here are the specifications listed on the project website: SoC – Texas Instruments OMAP 5432 SoC with 2x ARM Cortex-A15 @ 1.7Ghz with NEON SIMD, 2x ARM Cortex-M4, Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX544-MP2 GPU for 3D graphic, and Vivante GC320 GPU for 2D graphics System […]

January 18, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Firefox OS Running in InFocus New Tab F1 Tablet Powered by AllWinner A31

So far the only products I’ve seen selling with Firefox OS are entry-level phone such as ZTE Open. Mozilla is now also working on Firefox OS for tablets, with the chosen tablet being InFocus New Tab F1, powered by AllWinner A31 quad core processor with 2GB RAM, and featuring a 10.1″ IPS capacitive multi-touch screen. Here are the specs of the tablet: SoC – AllWinner A31 quad core ARM Cortex A7 processor @ 1.0GHz with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB Flash + micro SD slot Display – 10.1″ IPS capacitive multi-touch screen @ 1280×800 Camera – 2MP front camera, 5MP rear camera Connectivity – 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS, Sensors – Gyroscope USB – micro USB port Audio – Headphone jack, speakers Battery – 7000 mAh Dimensions – 266 x 170 x 9.7 mm Weight – 580 g This mid-range tablet originally runs Android […]

January 16, 2014May 29, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

FOSDEM 2014 Schedule and A Selection of Sessions

It’s soon time for FOSDEM 2014, a 2-day event where thousands members of the open source communities meet, share ideas and collaborate. Like the other years, it’s free to attend, and there’s no registration, and this year, FOSDEM 2014 will take place on February 1-2 in Brussels. There are 8 main tracks: Tracing and debugging Memory and storage IPv6 Mail Mathematics Hardware Miscellaneous Security FOSDEM 2013 had 7 tracks, but most topics changed with only Security and Miscellaneous tracks featured in the 2014 edition. There will also be four keynotes and devrooms for a total of 464 sessions (vs. 488 last year). Developers rooms that may particularly be of interest to readers of this blog are: Energy-efficient computing devroom – e.g. energy scavenging, battery life improvements, power measurements in embedded systems, open source power measurement tools and low power devices, etc… Internet of things devroom – 6LoPWAN, LTE in Linux, […]