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 […]
ITEAD Studio IBOX AllWinner A20 mini PC Review
ITEAD Studio IBOX is an AllWinner A20 based mini PC currently running Android or Linux distributions currently featured on Indiegogo. I’ve already written about IBOX in a separate post, where you can get all the specifications, but the company has also sent me a unit (engineering sample) for review. Since the system is still in development, and it’s mostly a development platform, I won’t do a review with video testing, system performance, etc… as usual, but rather show the progress and current issues in terms of hardware and software, and I’ll also mention documentation, and shortly try Android 4.2 (pre-installed) and the Debian 7.0 image released by the company. IBOX Unboxing Pictures I’ve received the device in a cartoon box containing the device itself and a 9V/2A power supply. If you are or become a backer on Indiegogo you’ll also receive an add-on board providing access to a SATA connector, […]
ITEAD Studio IBOX Powered by AllWinner A20 Features a 32-Pin Hacker-Friendly Connector (Crowdfunding)
ITEAD Studio IBOX is a mini computer powered by AllWinner A20 dual core Cortex A7 processor with 1GB RAM and 4GB Flash, a few USB connectors, Ethernet and video/audio connector. This mini pc can run both Android & Linux, and features a 32-pin connector that allows to connect expansion boards. Let’s have a look at the specifications: SoC- AllWinner A20 dual core ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1 GHz + ARM Mali 400 MP2 System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM Storage – 4GB NAND Flash + microsd slot Video Output – HDMI Audio Output – HDMI, optical S/PDIF Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB – 3x USB 2.0 host port, 1x USB OTG port (full size) Expansion – 32-pin proprietary connector with TV OUT, USB, LCD, UART, IR, CSI, SPI, SATA, GPIOS and power signals. Misc – LED , IR sensor, and U-boot button (FEL mode?) Power – 5V/2A 9V/2A Dimensions – 145 x […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]