WonderMedia Prizm WM8950 Cortex A9 SoC

WonderMedia Technologies, a subsidiary of Via Technologies, has unveiled the Prizm WM8950, a single core Cortex A9 processor running up to 800 Mhz with a Mali-400 GPU. The WM8950 SoC is especially aimed at low cost tablets running Android 4.0 as well as WinCE 7.0 smartbooks, but the company says it would also be suitable for applications such as Smart TV, SmartStream for wireless display and multimedia streaming, networked projectors, digital signage and thin clients. Peripheral support includes HDMI, LVDS, and DVO video interfaces, CMOS sensor input for webcams and SD / e-MMC card support.. Additional I/O includes 10/100 Ethernet, USB 2.0, audio, SPI, I2C, UARTs and GPIO. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth can be supported with external chips via SPI and UART interfaces. PRIZM WM8950 Key Features: 800MHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor ARM Mali-400 3D graphics Processor Multi-standard 1080p video decoding engine H.264 video encoding DDR3/LPDDR2 DRAM interface Multiple video interface including […]

Marvell Armada 1500 Google TV Reference Design

Marvell announced that its Foresight Platform, powered by Marvell ARMADA 1500 HD Secure Media Processor System-on-a-Chip (SoC), will be officially used by Google TV (replacing Intel CE4100 SoC) and be introduced at CES 2012. The company said Google TV smart TVs, set-top boxes (STB) and blu-ray players based on its platform would be available later this year. The Foresight Platform uses Marvell’s Qdeo video processing technology designed to deliver improved 3D video, rich audio, 3D graphics and TV-friendly Web content thanks to noise reduction, de-interlacing, low bit-rate internet video enhancement and other enhancement techniques such as Adaptive Contrast Enhancement (ACE) and Intelligent Color Remapping (ICR). ARMADA 1500 (codenamed 88DE3100) contains Marvell’s ARM v6/7-compatible PJ4B SMP super-scalar dual-core CPU. The chip is designed to enable PC-like processing power to support Web browsing with support for Flash and other key technologies – with the aid of more than 6000 Dhrystone MIPS of […]

Intrinsyc Launches OPEN-6 Platform for Freescale i.MX6

Intrinsyc Software International announced the OPEN-6 Design and Production Platform  that leverages Freescale i.MX 6 multi-core Cortex-A9 processors. Intrinsyc’s OPEN-6 DPP product line will deliver a platform for device makers focused on tablets, eReaders, automotive infotainment (IVI), and industrial handhelds. The platform will include support for: Android 4.0 or Windows Mobile 6.5 Production BSP Advanced Power Management 3G and 4G communication module options, with Intrinsyc’s RapidRIL technology Combination Bluetooth, WLAN, and GPS Capacitive multi-touch display with multiple options including daylight readability Multiple high resolution cameras Full suite of sensors Device Management through Intrinsyc’s i.Device Manager The OPEN-6 DPP product line includes the following solutions: Licensable Production Package – includes production software in source format and cost optimized hardware design that can be licensed by OEM’s and ODM’s for device acceleration Development Kit – solution for application developers and device manufacturers to evaluate, develop, test, and deploy applications that utilize the […]

Ziilabs ZMS-40 Quad Core Cortex A9 SoC is now Available

Ziilabs has just announced the availability of its 100-core ZMS-40 StemCell Media processor optimized for Android tablets. The ZMS-40 combines 96 of ZiiLABS’ StemCell media processing cores with four 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 CPUs. The number of StemCell Media processors has doubled compared to the dual core ZMS-20. Ziilabs’ own GPU benchmark called MandelMark shows a 2X increase in performance or a 50% reduction in power consumption. The benchmark is not yet available for download, but the company plans to release it in Q1 2012 as an apk file. This processor competes directly with the Nvidia Tegra 3 in terms of CPU and GPU performance. It may actually beat it, as it can support dual independent displays (see below for details). Here are ZMS-40 Key Features: Quad 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 cores with Neon ZiiLABS flexible Stemcell media processing capabilities Low-energy SIMD architecture for high performance media acceleration 96x 32-bit floating point […]

Linux for Cortex M3 & M4 Microcontrollers

There are plenty of low cost Linux development boards based on Cortex A8 or A9 such as the Beaglebone, as well as some devkits based on ARM7 and ARM9 such as SAM9 development kits , but if your application is cost and/or energy sensitive you can also switch to micro-controllers using Cortex M3 or M4 based development boards such as Emcraft SmartFusion devkits. You can run a functional uCLinux system with 1MB of RAM and 1MB of flash including the TCP/IP stack. You need to use uClinux and not directly Linux, because the Cortex M3 doess not have a Memory Management Unit (MMU) and only a Memory Protection Unit (MPU). This can bring some interesting software development challenges such as (apparently random) kernel panics, the lack of fork, memory fragmentation and more. You can check out http://kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/uclibc/Glibc_vs_uClibc_Differences.txt for the main differences between uClibc and Glibc. The instructions to patch and […]

Advantech Announces COMs, SBCs, Motherboards and Embedded PCs based on Intel Atom N2000 and D2000 Series

Advantech has updated its product range by adding Computer On Modules (COMs). single board computers (SBCs), industrial motherboards and embedded box PCs based on the latest Intel Atom N2000 and D2000 Series processors to its offerings. These low-power embedded platforms provide energy-efficient solutions, and serve a wide range of applications targeted at handheld devices, POS, kiosks, digital signage, medicine, and factory automation. Computer On Modules: SOM-7565 and SOM6765 The Advantech COM-Express Mini SOM-7565, with a mere 84 x 55 mm board size, benefits the low power consuming handheld devices market. SOM-7565 Key Features: PICMG COM R2.0 compliant module for Intel Atom processors N2600 Intel gfx support for DirectX 9 and Open GL 3.0 Supports 18-bit LVDS, eDP/HDMI/DVI/DisplayPort Onboard 2 GB DDR3 800 memory and 4 GB SSD Supports 3 PCIe x1, LPC, SMBus, I2C Bus, SATAII, 8 USB2.0, and GbE Supports Advantech iManager 2.0 and software APIs The COM-Express Compact […]

AllWinner A10/A1X Processor Resources, Development Board and SDK

AllWinner A10 (part of A1X series) is an ARM Cortex A8 SoC targetting multimedia products such as tablets, HD STB or digital signage. It is currently found in some low cost Android tablets such as Momo9C and will be used in Rhombus Tech’s Raspberry Pi alternative. The processor features an ARM Cortex A8 clocked at 1.5 Ghz with a Mali-400 GPU. It can support 1080p encoding/decoding, provides HDMI, Component, Composite, VGA and LVDS video outputs,  USB2.0 ports, a SATA 2.0 port and more… Here are the key features of the Allwinner A10: VPU (Video Processing Unit) HD Video Decoding (Super HD 2160P/3D Film) Support all popular video formats, including VP8, AVS, H. 264 AVC, VC-1, MPEG-1/2/4, … HD Video Encoding (H.264 High Profile) Support encoding in H.264 format DPU (Display Processing Unit) MULTI-CHANNEL HD displays Built-in HDMI YPbPr, CVBS, VGA LCD interfaces: CPU, RGB, LVDS up to Full HD Memory […]

Linaro 11.12 Release with Kernel 3.1.5

Linaro has just released version 11.12 based on Linux Kernel 3.1.5 and further support for Android 4.0 including graphics hardware acceleration on Snowball and Origen development boards. Here are the highlights of the release: Android Linaro ICS is built with the Linaro toolchain. Linaro ICS is running on all supported boards. DS-5 with Gator is supported in all Linaro Andoid ICS builds. The latest version of libpng (1.5.7) has been integrated in Linaro ICS. An AOSP master build is now available from linaro. ARM® Mali™ Hardware Accelerated Graphics is supported on Origen and Snowball. libjpeg-turbo has been integrated into all Andoid ICS builds. Developer Platform The linux-linaro and lt-panda kernel packages are now automatically generated by the CI build scripts DS-5 with Gator is supported in all Ubuntu LEB builds. XBMC packages, with Gstreamer and OpenGLES support, are now available at the Ubuntu Overlay (supporting only Panda initially) U-Boot-Linaro is […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design