Category: Programming

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Samsung Gear S SmartWatch and Tizen SDK for Wearables

Samsung Gear S SmartWatch and Tizen SDK for Wearables

Albeit Tizen struggle in the smartphone market widely reported by the tech press, devices from cameras to smartwatches, all made by Samsung, are currently selling with the new mobile operating system. Announced about two weeks ago, Samsung Gear S is the latest Tizen product launched by the company. The smartwatch features a 2″ curved display (Samsung likes curved displays), Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.. and it can also make phone calls and access the internet over 2G/3G cellular networks. Samsung Gear S specifications: SoC – Dual core processor @ 1.0 GHz (Maybe Exynos 3250 like in Gear 2?) System Memory – 512MB Storage – 4GB internal storage Display –  2.0” Super AMOLED touchscreen display with 360×480 resolution Connectivity – WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.1, A-GPS/Glonass Cellular Network 900/2100 or 850/1900 (3G) 900/1800 or 850/1900 (2G) USB – micro USB 2.0 Audio Codecs – MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ Audio Formats – MP3, M4A, WMA, AAC, OGG […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments on AllWinner A80 Linux SDK Released

AllWinner A80 Linux SDK Released

After Android 4.4 SDK for AllWinner A31 last week, another AllWinner software development kit has been seen in the wild, this time for the new AllWinner A80 octa-core processor. A80 SDK includes source code for the Linux Kernel and U-boot, as well as buildroot, and various AllWinner tools. I’ve also noticed AllWinner A80 datasheet is available, but with the strict minimum information (45 pages). Let’s get the code, and extract it:

Now we need to configure the build:

sun9i is the codename for AllWinner A80, not sure what w1p1 means. Dragonboard must be the internal Allwinner development board, but I just selected Linux, since the SDK does not come with Android, and finally I opted for optimus, which could stand for OptimusBoard. You may need to install extra dependencies in your build machine, for example (in Ubuntu 14.04):

Now let’s start buildroot which should retrieve the toolchain, […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2014 Schedule – IoT, ARM vs x86, Optimization, Power Management, Debugging…

Embedded Linux Conference Europe 2014 Schedule – IoT, ARM vs x86, Optimization, Power Management, Debugging…

The Embedded Linux Conference Europe (ELC 2014), CloudOpen, and LinuxCon Europe will jointly take place at the Congress Centre Düsseldorf, in Germany on October 13 – 15, 2014. The 3-day events will consists of keynotes, presentations, and tutorials. Each day will open with two or three keynotes by speakers including  Jim Zemlin (Executive Director, Linux Foundation), and Jono Bacon (XPRIZE), followed by presentation and tutorials. There will be 45 presentations for ELCE, 58 for LinuxCon, and 47 for CloudOpen, I’ll make a virtual schedule with a few sessions part of the Embedded Linux Conference Europe “track”. Monday, October 13 11:15 – 12:05 –  Performance Analysis Using the Perf Suite by Mans Rullgar, Consultant When faced with a performance problem, the initial steps towards a solution include identifying the sections of code responsible and the precise reasons they are time-consuming. To this end, the ‘perf’ profiling tools provide valuable insight into the […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 26 Comments on AllWinner A31 Android & Linux SDKs, and Documentation Leaked

AllWinner A31 Android & Linux SDKs, and Documentation Leaked

AllWinner A31 software development kits (SDK) for Android 4.2 / 4.4 and Linux can now be downloaded, and relevant documentation has also been made available, including HummingBird A31 system brief and system manual. Part of the documentation is in English, but lots of it, is in Chinese only. Download links to AllWinner A31 SDKs for HummingBird A31 development board, but they may be useful for other hardware platforms based on AllWinner A31: Android 4.4 SDK (password: 5ck9) – a31_v4.5_hummingbird_kfb_ok.tar.gz (6.04 GB) Android 4.2 SDK (password: tz17) – a31_hummbingbird_V3.3_v2_kfb_0k.tar.gz (3.99 GB) Linux SDK (password: kdcw) – A31_MerriiLinux_V3.3_v1.tar.gz (1.17 GB) There are also links to firmware files specific to HummingBird: Android 4.4 firmware LCD output (password: w1s6) Android 4.2 firmware LCD output (password: b7de) Android 4.2 firmware VGA output (password: nfqw) Linux firmware (password: ibal) It takes a very long time to download the SDKs, so I haven’t checked the files, and […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on Linaro 14.07 Release with Linux Kernel 3.16 and Android 4.4

Linaro 14.07 Release with Linux Kernel 3.16 and Android 4.4

Linaro 14.07 has just been released with Linux Kernel 3.16-rc6 (baseline), Linux Kernel 3.10.50 (LSK), and Android 4.4.4. This month, Linaro has continued development on Juno 64-bit ARM development board, as well as other member boards from Broadcom (Capri), Qualcomm (IFC6410), Hisilicon D01, Samsung (Arndale / Arndale Octa), etc.. Android have been upgraded to version 4.4.4 with images released for Pandaboard, Arndale, Nexus 10, and Nexus 7, built with Linaro GCC 4.9. Here are the highlights of this release: Linux Linaro 3.16-rc6-2014.07 released GATOR version 5.18 (same version as in 2014.04) updated basic Capri board support from Broadcom LT. Good progress in upstreaming the code: now the topic has 21 patch on top of v3.16-rc4 vs 53 patches on top of v3.15 in 2014.06 cycle removed cortex-strings-arm64 topic as the code is accepted into the mainline new topic from Qualcomm LT to add IFC6410 board support updated Versatile Express ARM64 […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments on ARM TechCon 2014 Schedule – 64-Bit, IoT, Optimization & Debugging, Security and More

ARM TechCon 2014 Schedule – 64-Bit, IoT, Optimization & Debugging, Security and More

ARM Technology Conference (TechCon) 2014 will take place on October 1 – 3, 2014, in Santa Clara, and as every year, there will be a conference with various sessions for suitable engineers and managers, as well as an exposition where companies showcase their latest ARM based products and solutions. The detailed schedule for the conference has just been made available. Last year,  there were 90 sessions organized into 15 tracks, but this year, despite received 300 applications,  the organizers decided to scale it down a bit, and there will be 75 session in the following 11 tracks: Chip Implementation Debugging Graphics Heterogeneous Compute New Frontiers Power Efficiency Safety and Security Software Development and Optimization Software Optimization for Infrastructure and Cloud System Design Verification There are also some paid workshops that take all day with topics such as “Android (NDK) and ARM overview”, “ARM and the Internet of Things”, or “ARM […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments on Linux 3.15 Released

Linux 3.15 Released

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.15 last Sunday: So I ended up doing an rc8 because I was a bit worried about some last-minute dcache fixes, but it turns out that nobody seemed to even notice those. We did have other issues during the week, though, so it was just as well. The futex fixes and cleanups may stand out, but as usual there’s various other random fixes since rc8 in there too: mainly drivers (drm, networking, sound, usb etc), networking, scheduling and perf tooling. But it’s all been fairly small and quiet, which *may* of course be due to the fact that last week was also the first week of the merge window for 3.16. That might have distracted some developers. I’m not entirely convinced I liked the overlap, but it seemed to work ok, and unless people scream really loudly (“Please don’t _ever_ do that again”) and give good […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments on Embedded Linux Conference 2014 Schedule

Embedded Linux Conference 2014 Schedule

The Tenth Embedded Linux Conference (ELC 2014) will take place on April 29 – May 1, 2014 at the San Jose Marriott in San Jose, California. The event will feature 90+ sessions on embedded Linux, Android and IoT with over 450 attendees expected to attend. It will also be co-located with Android Builders Summit and the AllSeen Alliance Hackfest. Even if you can’t attend it’s still interesting to see what will be discussed at the event to get a grasp of on-going developments, learn a few things about different optimization techniques, and so on. So I’ve gone through the sessions’ description, and I’ve designed my own virtual schedule with sessions that could be of interest. April 29 9:00 – 9:30 – Keynote: The Paradox of embedded and Open Source by Tim Bird, Sony Mobile Linux has taken the embedded world by storm.  Billions (with a ‘B’) of devices have now shipped […]

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