Turtle Board is a Raspberry Pi 2 Like FPGA Board for J-Core J2 Open Source SuperH SH2 SoC

J-core J2 is an open source processor and SoC design implemented in VHDL, and using  SH2 instruction set found in some Renesas (previously Hitachi) micro-controllers. The code available royalty free under a BSD license, and it’s also patent-free since all SH2 related patents expired expired in October 2014. The developers used to run the code on Xilinx Spartan 6 based Numato Mimas v2 board since it was cheap ($50) and mostly did the job. “Mostly”, because it still lacked Ethernet, capability for SMP and the serial port was slow, so they decided to design their own Turtle Board to address those issues. Turtle Board preliminary specifications: FPGA – Xilinx Spartan 6 LS25 or LS45 FPGA MCU – 8-bit Atmel MCU for load/update flash at power on. Storage – micro SD slot, 8MB SPI flash System memory – 256 MB RAM Video & Audio Output – HDMI and AV jack Connectivity […]

Linux 4.10 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.10: So there it is, the final 4.10 release. It’s been quiet since rc8, but we did end up fixing several small issues, so the extra week was all good. On the whole, 4.10 didn’t end up as small as it initially looked. After the huge release that was 4.9, I expected things to be pretty quiet, but it ended up very much a fairly average release by modern kernel standards. So we have about 13,000 commits (not counting merges – that would be another 1200+ commits if you count those). The work is all over, obviously – the shortlog below is just the changes in the last week, since rc8. Go out and verify that it’s all good, and I’ll obviously start pulling stuff for 4.11 on Monday. Linus Linux 4.9 added Greybus staging support, improved security thanks to virtually mapped kernel stacks, […]

Renesas SK-RZG1M Board Powered by R8A7743 Processor Gets Mainline Linux Support

Another board has gotten initial mainline Linux support recently, with Renesas SK-RZG1M starter kit board based on Renesas RZ/G1M dual core ARM Cortex A15 SoC with 2GB RAM, a SATA interface, HDMI, LVDS, AV Ethernet bridge, and more. Renesas SK-RZG1M starter kit board actually has the exact same features as Renesas R-Car M2 Porter board except for the processor: SoC – Renesas RZ/G1M (R8A7743) dual core ARM Cortex-A15 processor @ 1.5­GHz with PowerVR SGX544MP2 3D GPU, Renesas 2D graphics processor System Memory – Dual channel 2GB DDR3 Storage – On-board 4 MB SPI, and 64 MB SPI, 1x SATA rev 3.1 connector, 1x SD card slot, and 1x micro SD card slot Video Output / Display I/F – HDMI (via ADV7511), and LVDS + touchscreen Analog Video In – ADV7180 video decoder with RCA jack, NTSC/PAL/SECAM autodetection Audio codec – AK4643EN with 3.5mm jacks for Line In and Line Out Connectivity […]

Linux 4.8 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has officially released Linux 4.8 last Sunday: So the last week was really quiet, which maybe means that I could probably just have skipped rc8 after all. Oh well, no real harm done. This obviously means that the merge window for 4.9 is open, and I appreciate the people who already sent in some pull requests early due to upcoming travel or other reasons. I’ll start pulling things tomorrow, and have even the most eager developers and testers hopefully test the final 4.8 release before the next development kernels start coming 😉 Anyway, there’s a few stragging fixes since rc8 listed below: it’s a mixture of arch fixes (arm, mips, sparc, x86), drivers (networking, nvdimm, gpu) and generic code (some core networking, with a few filesystem, cgroup and and vm things). All of it pretty small, and there really aren’t that many of them. Go forth and test, […]

Renesas GR-PEACH mbed Board Features RZ/A1H Processor with 10MB On-chip Memory

Renesas RZ/A1 ARM Cortex A9 processors were unveiled in 2013, and one of the differentiating feature was the large amount of on-chip SRAM with up to 10MB for RZ/A1H model. The following year, Renesas’ RZ/A1 professional development kit, and some RZ/A1H modules were launched, and I’ve now just seen a tweet about Renesas GR-PEACH development board that is mbed compatible, feature Renesas RZ/A1H processor, and happens to be pink. There are actually two models based on the same PCB: GR-PEACH normal without header, and a “WiFi” connector, and GR-PEACH Full with female headers and an Ethernet port. Both basically share the same specifications: SoC – Renesas RZ/A1H ARM Cortex-A9 Core @ 400 MHz with 10MB on-chip RAM, NEON and FPU, and 128KB L2 cache Storage – 8MB FLASH + micro SD slot Connectivity – Normal: Optional BP3595 WiFi module; FULL: 1x 10/100M Ethernet(Microchip LAN8710A); Both: Xbee connector (unpopulated) USB – […]

Renesas R-Car M2 Porter is a Linux Development Board for Your Car

So far, I always assumed development boards specifically designed for automotive applications would only be available to companies in the car or truck business, but as I wrote about FOSDEM 2016 schedule yesterday, I found out that one of the talk with cover FOSS software stacks that are available for automotive, and usable on hobbyist boards such as Raspberry Pi 2 and Minnowboard Max, but also on Renesas R-Car M2 Porter board specifically designed for automotive infotainment applications. Renesas Port board specifications: SoC – Renesas R-Car M2 dual core ARM Cortex-A15 processor @ 1.5­GHz with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU, Renesas 2D graphics processor, and Multimedia Engine SH­4A @ 780 MHz System Memory – Dual channel 2GB DDR3 Storage – On-board 4 MB SPI, and 64 MB SPI, 1x SATA rev 3.1 connector, 1x SD card slot, and 1x micro SD card slot Video Output / Display I/F – HDMI and LVDS […]

Renesas R-Car H3 Deca-Core Processor and Driverless Car Roadmap

Renesas has recently unveiled R-Car H3 deca-core processor for automotive applications with four Cortex A57 cores, four Cortex A5 cores, and two Cortex-R7 “dual-lock step” cores for real-time processor, and has part the releases showed the expected roadmap for the implementation of driverless / autonomous cars. Let’s start with the processor (R8A77950) and SiP module (R8J77950) specifications: CPU cores –  quad core  ARM Cortex-A57, quad core ARM Cortex-A53, and dual lock-step ARM Cortex-R7 cores with respectively 48KB/32KB, 32KB/32KB, and 32KB/32KB L1 instructions/operand cache. GPU – IMG PowerVR Series6XT GX6650 External memory – LPDDR4-SDRAM up to 1600 MHz, data bus width: 32 bits x 4 ch (12.8GB/s x 4) Expansion bus – 2 ch PCI Express2.0 (1 lane) Video Out – 3x display output Input / camera – 8x video inputs Video codec module (H.265, H.264/AVC, MPEG-4, VC-1, etc.) IP conversion module 2x TS Interfaces Stream and Security Processor Video image […]

iWave Systems iW-RainboW-G20M-Q7 SoM Features Renesas RZ/G1M Cortex A15 SoC

iWave Systems has unveiled a new Qseven 2.0 compliant system-on-module part of their RainboW family with iW-RainboW-G20M-Q7 module powered by Renesas RZ/G1M dual core ARM Cortex A15 SoC, and targeting industrial and automotive applications with over 10 years of support. iW-RainboW-G20M-Q7 module specifications: SoC – Renesas RZ/G1M dual core ARM Cortex A15 @ 1.5GHz with PowerVR SGX544MP2 GPU @ 520MHz System Memory – 1GB DDR3(expandable) Storage – 4GB eMMC Flash (expandable) + 2MB SPI NOR Flash for boot code, and optional Micro SD Slot Connectivity – 1x Gigabit Ethernet  PHY USB – 2 Port USB HUB I/Os via 230-pin Qseven edge connector: Storage – 1x SATA , 1x SDHC USB – 1x USB3.0 host, 2x USB 2.0 hosts, or 1x USB 2.0 device Display – 1x LVDS Connectivity – 1x Gigabit Ethernet Audio – 1x I2S Audio 2x PWM, 2x I2C, SPI, CAN, UART, GPIOs 1x PCIe (multiplexed with SATA) JTAG or […]

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