allwinner

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on Allwinner H8 Octa-core Processor is Designed for Game Consoles and OTT Boxes

Allwinner H8 Octa-core Processor is Designed for Game Consoles and OTT Boxes

Allwinner Technology has just introduced its new octa-core H8 System on Chip (SoC) for “high-end” gaming consoles and video OTT (over-the-top) boxes, right before the Hong Kong Electronics Fair taking place on October 13-16. The processor feature eight Cortex A7 cores clocked at up to 2.0 GHz, coupled with Imagination Technology PowerVR SGX544 GPU @ 700 MHz with support for OpenGL ES 2.0/1.1, OpenCL 1.1 APIs.  Other key features includes: Multi-format 1080p@60fps video processing including H.265/HEVC codec. HDMI video output up to 1080P@60fps, with HDCP 2.0 support; support HDMI CEC Integrated 8M image signal processor USB – USB Host, and USB dual-role interfaces Gigabit Ethernet MAC Three SD/MMC controllers SmartColor technology to deliver higher image quality and better visual effects Manufactured with 28nm HPC (High-Performance Compact) process by TSMC. We don’t have the full details, but it does look very similar to Allwinner A83T announced last month, but except of […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments on Linux 3.17 Released

Linux 3.17 Released

Linus Torvalds announced the release of Linux Kernel 3.17 on Sunday: So the past week was fairly calm, and so I have no qualms about releasing 3.17 on the normal schedule (as opposed to the optimistic “maybe I can release it one week early” schedule that was not to be). However, I now have travel coming up – something I hoped to avoid when I was hoping for releasing early. Which means that while 3.17 is out, I’m not going to be merging stuff very actively next week, and the week after that is LinuxCon EU… What that means is that depending on how you want to see it, the 3.18 merge window will either be three weeks, or alternatively just have a rather slow start. I don’t mind getting pull requests starting now (in fact, I have a couple already pending in my inbox), but I likely won’t start processing […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments on Current Performance and Stability Issues on AllWinner A80 OptimusBoard Development Board

Current Performance and Stability Issues on AllWinner A80 OptimusBoard Development Board

Sine A80 OptimusBoard is the first ARM hardware that supports both USB 3.0 and Gigabit that I’ve ever owned, so I though it might be interesting to see what performance I could get with a USB 3.0 hard drive through the USB 3.0 OTG port of the board. For testing purpose, I bought a USB 3.0 OTG adapter on Ebay, but I did not look closely enough as it turned out to be only a USB 3.0 OTG to USB 2.0 female adapter capable of USB 2.0 speeds… Kind of useless item since you can plug a standard USB 2.0 OTG adapter into a USB 3.0 OTG receptacle. But I tried my hard drive anyway, and quickly realized write performance was very poor at 3 MB/s on the NTFS partition, whereas most other devices can handle at least15 MB/s, and usually over 25 MB/s. So I contacted Allwinner with this […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments on How to Upgrade Allwinner A80 OptimusBoard Firmware

How to Upgrade Allwinner A80 OptimusBoard Firmware

After informing Allwinner I had some rather slow write speed (3MB/s) to the NTFS partition of my USB drive on my A80 OptimusBoard, they kindly provided a new compressed Android firmware image (sun9iw1p1_android_optimus_v1.2_20140930.img.7z) with some NTFS optimizations that can be downloaded from baidu (password: x2tz), mega.co.nz or simos.info (please only use this link, if the other two do not work as it’s a private website and monthly bandwidth may be limited). I vaguely remember tools like LiveSuit (Linux) or PhoenixSuite (Windows), and I ended up on sunxi-linux Livesuit wiki as I’m running Ubuntu 14.04 on my PC, but you should be able to flash the firmware with PhoenixSuite if you run Windows. The instructions below can also be used for other Allwinner based devices. First you need to install LiveSuit, and build Allwinner USB drivers as follows:

In order to use LiveSuit as a normal user, you also have […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments on AllWinner Announces A83T Octa Core Processor for Tablets

AllWinner Announces A83T Octa Core Processor for Tablets

So Allwinner has just announced a new processor. I’ve been disappointed recently when I discovered AllWinner A80 only supports Linux 3.4, whereas most competitors are running Android 3.10 stable kernel, and their partner is distributing A80 OptimusBoard development boards, which looks to be a nice hardware platform, but without any Android or Linux SDK… And with their latest press release you have to wonder… They announced AllWinner A83T processor with “eight highly energy-efficient Cortex-A7 cores that could run simultaneously at around 2.0GHz, and implements the advanced big.LITTLE architecture to maximize the battery life”. The only problem is that with big.LITTLE you need big and LITTLE core, and if AllWinner A83T is just having eight Cortex A7 cores, there’s no big to be found… I guess that just means they can turn cores on and off independently… Allwinner must also have adopted Qualcomm or Mediatek press release “strategy”, as they release […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments on A80 OptimusBoard Development Board Pictures and Benchmarks

A80 OptimusBoard Development Board Pictures and Benchmarks

A80 OptimusBoard is a development board featuring the latest AllWinner A80 SoC with 8 ARM Cortex A15/A7 cores in big.LITTLE configuration, and a PowerVR GC6230 GPU. Availability was announced about 2 weeks ago for $345, but partially thanks to reader comments on CNX Software, Merrii Technology decided to lower the price to $169 (and $50+ for shipping) to stay competitive against similar boards such as Hardkernel ODROID-XU3. I’ve now received a sample for evaluation. I won’t go again through the specs, but today I’ll take a few pictures of the board, and provide benchmark results to compare them to the ones I got with Rockchip RK3288. Normally, I would also play with the SDK provided with the board, but sadly (and amazingly), there’s currently no such SDK for A80 OptimusBoard, except a leaked Linux SDK which failed to build with recent tools and operating systems. A80 OptimusBoard Pictures I’ve received […]

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) - 14 Comments on Interview with Allwinner Regarding their Linaro Membership

Interview with Allwinner Regarding their Linaro Membership

Since Allwinner has joined the Linaro Digital Home Group earlier this year, many people, including myself, have wondered what it means in terms of Linux support, and the engagement with the open source community. Following up on an idea from a regular reader, I’ve decided to asked a few questions to Ben-El Baz, marketing manager at Allwinner, and Linaro contact for Allwinner, which he kindly answered, and accepted to be published on CNX Software. CNXSoft: Why did Allwinner decide to join Linaro, and especially the Digital Home Group? Allwinner: One of our company’s goals is to be a technology leader.  It’s ambitious but not too far-fetched given the background of our leadership and engineering team.  There’s an extremely talented group of guys behind the scenes here! Leading is difficult unless you’re involved in collaborative organizations like Linaro that work on new technology.  Joining Linaro is an opportunity for us to […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC