allwinner

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 26 Comments on $240 Onda V972 AllWinner A31 Quad Core Android Tablet with 9.7″ Retina Display

$240 Onda V972 AllWinner A31 Quad Core Android Tablet with 9.7″ Retina Display

We finally get a product based on AllWinner Quad Core A7 SoC! The Onda V972 is a 9.7″ inch tablet features the latest AllWinner A31 quad-core A7 processor with an 8 core Power VR SGX544MP2 GPU, 2GB RAM & 16 GB Flash, and running Android 4.1 Jelly bean (Upgradable to 4.2). Here are the full specifications of this tablet: SoC – AllWinner A31 Quad Core A7 + 8 Core Power VR SGX544MP2  GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB Flash + microSD socket Display – 9.7″ capacitive touchscreen IPS display (Resolution: 2048*1536) Camera – 5.0MP rear camera with Auto Focus and 2.0MP front camera Connectivity – Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n with Wi-Fi Display and Direct support USB – USB 3.0 port. 3G support via external dongle. Video Out – HDMI – Apparently only 1080p, not 4K TBC. Video Playback – 4K HD Video Playback supporting MP4/3GP/3G2/RM/RMVB/ASF/FLAC/APE/MOV etc… Audio Codecs […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments on AllWinner A10s Processor Overview

AllWinner A10s Processor Overview

Between the AllWinner A10 and AllWinner A13 processors, there’s now an alternative. AllWinner A10s is based on AllWinner A13 architecture (sun5i), but adds HDMI and Ethernet MAC which makes it suitable for mini PCs and set-top boxes. The first time I heard about this processor was in August with IP878 mini PC, and in October, one reader (Alex) informed me AllWinner had posted more details about his new processor. Here are the key features of this (relatively) new SoC: CPU/GPU – ARM Cortex-A8 Core with 32KB D-Cache/ 32KB I-Cache / 256KB L2 Cache, and Mali-400 VPU HD Video Decoding 1080p@30fps of VP8/6, H.264/H.263, WMV9/VC-1, WMV7/8, MPEG-4/2/1, Xvid codecs HD Video Encoding 1080p@30fps with H.264 codec Video Out – HDMI 1.4 (1080p), Memory Up to 1GB DDR2/DDR3 up to 533MHz (16/32 bits Data Bus) MLC/TLC/SLC/EF-NAND ECC 64-bit Peripherals: USB2.0 OTG, USB2.0 HOST （OHCI/EHCI） SD Card V.3.0, eMMC V.4.2 SPI, TWI and […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment on 2D/3D Graphics Linux Demo (X11, EGL, GLES2, Qt4) on AllWinner A10 Tablet

2D/3D Graphics Linux Demo (X11, EGL, GLES2, Qt4) on AllWinner A10 Tablet

Xlab (Maxim Kouprianov) has tested 2D & 3D capabilities of AllWinner A10 SoC (with Mali-400 GPU) on a Ployer MOMO11 Bird Edition tablet running OpenEmbedded with kernel 3.0.52+ testing X11, EGL, OpenGL ES2 and Qt4 on the platform, and the results are pretty smooth as you can see in the video below, although there appears to be some flickering in LunaSysMgr demo. The tools used in the demos are xfwm4 (Xfce Windows Manager), es2gears_x11, cube (Qt), LunaSysMgr (Qt/WebOS) and glmark2-es2. Qt4 acceleration is done via XlibGL platform which in turns uses X11-EGL. He used the Mali drivers version r3p0 (mali400-gles20-gles11-linux-x11-ump) and xf86-video-mali on sunxi-linux github repository mainly maintained by rz2k. You can get more details on how to build Mali-400 support for AllWinner A10 on http://linux-sunxi.org/Mali400, and GPU benchmark results for A10 show the drivers seem to work as expected. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on XBMC for Linux on AllWinner A10 Devices? It Works! (Sort of)

XBMC for Linux on AllWinner A10 Devices? It Works! (Sort of)

Following the lack of support by AllWinner for the video engine libraries (CedarX), I had more or less given up on hope XBMC for Linux would ever run properly on AllWinner A10/A13 hardware. But recently, I found out some progress had been made using existing libs, and saw the Pengpod Tablet video showing XBMC running in Linux fairly smoothly. So I decided to cross-compile XBMC by following the instructions available at http://linux-sunxi.org/XBMC and trying to run it in Linaro ALIP 12.04 rootfs in my Mele A1000. Finally, I managed to cross-compile XBMC, but the performance was very poor in the GUI (6 to 12 fps) and I was unable to play videos and my serial console was flooded with messages like:

[Update: I managed to have XBMC Linux running & playing videos on Mele A1000 by using j1nx image (rootfs + kernel). I would first exhibit the exact same […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments on $100 Mele A1000G / A2000G Android Media Players with 1GB RAM and 8GB Flash

$100 Mele A1000G / A2000G Android Media Players with 1GB RAM and 8GB Flash

I’ve been asked by several people when there would be a Mele with 1GB RAM, well the time is now, with the Mele A1000G and Mele A2000G. Both appear to be based on the previous Mele A1000 and Mele A2000 set-top boxes, but feature 1 GB RAM and 8 GB Flash instead of 512 MB RAM and 4 GB Flash. Here are Mele A1000G & Mele A2000G Specifications: SoC – AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 processor @  1GHz System Memory – 1 GB DDR3 Storage: 8GB NAND Flash  SD card slot (up to 32 GB) Connectivity: Wi-Fi – 802.11 b/g 10/100 MB Ethernet USB – 3 USB Host ports SATA Interface for 2.5″ HDD Video Output – HDMI, composite and VGA. Audio Output –  RCA stereo output and optical out (SPDIF) Audio Formats – MP3 / WMA / WAV / OGG / FLAC / MKA Video Formats – TS / M2TS […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on PengPod 700 & 1000 – Linux Tablets Based on AllWinner A10

PengPod 700 & 1000 – Linux Tablets Based on AllWinner A10

There are plenty of tablet based on AllWinner A10 and A13 processors, but all of them run Android, and you are out of luck if  you want to run Linux on your tablet, unless you hack this yourself. But this is about to change as PengPod will launch 2 tablets and 1 mini PC running Linux from NAND flash or micro SD card: PengPod 700 – 7″ tablet with Allwinner A10, 1GB RAM and 8GB Flash PengPod 1000 – 10″ tablet with AllWinner A10, 1GB RAM and 8GB Flash PengStick – AllWinner A10 mini PC with 1GB RAM and 4 GB Flash The table below gives more detailed specifications and comparison of the three devices. Device PengPod1000 PengPod700 PengStick Type Tablet Tablet TV Stick CPU Allwinner A10 AllWinner A10 AllWinner A10 Android 4 4 4 Linux 3.0.42 3.0.42 3.0.42 Screen 10” 7” External Resolution 1024×600 800×480 1080i Ram 1GB 1GB […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments on HackBerry AllWinner A10 Board is Now Available for $60

HackBerry AllWinner A10 Board is Now Available for $60

The Hackberry “development board” is now available for sale on Miniand. This board powered by AllWinner A10 processor comes in 2 versions: 512 MB RAM version – Available now for $60 1GB RAM version – Available by the end of the month for $65. Both boards features a 4GB Flash, a SDHC slot, 2x USB 2.0 port, 10/100 Ethernet, Wi-Fi, HDMI & composite outputs,  headphone & microphone ports and a IR sensor. The good thing is that serial interface and FEL connectors will be soldered on the board for easy debugging and recovery. The FEL recovery port allows to reflash the board using Livesuit. As a side note, Henrik, a developer involved in Allwinner A10 software development, has done some work to reverse engineer FEL USB protocol, wrote a small program to enter into Livesuit mode with an SD card (Go to the bottom of the page section “Forcing FEL […]

Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 19 Comments on Editing AllWinner A10 Board Configuration Files (script.bin)

Editing AllWinner A10 Board Configuration Files (script.bin)

AllWinner A10 based devices all have board configuration files in binary format, sometimes refereed to as script.bin, evb.bin, sys_config.{product_nane}.bin store in the FAT partition with the kernel. You may want to decode those binary files to configure your hardware and/or disable/enable peripherals. For the Ubuntu image provided for the Mele A1000 set-top box, the file is called evb.bin and the two other files (mele.bin and sys_config1.mele_mod.bin) are not used. The filename can change since it is configurable in u-boot e.g.: load1=fatload mmc 0 43000000 evb.bin bootcmd=run load1 boot_mmc If you want to decrypt the binary files into text format (fex), you can retrieve bin2fex tool: git clone https://github.com/amery/sunxi-tools Build it: cd sunxi-tools make This will compile both bin2fex (binary to fex text files) and fex2bin (fex files to bin), but the later does not seem to work right now. fex2bin also works now. If you want to decrypt a configuration […]

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